Above link not working? Click here to launch Zoom session

Join us on Thursday at 3PM to chat about the book!

Before Breakfast

by Willa Cather

Read the Book as a PDF: Before Breakfast

This week in the book club we will be reading the short story 'Before Breakfast' by Willa Cather. Written not long before her death this was one of Willa Cathers last three posthumously published works, it is filled with the careful touch and wisdom of an older and wiser writer than some of her earlier youthful works. It’s a tight nugget of a story about a successful middle-aged businessman 'Henry Grenfell' who escapes his work and family for a solo summer vacation at his island cottage.

The story begins with this sentence:

“Henry Grenfell, of Grenfell & Saunders, got resentfully out of bed after a bad night.”

Henry’s immersion into 'glorious loneliness' is not off to a good start. This is due to science in the form of a professor of geology whose comments the night before about the age of the island set off a middle-aged existential crisis, and all before he even sets down for breakfast...

The story reflects not only on the nature of aging and our own mortality, but - rather ahead of its time - critiques a fragile masculinity in the form of Henry Grenfell, a man who is cold and robotic in his pursuit of 'success' and is emotionally distant from his feelings and family, so much so that he resorts to big game shooting to cure his fear of being perceived as 'weak'.

What did you make of this story? 

About the Author

Willa Sibert Cather was born in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

Cather achieved recognition as a novelist of the frontier and pioneer experience. She wrote of the tenacity and spirit of settlers, many of them European immigrants, in the Great Plains in the early to mid-20th century. Common themes in her work include loss, exile, and social isolation. A sense of place is an important element in Cather's fiction; sometimes harsh, often beautiful, physical landscapes and domestic spaces are for Cather dynamic presences against which the characters both struggle and express love.

How to join the club to chat

The zoom link to join will apear above on this page at 3PM on Thursday. To join you will need a phone/tablet or laptop with a built in camera and microphone (most modern devices come with this) you may need to download the zoom app onto your phone if you are using a phone to join.

Sign up if you would like to receive an email reminder of the book club, to do this you must first create a profile.

Create a profile now