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Title: My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather, A.S. Byatt ISBN: 0-86068-246-3 Publisher: Virago Press Pub. Date: 24 May, 1982 Format: Paperback

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Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Spare and ambiguous, yet moving and memorable
Comment: This short novella (about 20,000 words, close in size to a few of Cather's longer short stories) is a concentrated study of the decline and fall of a marriage. Cather herself agreed with the assessment offered by one of her contemporary reviewers: "there is the steady rhythm of the fundamental hatred of the sexes one of the other and their irresistible attraction one of the other."

The young and idealistic Nelly Birdseye describes the marriage of Myra Driscoll, her aunt's friend, to Oswald Henshawe. Their elopement incites Myra's uncle to disown her from a considerable inheritance, and the couple alternates between mutual bliss and impoverished misery. The fragility of their relationship is further imperiled by Myra's materialism and jealousy and Oswald's indolence and philandering.

"My Mortal Enemy" is, perhaps, one of Cather's most misunderstood novels, and the author seems to have intended that the title's meaning remain ambiguous. Most readers will assume, quite reasonably, that the "mortal enemy" who inflames Myra's inevitable disillusionment is Myra herself, and the text certainly supports such a reading. Yet in correspondence to friends and other writers, Cather admitted that she "had a premonition . . . most people wouldn't [understand]" that Myra's "mortal enemy" was Oswald, since he could never satisfy the excessiveness of her devotion, both to him and to others.

Although framed by the sparsest detail to be found in Cather's fiction, the story's forlorn perspective and memorable characterizations make this one of her most powerful works.

Rating: 5
Summary: Poetic and tragic short novel
Comment: We come to know the protagonist of this short novel,Myra Henshawe.through the eyes of a younger woman who at first admires her unconditionally and grows to view her and the motivations behind her behavior more realistically as she encounters her again as an older physically suffering woman.

The bitterness which she feels toward her husband ,covered over with friends and laughter, when they were young and successful is more openly expressed as they age and find themselves in economic straits.

The characterizations achieved in this very short novel are extremely memorable. An excellent one evening read.

Rating: 5
Summary: A Well of Bitterness
Comment: Too often, popular knowledge of important writers is limited to one or two books which may be neither representative of the author's work as a whole nor the author's best. This is true of Willa Cather. Her early books, such as My Antonia and O Pioneers are widely read and widely praised as is, to a lesser extent a work from her final years, Death Comes to the Archbishop. There is a range of writing from Cather's middle years which may show her at her best, without the sentimintality of the earlier writings. These middle period books are, alas, not well known.

One of these books, My Mortal Enemy, is a short tightly-written tale which can be read in a single sitting or two. But its short length holds great complexity and pathos. The book is difficult to approach because it includes a largely unsympathetic heroine, Myra Henshawe.

Ms. Henshawe left small-town Illinois behind her as a young woman to marry the man she thought she loved. In so doing, she turned her back on a large inheritance. She lives the high life in New York City as the wife of a businessman. She knows writers, artists, but is incorrigibly jealous and has a sharp tounge and a biting wit.

The elderly couple find themselves in hard times and settle in San Francisco. Myra Henshawe, sharp tounged and critical as in her youth, says harsh, irrevokable things about her life and her marriage and modernistic art and culture. She returns for value to the ritualistic elements of the Catholicism of her youth, the religion of her uncle who disinherited her when she eloped.

The story is told by a third party narrator, as is My Antonia, who functions in varied ways throughout the story.

The story is about the well of bitterness, of lost sad lives, the limitations of romantic love and the tarnished heroine's view of religion as a possible source of redemption.