After a mediocre book of poetry and a pretty good book of short stories, Cather didn’t publish any other books for seven years, but she spent those years, apparently, really honing her craft. This is a novella, not a full novel; in the collection I read, it took up right around a hundred pages, and it’s a really satisfying read. It’s the story of Bartley Alexander, a wealthy engineer who’s become well known for the bridges he’s designed. He’s become bored by his life, his marriage and his friends, but when he takes a business trip to London, he reconnects with a woman he had a relationship with years before and the story becomes a pretty typical mid-life crisis narrative. But Cather’s prose is extremely refined here and she really puts us inside Alexander’s head or, rather, inside his heart because we really feel everything that he’s feeling in this story. Romanticizing the past, longing for lost youth, questions about how different a life might have been with different choices made when younger . . . these are common themes in art, but Cather imbues them with real feeling. It’s not particularly unique and it isn’t instantly recognizable as a Cather, as some of her later works are, but it’s a time-worn story told effectively and graciously and at a slim hundred pages, it’s a quick, diverting read. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – fairly standard mid-life crisis story is wonderfully executed with real empathy and feeling; at a brief hundred pages, it’s a fast, emotionally satisfying read. 3 ½ stars.