num_pages: 5
description: Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems. In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Pete appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. These people are all loving, and ironic. Theirs is a simple and bold story. In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts nature's vastness and nearness. She presents willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Annie Dillard's original body of work.
language: English
title: The Maytrees
titlecomplete: The Maytrees
genres: Relationships, Adult, Adult Fiction, Novels, Marriage, Audiobook, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 6335
places: Cape Cod, Massachusetts
awards: awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
publisher: HarperAudio