The Country of the Pointed Firs
The Country of the Pointed Firs is a quiet story that relates the narrator’s impressions of Dunnet’s Landing, a small community on the Maine coast. Published in 1896 after being serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, the novel (or novella) is mainly a collection of character sketches. Though it takes a fictional hamlet as its subject, it reads like nonfiction.
Most of the characters are over sixty and know one another quite well. The narrator is a young, single writer who rents a room in the home of Almira Todd, a local widow and herbalist, for the summer, and through the friendship that develops with Mrs. Todd she learns about local characters and lore. The introductory essay by Ted Olson explains that Jewett is “an important transitional figure who transcended the limitations of the local color movement by producing literary work that both chronicled and universalized one American region and its human culture.”
It’s clear that the narrator finds something she hungers for at Dunnet’s Landing. She describes the combination of close-knit community, a wealth of practical knowledge, and folklore so satisfyingly that we nearly weep when she has to leave at the end of the summer. Among the village’s inhabitants are a retired sea captain who tells of a ghostly community at the edge of the world, a woman who moves to a nearby island to dwell in solitude after her fiancee departs with someone else, and a widower whose only subject is his dead wife. There are accomplished fishermen and savvy homemakers. There are recluses and socialites, and a preacher too focused on higher matters to be of much use to the human needs in his ken. All of it comes through the wise, kind sensibility of Mrs. Todd herself, whom we come to love. There’s not much action, so you have to be in the mood for that. But to someone willing to slow down, this is a rewarding read.
