My Mortal Enemy - Softcover

Cather, Willa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844084485 ISBN 13: 9781844084487

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2006

Synopsis

'People can be lovers and enemies at the same time. We were...' Through the eyes of a young girl, Nellie, we view the life of Myra, a legend in the Southern town where both were born. Myra has romantically abandoned the luxury she was born into to elope with the impoverished Oswald Henshawe. Twenty-five years later, Nellie is dazzled when she meets them living in the elegant poverty of an apartment frequented by singers, actors, poets - in the heart of the artistic community of old New York. But this shabby gentility gives way to real poverty in a jerrybuilt West Coast hotel, and the high purpose of Myra's life - love itself - is revealed to be the enemy within. A finely-wrought study of the great rewards and punishments love brings, MY MORTAL ENEMY is an exquisite example of Willa Cather's art.

About this title

From the Back Cover

In her portrait of Myra and in her excquisitely nuanced depiction of her marriage, Cather shows the evolution of a human spirit as it comes to bridle against the constraints of ordinary happiness and seek an otherworldly fulfillment. 'My Mortal Enemy' is a work whose drama and intensely moral imagination make it unforgettable.

From the Inside Flap

First published in 1926, this book is Cather's sparest and most dramatic novel, a dark and oddly prescient portrait of a marriage that subverts our oldest notions about the nature of happiness and the sanctity of the hearth.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1844084485
• ISBN 13: 9781844084487
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 132