Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16541 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ageing Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cut-throat lenders. In this winner of the US 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence of such a life with stark, painful detail. --Amazon.com

Synopsis
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers. Larry Cook's farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out. In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare's original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America's highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.

Customer Reviews

Old-fashioned 70's Feminist Misandry
There is plenty to admire in this book, which is why awarding it only one star wouldn't have felt right. I did not found the main characters convincing or `alive', there is no wit or irony in the book, and the story as a whole doesn't gel. But Smiley is a hard-working writer, and there is a wealth of detail about farming and farming techniques (presumably the result of detailed research) which feels educational. You come away feeling that you've learned something.

Also, although it suffers from many of the weaknesses of contemporary novels (especially the feeling that the whole is less than the sum of its parts) there is a passion which burns at the core of this book so you do feel that it is at least about something. It was apparently born out of a feminist desire to rewrite King Lear (sort of) from the point of view of the daughters. The daughters point of view, it transpires, is that of man-hating 70's feminists. Their world is one in which men are generally vile, sly and treacherous. There are only so many evil acts that you can pile onto the shoulders of the poor males, without turning the book into a melodrama (an ever-present threat); so Smiley has to work hard to convey their blanket wickedness by tone and atmosphere, and sometimes she struggles. When Harold, a neighbour, is blinded in a horrific accident, for example, and one of the daughters compares him to Hitler and says that he deserves no pity, the other daughter effectively poses the question - and you can't help feeling that she is articulating the very question that Smiley must have been asking herself, seated at the keyboard at this point - exactly what he has done that has put him so far beyond the pale. She resolves this little problem by coming up with an anecdote about how years earlier he apparently deliberately drove over a fawn on his cornpicker, and then callously left it to die - not so much melodrama as Disney.

Throughout the book, you never have a clue what the characters will do next, and this is mainly because they aren't credible personalities. Their dialogue is usually done well, but their actions aren't convincing. Yes some fathers abuse their children. But I wasn't at all persuaded that such men are remotely like the characters in this book.

Smiley's strength is in the externals, and in the detail - but she often overdoes even that. There are an awful lot of lists. A character can't open a medicine cabinet without Smiley listing every single thing inside it.

Smiley is described in the blurb at the back of the book as a `militant liberal'. She describes herself as a `nice person'. And yet ethically this is a dodgy book. We would know exactly what to think of it if the target were homosexuals, Jews, women, Muslims, etc. It is to be hoped that a future, more enlightened generation will also know what to think of a book that treats men as this one does.

Astonishing Symmetries Sneak Subtleties into a Surprising Story

Most modern novels fail to surprise me. They telegraph where they are going in such obvious ways that I often feel I could write the next chapters and the ending before I read them. Jane Smiley in A Thousand Acres also telegraphs a lot . . . but underneath those obvious road signs, she's built a more powerful message for those who care to read between the lines. Although most people don't want to read a book as long and as dark as this one, it's well worth your while. The character and plot developments display an amazing set of symmetries that are works of genius.

Those who will love this book the most are people who know farm life in the American Middle West well. Having had a grandfather, father and several uncles who were farmers in Illinois raising lots of corn and hogs, I was first impressed by how well Ms. Smiley captured the attitudes, experiences, psychology and perspectives of the American family farmer during the 1930s through the 1980s. I felt like I was reading the history of my own family for about the first third of the book.

Then, she powerfully shifts the ground as the patriarch of the family, Larry Cook, decides to cede control over the family farm to avoid estate taxes. From there, a superficial reading will see this as a modern version of King Lear. I think that obvious parallel is not an accurate view of the book. Instead, this book takes on the qualities of a Greek tragedy as the characters move inexorably towards their preordained fates. What's the source of the tragedy? It's the pride of the American family farmer who lusts for more land and production.

In fact, this book could have been titled "Life Drains Away" as the forces set into action by the characters create an ironic threat to some of the same characters.

I was most impressed by the subtle case being made for healthier farming methods and changed values among family farmers. Rarely does a novel make such an objective point with such power.

At times, you'll feel that the novel is more than a little over the top. But that's what makes the novel work as a tragic story. I do agree that Ms. Smiley could probably have cut back on some of the darkness, still made her point, and possibly had a masterpiece of a story. But some writers need to shake the heavens with their furies . . . and we can hardly blame them when they succeed.

Well done, Ms. Smiley!

A difficult and unrewarding read
I chose to read this after my mother gave it to me and I read all the rave reviews on the cover. Although I found it very well and emotionally written I have to say, I didn't like any of the charachers and therefore couldn't empathise or really care about what happened to them.

Ginny especially came across as a very weak person and I believe the tiniest details of her everyday life (her houshold jobs, the dinner, what she was wearing etc.) was recounted to reflect that not much else was going on in her head. This was probably to blank out her horrific childhood of course but when it came to it she refused to stand up for herself or even confide in her husband and tried to poison the person who brought it all out into the light. Rose was probably the best of a bad lot!

Even so, it did keep me engaged if only to find out if Larry got what was coming to him. But alas no! Read if if you don't mind feeling a curious anxiety but I have enough of that in real life.