The Country of the Pointed Firs

Author(s): Sarah Orne Jewett

Genre(s): General Fiction

Narrators: Betsie Bush, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), James Smith, Frank, Stephan Gambke, Chip, Michael Shook, Patricia Oakley, Marian Brown

Number of Chapters: 20

Length: 4 hours and 25 minutes

Language: English

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is considered Jewett’s finest work, described by Henry James as her “beautiful little quantum of achievement.” Despite James’s diminutives, the novel remains a classic. Because it is loosely structured, many critics view the book not as a novel, but a series of sketches; however, its structure is unified through both setting and theme. Jewett herself felt that her strengths as a writer lay not in plot development or dramatic tension, but in character development. Indeed, she determined early in her career to preserve a disappearing way of life, and her novel can be read as a study of the effects of isolation and hardship on the inhabitants who lived in the decaying fishing villages along the Maine coast.
(summary from Gutenberg e-text)