Yes, it is. And don't call me Shirley.I read The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories by Sarah Orne Jewett. As I read this novel, I was reminded of nothing so much as Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone. Jewett created a fictional town on the coast of Maine -- Dunnett Landing -- and peopled it with colorful and endearing characters. The narrator is an outsider, a writer from Boston who is spending a summer in Dunnett Landing. She boards with the widow Almira Todd, the local healer/herbalist and acknowledged repository of local history, and quickly falls in love with the place. Through her eyes we meet Mrs. Todd's elderly mother Mrs. Blackwell, who lives on an island with her middle-aged, unmarried son William, Captain Littlepage, Mr. Elijah Tilley, Esther Hight the shepherdess, and a bevy of others.
What is amazing is that, although The Country of the Pointed Firs was first published in 1896, there is nothing stilted or old fashioned about the writing. The language takes a little bit of getting used to, because the dialogue is written in regional dialect, but after that it is fresh, engaging, and gently humorous.
It is notable that the humor does not come from the locals being backwards or ignorant. In fact, Jewett makes a point of saying that the residents of Dunnett Landing had, by and large, been in the shipping trade and traveled with their families all over the world. They were educated, worldly, and open-minded.
I loved this book! The edition I have, the Norton edition reissued in 1981, has the added bonus of lovely pen and ink illustrations. It really was a completely delightful reading experience.
(I know a couple who both loved this book so much that when they moved in together neither one could bear to part with her copy, so the two books sit side by side on their book shelf.)
(Cross-posted at the Spring Reading Challenge.)
