The Country of the Pointed Firs

It is hard to articulate why I loved this book so much. It’s not really a novel, more a loose series of character sketches. The main characters are mostly unmarried and widowed women whose dispositions have been shaped and sculpted by the rough winds of life. They are as beautiful and solid as the rocky Maine shoreline. This is one of those books you read with your heart. You feel every nuance, everything that’s not said, and every small joy and great disappointment of each character.

The characters in this book reminded me of those found in L.M. Montgomery’s stories, but they were more somber and mature. William, especially, reminded me of Matthew Cutburt: the quiet dignity, the shyness, and the patience – it was like reading an alternate storyline for Matthew.

The only thing that threw me was the narrator. I could never quite figure out who she was, why she was there, or what her real purpose was. Yet, I think in leaving the narrator undeveloped, Jewett allows her reader to effectually become the narrator. Her experience is our experience. Her observations ours. There is no distance. In reading The Country of the Pointed Firs we live for a season on the coast of Maine. We develop relationships and sympathize with a host of folks who are in the autumn of their lives. We conclude, like our narrator, that “in the life of each of us … there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong” (89).