The Living

A Novel

397 pages

English language

Published May 5, 1992 by HarperCollins.

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

This New York Times bestselling novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard is a mesmerizing evocation of life in the Pacific Northwest during the last decades of the 19th century.

13 editions

Review of 'The living' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

BIG NOVEL!!
contains vast expanses of life, including about three dozen incredibly beautiful passages of characters reflecting on their life with the full scope of birth and death behind them and before them.

that being said it’s VERY long and there were only barely enough plot points or tension scraped onto the dry whole wheat toast to get me through it.

the treatment & experiences of the non white people brutalized by colonialism was (imo) nuanced but still very minimized. it’s a whhite book and i didn’t possess my own supplemental understanding of the region’s history to layer in my own context & nuance. :/

i look forward to reading some of her shorter work