Life of a man, Henry David Thoreau

Wow. This one starts as a romance, instead of starting as a nature story and growing a romance later - the nature parts are nicely intertwined with the romance. It's truly wonderful - for all the Cinderella aspects. And since the reader has been with him since he fell in love, we can see it from his side with no Cinderella to it at all...Love it. Lots of twists and turns - seems like he keeps bringing men to the house for her to choose from. But a proper happy ending, despite the misunderstandings right near the end. Best Stratton-Porter book yet. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2018695.html

This was America's best-selling novel in 1912; a feelgood romance between a young man who grows vast numbers of medicinal herbs in the Indiana woods, and a girl who appears to him in his dreams. She needs to sort out some mildly complex family issues (evil uncle, dead mother, estranged grandparents); he needs to persuade her that she loves him; it's fairly obvious how things will work out. (I notice that the more recent of the two Hollywood adaptations had to invent a whole new rival romance subplot to make the story interesting.)

The best bits in the book are Stratton-Porter's lyrical descriptions of the scenery:

"They were at the foot of a small levee that ran to the bridge crossing Singing Water. On the left lay the valley through which the stream swept from its hurried rush down the hill, a marshy thicket of vines, shrubs, and bushes, the banks impassable with water growth. Everywhere flamed foxfire and cardinal flower, thousands of wild tiger lilies lifted gorgeous orange-red trumpets, beside pearl-white turtle head and moon daisies, while all the creek bank was a coral line with the first opening bloom of big pink mallows. Rank jewel flower poured gold from dainty cornucopias and lavender beard-tongue offered honey to a million bumbling bees; water smart-weed spread a glowing pink background, and twining amber dodder topped the marsh in lacy mist with its delicate white bloom. Straight before them a white-sanded road climbed to the bridge and up a gentle hill between the young hedge of small trees and bushes, where again flowers and bright colours rioted and led to the cabin yet invisible."

I don't think I have heard of even half of the individual species named there, but it adds up to a very pleasing picture, and every chapter has several passages like this.

On the other hand, the characters are a little too perfect to be true, apart from the evil uncle of whom the opposite is the case, and also one or two points where our hero gets a bit manipulative with our heroine, though he does get a mild comeuppance from it. Not too long, compared with some of the other century-old blockbusters I have read. ( )

Dreadful. Hard to know where to start with this one... Apart from being horribly overwritten and w-a-a-y too long, it is packed with drivel about Love and Keeping a Clean Body. The Harvester's behaviour in this "relationship" is positively delusional, as well as being patronizing. Most of the characters are unbelievable. Defo not a book for anyone with an iota of feminist sensibility. Basically, tosh from beginning to end. I kept reading because the overarching horror of it made it difficult to look away - rather as with witnessing an accident.

I last read this book probably at least 35 years ago, and was surprised at how much I still love it. I read it tonight on Google Books because my Grandma's copy of this is packed away somewhere in my parent's attic.

This story, of a very Thoreau-ish young man who lives in the country on 600 acres devoted to medicinal plants and herbs, manages to strike a melancholic note without meaning to. Even a hundred years ago he was on a mission to preserve the disappearing flora from the Indiana country side that had been used in traditional and western medicine. I couldn't help but feel how much more we've probably lost in the hundred years since this book was written.

The prose is over-wrought by today's standards, but the story of the plants and the noble man behind their cultivation, and his lovely pure-hearted romance of the delicate and sickly young woman that he comes to love still managed to tug at my heart.

It's just a beautiful story and you can't help wishing that there were more men today like David Langston, the Harvester. ( )