17 h 25 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 17 h 25 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your need to do the right thing blinds you to the harm you cause?
At Saddle Meadows, Pierre Glendinning lives among wealth, affection, and cherished images of his family’s past. His widowed mother takes fierce pride in him. Then Isabel Banford arrives, claiming to be his father’s unacknowledged daughter, and unsettles everything Pierre believes about the people he loves.
Pierre resolves to protect Isabel while shielding his mother from disgrace. But his sense of duty reaches beyond what he can know for certain. Leaving the country estate for the city, he faces poverty and tries to support himself through writing. In Herman Melville’s Pierre; or The Ambiguities, sacrifice and pride become hard to tell apart.
What you’ll discover
- A family under strain Isabel’s claim places a cherished father’s image against a troubling possibility Pierre cannot ignore.
- The danger of certainty Follow a young man whose determination to act nobly outruns his understanding of others.
- Love tangled with possession Explore the uneasy boundary between caring for someone and defending your own ideal.
- Security left behind Travel with Pierre from inherited comfort to city poverty and the uncertain work of writing.
- Loyalty at a cost See how Pierre’s choices unsettle his proud mother and bring pain to his fiancée, Lucy Tartan.
Who will love it
For readers who love tangled families, secrets in old houses, big questions about duty and truth, and a narrator who talks back. Anyone drawn to Melville after Moby-Dick will find a very different, intimate story here.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A golden world at Saddle Meadows
- Love, a ride, and a haunting face
- A letter in the dark changes everything
- Hiding the truth, and Isabel's story
- Pierre's resolve and the false marriage
- The pamphlet and the cold city
- Writing a book, and Lucy's arrival
- The book, the vision, and the walk
- What the story is really about, and how it is told
Who’s who
- Pierre GlendinningA rich, warm-hearted young heir who tries to live by the highest rule of conscience once he learns of a hidden sister.
- Isabel BanfordA dark-haired, guitar-playing girl raised in mystery who writes to Pierre as her brother and wants only a home and love.
- Lucy TartanPierre's gentle, fair-haired fiancee, who trusts him fully and wants to share every secret and every trial with him.
- Mrs. Mary GlendinningPierre's proud, beautiful widowed mother, who guards the family name and wants her son to stay obedient and honored.
- Glen StanlyPierre's cool, fashionable cousin, once a boyhood friend, who stands to gain from Pierre's fall.
- Charlie MillthorpeA boyhood friend from Saddle Meadows who now lives among the Apostles as a talkative, kind-hearted lawyer and would-be philosopher.
- Delly UlverA village girl disgraced and broken by her fate, whom Pierre rescues and who becomes Isabel's companion and maid.
- Mr. FalsgraveThe gentle, polished clergyman of Saddle Meadows, who prefers soothing words to hard moral answers.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 17 h 25 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 12 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Pierre ou les Ambiguïtés
by Herman Melville · 1852
A letter from an unknown girl claims Pierre Glendinning as her brother and sends him from his mother's home.
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In short
Pierre; or The Ambiguities is a novel by Herman Melville, written in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and set in the New York countryside and the city. It follows Pierre Glendinning, a wealthy young heir with a proud mother, a loving fiancee and a spotless picture of his dead father.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A golden world at Saddle Meadows
The story opens on a June morning in the country. Pierre, nearly twenty, walks to a cottage where Lucy Tartan is staying with her aunt. A crimson flower rests on her windowsill pillow, and he pins it to his coat like a soldier's colors. Their talk is full of teasing and heartfelt play.
Pierre lives at Saddle Meadows with his widowed mother, Mrs. Glendinning. She is proud, beautiful and wealthy, and the two call each other brother and sister as a family joke. Melville spends whole chapters on the Glendinning past. Pierre's great-grandfather died in an Indian battle on the meadows. His grandfather, a general in the Revolution, held a fort for months and left banners, a drum and a baton hanging in the hall.
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What is Pierre; or The Ambiguities about?
It tells of a young New York heir, Pierre Glendinning, whose life changes when a girl named Isabel writes that she is his father's secret daughter. He gives up his family and bride for her, and the tale follows what that choice costs.
What does ambiguities mean in the title?
It points to the way events and people in the book can be read two ways. A smile, a portrait, a sister or a sacrifice may be pure or flawed, and Pierre can never be sure which he is facing.
Who is Isabel in Pierre?
Isabel Banford is a dark-haired girl who plays the guitar and tells a dreamlike story of a mysterious childhood. She writes to Pierre as his sister and wants to live near him. Her origin is the central puzzle of the plot.
The author
Herman Melville
1819–1891 · American novelist and poet
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He was born and died in New York City and also lived in Massachusetts. He published Moby-Dick in 1851, Pierre in 1852, and The Confidence-Man in 1857. His unfinished Billy Budd was published after his death, in 1924.
More by Herman Melville
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