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One of Ours Audiobook
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(3.01) - 1,812 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
Willa Cather’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel tells of the making of a young American soldier.
Claude Wheeler, the sensitive, aspiring protagonist, resembles the youngest son of a peculiarly American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds the purpose he has been searching for all his life. His yearnings impel him toward a frontier wilder and more violent than the one tamed by his pioneer ancestors.
One of Ours is a canny and vital portrait of an American psyche at once skeptical and romantic, restless and heroic.
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"A Pulitzer Prize winner with this book for the usual reason -that it portrays a particular part of the history of this country - the first half of the book details life as Claude was growing up in Nebraska. I wished that part hadn't ended. It almost seemed that I was reading a different book after he enlisted and was having the usual experiences on a troop ship except in this case there was a flu epidemic on board. It wasn't until later that I realized she was giving the readers a small taste of the same kind of sickness that was world-wide at that time. I gradually got used to the fact that the rest of the book would be an account of the lives of infantrymen in and out of trenches in France. Their human qualities as well as those of the German soldiers are revealed and causes one to ponder again about how senseless such things are."
— Jim (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“The thing about Willa Cather’s landscape and figures is that not only were they born alive but remain so after six decades.”
— Guardian (London) -
“An astonishing power to touch an elegiac note right on the nerve without sentimentality.”
— Marina Warner, British writer, historian, and mythographer
Awards
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Winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
One of Ours Listener Reviews
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" Won the Pulitzer in 1923. "
— Kelly, 2/17/2014 -
" Even though it's been a few years since I read this book, I still remember it. The pictures in my mind are still bright. Some very poignant scenes and quite a story. "
— Sara, 2/12/2014 -
" I loved this book. Cather tells the story of a young girl who lives in a small town and has great talent at the piano. Her talent takes her to the big city where she finds greater artistic development as well as her first love. It's typical Cather, but with a musical theme. Thoroughly enjoyable. "
— Sara, 2/10/2014 -
" It deserved its Pulitzer Prize...an excellent book "
— Peter, 1/28/2014 -
" Despite the thesis-writing so long ago, there are many Cather books I haven't read. I was so in-depth in the ones I wrote about, there was no time! But she won the Pullitzer for this one, and I can guess why. It was a timely, tragic record of the losses of WW1, in personal detail. Following Claude through his frustrated, boring life in Nebraska after the frontier is no longer a frontier, he only finds fulfillment in war-torn France. So sad, but so right at the end, as well, as most Cather books are. My initial dislike for Claude gave way to a grudging respect for a man out of time and out of place. "
— Amanda, 1/20/2014 -
" Cather won the Pulitzer for this book in 1923. The story is still fresh, the last two pages will stay with me always. The mother summing up her son's life. "
— Patricia, 1/13/2014 -
" Very slow placed story of a man searching for a place in the mid-West farming workd he grows up in. Then switches to gruesome account of WW1 life, where he ultimately finds purpose, if not meaning. Sadness abounds. "
— Matthew, 1/3/2014 -
" This book seems to revolve around the main character's general unfulfillment, and then the ending punches you in the teeth. "
— Jenny, 12/21/2013 -
" Poignant to read of a young man's reaction to being in the military for WW I and wondering about the similarities and differences for our soldiers now. "
— Randee, 12/20/2013 -
" Her war book. Hemingway made a nasty comment about her not being able to write about war without being in one. But then he had some pretty misogynistic tendencies...this is very good. "
— Dan, 12/17/2013 -
" I enjoyed this book very much. It is a pro-WWI story, but it does also show the heartbreak of war in general. The narrator is a cross between Jim in My Antonia and Collin (I think. You know, the one who also narrates Absolom, Absolom!) in The Sound and the Fury. "
— Marie, 11/29/2013 -
" Quick review to be updated later...won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1923. Scrumptious, wonderful! "
— Sara, 6/5/2013 -
" I loved this book. The description of a young boy who never really fit in on the farm where he grew up. Never understood by his father but eternally loved by his mother. There is a quote in this book "safe, safe" that I want to cry every time I think about it. "
— Sara, 2/10/2012 -
" I read this one b/c it was her Pulitzer Prize winner. I wasn't impressed. Claude made me nuts. I loved "Oh Pioneers" and "My Antonia", but this one wasn't great in my book. "
— Maggie, 9/27/2011 -
" WW I story of a farmboy who chooses to go to war. "
— Stephanie, 5/13/2011 -
" I would recommend this book. I felt like she brought this era alive for me as well as the characters. "
— Roxanne, 2/21/2011 -
" Not one of my favorite Willa Cather books -- a little depressing. "
— Michelle, 12/17/2010 -
" Cather won the Pulitzer for this book in 1923. The story is still fresh, the last two pages will stay with me always. The mother summing up her son's life. "
— Patricia, 11/29/2010 -
" Poignant to read of a young man's reaction to being in the military for WW I and wondering about the similarities and differences for our soldiers now. "
— Randee, 10/11/2010 -
" I wanted so badly to like this one - I love WC and this won a Pulitzer but the plot took such a weird and boring turn into the main character's experience in the military. Ugh - not my thing. I skimmed the ending. "
— Kelley, 8/29/2010 -
" A WWI novel. Okay, but not as good as much of her other fiction. I thought that the first 2/3 of the book, which was set in Nebraska, was much better than the final portion, which took place in France. In writing about war, I suspect that it helps to have been there. "
— Chris, 8/17/2010 -
" Not one of my favorite Willa Cather books -- a little depressing. "
— Michelle, 8/6/2010 -
" Great character development and well told universal heart rending story. "
— Kathy, 8/4/2010
About Willa Cather
Willa Cather (1873–1947), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifteen books, is widely considered one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century. She grew up in Nebraska and is best known for her depictions of frontier life on the Great Plains in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Song of the Lark. In 1944 she was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours.