Listening to Lawrence Luckinbill read Annie Dillard's historical novel The Living takes a little getting used to. The very first sentence reveals a pronounced and distracting lisp, but don't let that dissuade you from continuing. Luckinbill's voice also exhibits a simple honesty, a gruffness that is perfectly suited to the steely pioneer spirit of Dillard's story. Surprisingly quickly, the vocal idiosyncrasy fades away, leaving only the emotional resonance of Luckenbill's obviously heartfelt connection to this powerful tale.

Dillard's finely crafted prose and Luckinbill's sincere voice carry you back to the early days of American expansion, into the truly Wild West and the stone-hard life these settlers would be forced to endure. "She had cried out to God all day and maybe all night, too, that he would lend her strength to bear affliction and go on. She was not aware that underneath she prayed another prayer as if to a power above God, or at least to his better nature, that he was finished with the worst of it." Of course, God isn't finished, and neither are these brave souls. Dillard opens their world slowly, stretching the horizon generation by generation, tethering the fate of one small family to that of the struggling town that they are helping to build and, ultimately, to the inexorable rise of the emerging nation. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --George Laney


From Library Journal
Pulitzer Prize-winner Dillard ( Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , HarperCollins, 1988) turns her hand to fiction with this historical novel of the American Northwest in the late 19th century. Focusing on the settlement at Whatcom on Bellingham Bay (near Puget Sound), Dillard offers a compelling portrait of frontier life. The novel has a large and richly varied cast of characters, from the engaging frontiersman Clare Fishburn and Eastern socialite-turned-pioneer Minta Honer to the disturbed and violent Beal Obenchain and kleptomaniac Pearl Sharp. The Living is unflinching in its delineations of pioneer life at its worst and best--racism and brutality on the one hand and optimism and charity in adversity on the other. Dillard's view of "the living" in its many senses is a fine novel that is an essential purchase for all fiction collections.- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.


-- New York Times Book Review
"An august celebration of human frenzy and endurance [and]...an invigorating, intricate first novel. Annie Dillard [shows a] tremendous gift for writing in a genuinely epic mode."



"The Living is an impressive piece of fiction and a riveting hunk of history...The many readers who have been drawn in the past to Dillard's work for its elegant and muscular use of language won't be disappointed in these pages...She has given herself a landscape large enough to challenge her talents."



"Above all, a novel about the precarious, wondrous, solitary, terrifying, utterly common condition of human life."



"The kind of book a reader sinks into completely...The characters are so compelling, the setting so detailed, so convincing, so absolutely complete...The Living is an extraordinary accomplishment, one of those rare occasions when the written word results through the magic and talent of the author in the creation of the whole world."


From AudioFile
Annie Dillard's first novel celebrates grace in nature, life in death, and the present in the past. Dozens of characters appear and disappear in this novel whose only enduring character seems to be the town of Whatcom on Washington's Bellingham Bay. Alert to Dillard's richly alliterative prose, Cassidy's reading is perfectly paced and sparkles with the author's delight in the living. P.E.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
The popular Pulitzer-winning Dillard (An American Childhood, 1987, The Writing Life, 1989, etc.) has come up with a novel at last--a panoramic and engrossing re-creation of 19th-century pioneer life in the Pacific Northwest--complete with gentlemanly gold miners, avuncular railroad speculators, misty-eyed sweethearts, assorted schemers and dreamers, and even a three-card- monte player or two. Ada and Rooney Fishburn were barely into their early 20s when they set off by covered wagon for the untamed western coastland just south of Canada. Youthful ignorance and optimism proved to be their greatest assets, though, as they arrived at Whatcom, a minuscule settlement in Bellingham Bay, and threw themselves into a lifelong battle against the physical hardship, grueling labor, and frequent tragedies of frontier life. With the help of other settlers and a tribe of friendly Lummi Indians, the Fishburns managed to survive--long enough to watch with amazement as gold, railroads, and real estate brought undreamed-of fortune and calamity to their isolated shore. By the time the two surviving Fishburn sons were grown, an ever-increasing influx of shopkeepers, politicians, and entrepreneurs arriving from the Midwest, the East Coast, and Europe had quickened the rhythms of the town sufficiently to send all of Whatcom's fortunes reeling. New personalities joined the fray, including John Ireland Sharp, the soul-searching school principal forever marked by the poverty he witnessed in New York City; Minta and June Randall, Baltimore heiresses who bet their hearts and their inheritances on this coastland; Johnny Lee, a Chinese railway worker whose younger brother was deliberately drowned; and brooding, depraved Beal Obenchain, who toyed with his fellow settlers' psyches as a form of recreation. As usual in Dillard's work, sparkling prose and striking insights abound, though a tendency toward overdescription, plus a certain emotional distance from her many characters--who must regularly vacate the stage to let others have a turn--take some of the power out of her punch. Otherwise: a triumph of narrative skill and faithful research- -headed for success. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.



"A panoramic, hypnotic novel...A novel of character that blends history, social change and individual dreams in a sophisticated, seamless prose."


Book Description
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.


About the Author
Annie Dillard is the author of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as well as An American Childhood, The Living, and Mornings Like This. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Dillard attended Hollins College in Virginia. After living for five years in the Pacific Northwest, she returned to the East Coast, where she lives with her family.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

Author Biography:

Annie Dillard is the acclaimed author of nine books, including Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, and The Living. She lives in Middletown, CT.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

An august celebration of human frenzy and endurance [and]...an invigorating, intricate first novel. Annie Dillard [shows a] tremendous gift for writing in a genuinely epic mode.

Thomas Keneally

"The Living" is an august celebration of human frenzy and endurance. Her living are hectically alive, her dead recur in furious memory. And Annie Dillard, sometimes by an apparent crabwise indirection but with utter thoroughness, proves herself a fine novelist. -- New York Times

AudioFile - Robert Berlinger

The abridged audio version of Annie Dillard's epic novel, The Living, is an absolute delight. Dillard's rich, evocative tale surrounding the birth pangs and subsequent maturity of a small Pacific Northwest community is brought vividly to life by Lawrence Luckinbill's masterful reading. Luckinbill's graceful, expressive tones give full value to the intensity of Dillard's drama and the subtle details of her poetic imagery. While the lives in this rich tapestry of characters get crowded as Dillard traces these pioneers and their progeny through the nineteenth century, Luckinbill proves to be a keen raconteur and keeps his audio audience right on track. R.W.B. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Thomas Keneally - New York Times Book Review

An august celebration of human frenzy and endurance￯﾿ﾽ.Annie Dillard [shows a] tremendous gift for writing in a genuinely epic mode.

Kirkus Reviews

The popular Pulitzer-winning Dillard (An American Childhood, 1987, The Writing Life, 1989, etc.) has come up with a novel at last—a panoramic and engrossing re-creation of 19th-century pioneer life in the Pacific Northwest—complete with gentlemanly gold miners, avuncular railroad speculators, misty-eyed sweethearts, assorted schemers and dreamers, and even a three-card- monte player or two. Ada and Rooney Fishburn were barely into their early 20s when they set off by covered wagon for the untamed western coastland just south of Canada. Youthful ignorance and optimism proved to be their greatest assets, though, as they arrived at Whatcom, a minuscule settlement in Bellingham Bay, and threw themselves into a lifelong battle against the physical hardship, grueling labor, and frequent tragedies of frontier life. With the help of other settlers and a tribe of friendly Lummi Indians, the Fishburns managed to survive—long enough to watch with amazement as gold, railroads, and real estate brought undreamed-of fortune and calamity to their isolated shore. By the time the two surviving Fishburn sons were grown, an ever-increasing influx of shopkeepers, politicians, and entrepreneurs arriving from the Midwest, the East Coast, and Europe had quickened the rhythms of the town sufficiently to send all of Whatcom's fortunes reeling. New personalities joined the fray, including John Ireland Sharp, the soul-searching school principal forever marked by the poverty he witnessed in New York City; Minta and June Randall, Baltimore heiresses who bet their hearts and their inheritances on this coastland; Johnny Lee, a Chinese railway worker whose younger brother was deliberately drowned; andbrooding, depraved Beal Obenchain, who toyed with his fellow settlers' psyches as a form of recreation. As usual in Dillard's work, sparkling prose and striking insights abound, though a tendency toward overdescription, plus a certain emotional distance from her many characters—who must regularly vacate the stage to let others have a turn—take some of the power out of her punch. Otherwise: a triumph of narrative skill and faithful research—headed for success.