Willa Cather’s writing is pertinent – I remember reading O Pioneers! for the first time. I will never forget it. Set on the American frontier, it follows the lives of the pioneer women who worked the land and watched the times change as people moved away, some to return while others remained distant. O Pioneers! was like the classic western told from a female perspective. To me, A Lost Lady held less charm, being set against the backdrop of the dying West, though it remains a work of art, with its own impressions and mood.

Through the eyes of young Niel, Cather tells the story of Marian Forrester – a sad, nostalgic story of someone so close to redemption, but never quite making it. People think good of her at first, though it soon becomes evident that she is not as straight as they thought. Niel knows this and mourns because of it. He sees Mrs Forrester as belonging to the glory of the old west and he wishes she’d die with it, instead of running on ahead of time and trying to outlive herself.  

The ending is particularly fine. As a grown man, Niel looks back on a woman he admired, who fell from grace, yet who was remembered fondly. A Lost Lady is a highly skilled portrait of people who love, who change on the surface, who are ultimately simply human. There seems nothing good about them, yet nothing quite bad either. They tend to surprise. One can never quite figure them out. The final chapter was warm, relieving, where everything about the people, the book itself, came together – like a long golden afternoon – and prepared to finish itself with perfect dignity. There were hints of elegant sadness, the main character all grown, and the horrible, empty realisation that the West was no more.  

‘The world has changed, and here I end,’ the book seemed to say. Very moving, very clever. Yet strangely inviting. I was left with the sense that the author was trying to tell me something about females and humans in general, but I couldn’t quite get at the mystery. Though that’s fine by me. I tend to enjoy leaving the mystery well alone for the sake of the people it protects, and its own artful evasion.