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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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
‘A Thousand Acres is a strong, gnarled shocker of a novel… superb.’
Sunday Times
‘Epic fiction of the very highest order, naturalistic , penetrating and wholly absorbing.’
Literary Review
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--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Jane Smiley's characters in A Thousand Acres are as intense and complex as anyone whose path you'll cross today. I read this book twice. My first time through, I felt as bewildered about the turn of events as Ginny does. I had a better understanding the second time. Smiley paints Ginny as a fair and impartial narrator, but it's obvious this is not so. Ginny filters out what is too painful to see, so she's knocked off balance when someone close to her acts contrary to her perception of him or her. She passively goes through life just trying to get by. She's not really likable, but she's not unlikable either -- she's likely to be unnoticed. Smiley's description of modern farming techniques and the highs and lows of attempting to conquer the land is also very compelling. The characters' lives and consciousness are woven into the land until it's hard to see what the land ends and the people begin.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Jane Smiley's darkly awesome Pulitzer Prizewinner has lost none of its impact fourteen years on from its initial publication in 1991. Her re-telling of the King Lear story has all the rage, emptiness and cosmic irony of the Shakespearean original, but it is Smiley's crucial change of focus that makes the book such an overwhelming experience. For the tragedy here is not that of Lear himself, the father who reluctantly relinquishes his power; but rather belongs to the three daughters who suddenly find themselves dealing with the fall-out of years of domestic tyranny and abuse. The Goneril and Regan figures, the two eldest daughters who cast their father out into the storm and collude in depriving their younger sister of her rightful inheritance, are (kind of) the Good Guys here. Smiley has a long, cold look at the original King Lear story, and tells us that if Goneril and Regan saw fit to treat their father and their sister in this way, well, maybe they had their reasons. And terrible reasons they must have been.
The book is narrated by Ginny, eldest daughter of successful farmer Larry Cook, who owns one of the largest farms in his county, the regal Thousand Acres of the title. Ostensibly motivated by an urge to cheat the government out of death duties on his farm, he suddenly and unexpectedly offers each of his three daughters a third share in the farm. His youngest daughter Caroline, wary of his true motivation and of the darker undercurrents in the family dynamic, isn't keen on the idea and promptly gets cut out completely: Larry divides the farm between the two older girls Ginny & Rose. They are to farm the land with their husbands' help. However, Larry himself, aided and abetted by his wily clown of a neighbour Harold Clark, starts to behave increasingly oddly, stirring up bad feeling in the neighbourhood against Ginny and Rose. When Harold's charismatic younger son Jess returns from Canada, and Caroline pushes her father into a lawsuit to try to retrieve his farm, the stage is clearly set for tragedy - and tragedy is what we get.
Smiley's aim here is primarily to give a voice to the sort of people who are never usually allowed the luxury of centre-stage soliloquies to explain their actions and motives: in particular, there is a subtle but definite post-feminist slant to her tale. Downtrodden and embittered Ginny is the perfect choice as narrator: Smiley gives her a voice of uncommon poetry, perhaps as some sort of compensation for her irredeemably blighted life. The fierce and egotistical Rose is equally finely done, and neither Ginny nor Rose ever really lose the reader's sympathy even as their actions become more and more extreme. On the other hand, the melodramatic ranting of the disinherited Larry Cook comes to seem more and more irrelevant, and unlike Shakespeare's Lear, Smiley never allows Larry to become a sympathetic character. He may be a monster who has lost his poison, but he remains a monster. Although virtually everyone in the tale ends up empty-handed at the end, and there is no public accounting for past crimes, there is a feeling that in some way, justice has been done. As one of the older sisters sums it up near the end of the book: "All I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment."
Although this is a pretty dark read, it's a surprisingly exhilarating one too. Partly, this is the exhilaration in watching something getting smashed up that richly deserves to be smashed. But there is a lot more to it than that: Smiley creates characters of rare emotional complexity, and her use of language and metaphor is always beautiful. At the start of the book, Ginny muses over the fact that Larry's farm consists mainly of reclaimed marshland: there is a lost sea lurking just beneath the surface of the prairie. When Smiley strips back the ostensibly ordered lives of her farming family to show us the murky depths lurking there, it ultimately feels like a liberating experience.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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!
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!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fantastic
This is a deeply moving account of a family who, despite appearances, have failed and suffered. Beautiful and sad, a must read.
Published 5 months ago by S M
Classic Jane Smiley !
It took a little while to get into but then I just couldn't put this book down! The feeling of place, the claustrophobia that can be felt even on a 1,000 acre farm, and the real... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Messymare
Ambitious re-working of King Lear
Published in 1991 and deserved winner of the Pulitzer prize, Smiley's re-telling of King Lear is up there with the best of modern literary fiction. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Reddy
An excellent twist on Shakespeare
Sometimes prize winners disappoint, but not in this case. I approached the book with some scepticism having read that it was based on Shakespeare's 'King Lear' but after the first... Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2008 by BookWorm
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. Read more
Published on 17 Dec 2006 by a reader
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... Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2006 by Donald Mitchell
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... Read more
Published on 17 Mar 2006 by Andrew Killeen
This book really gets to me
I bought this book last August, and only now I got to read it. It was sertainly worth waiting for... Or, well, what I mean is that it is totally great! Read more
Published on 21 Aug 2005 by Faith
Sorry, but this was a let down
I could not have been more intrigued and excited upon discovering a modern-day interpretation of King Lear, which I have just been studying for my English A Level. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2004 by M. L. York
A dark, compelling and haunting retelling of the Lear story
A modern setting for the story of Lea in the mid-West of America, with a twist in the plot which is gradually revealed. Read more
Published on 14 July 2000
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