The Maytrees

Author: Annie Dillard
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2007
Pages:  240
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.

In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Peter appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. These people are all loving and ironic. Theirs is a simple and bold story.

Review: I'm confident that had I tried reading the print version of this book, I would not have been able to finish it. That said, unfortunately the narrator, David Rasche, did nothing to enhance the audiobook version of this novel. I am giving this two stars simply because I finished it.