The Yearling

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, 1938

Date Read: 7/29/23

This novel belongs to the same genre as Old Yeller: books about pets dying. This one had the added bonus of a young child also dying, so that's fun.

Emotionally, I really didn't need this at the same time as Good Omens: Season 2 and I'm not sure I'm going to recover anytime soon. I was already crying from the show, picked up the novel, and a little kid died unexpectedly.

[Spoiler] And a little boy had to shoot his pet deer. [/Spoiler]

It was interesting in that I know nothing about the history of Florida, where this is set. There's no dates given in the novel but they have steamships which were first used in Florida in 1829. If I had to guess, I'd say it is set in the author's childhood (b. 1896).

I'd like to say though, reading her bio on Wikipedia, that her life was nothing at all like that of the family in the novel. She grew up in DC and went to college, and wasn't ever so poor a single harvest meant life or death.

Also there's this little ditty:

Allegedly, this is included on high school reading lists. I don't remember ever reading it and it certainly was around well before I was lol in school, because I had read so many of the assigned books already, my English teachers often assigned me something else to read, so I wouldn't be bored in class. I still had to do the work on what the class was reading, but they did help broaden my reading horizons (I went straight from The Babysitter's Club to Stephen King).

I'm going to read some very emotionally bland history and try to recover from Good Omens and this novel. My poor heart can't take much more. Literally having like angina from all this lol

Length: 405 pages in Scribner's hardback. This one has illustrations which are badly placed and spoil some of the suspenseful bits so don't read this version.

Rereadable: maybe if my heart recovers.

Classic: yes, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin or Old Yeller.