Rating: 
Summary: Hauntingly real - a masterpiece!!
Review: This was one of the best books I've read in a long time - full of people trying to cope with overwhelming situations and feelings. I was moved by the protagonist's longings, needs and her understanding and ultimate compassion toward her family. Real life is a LOT like this!
Rating: 
Summary: Who acts this way?
Review: Incest, recovered memories, alcoholism, marital infidelity,miscarriages, breast cancer, attempted poisoning, family land feuds,cancer causing pesticides - is this a Montel Williams episode and Lifetime channel for women movie rolled into one or what? I read this in a weekend, and not because I particularly liked this refined midwestern melodrama. There are some absorbing themes - I thought the connection between the pesticides that destroy the fertility of the land and the people and the poisonous legacy of rampaging patriarchy that destroys a family was interesting. My principal problem with this book is that people DO NOT ACT the way these characters do. There are explosive scenes between family members, and then days will pass as though nothing has happened. It's as if all of these characters were pod people imitating the emotional life of humans. This book gave me the creeps.
Rating: 
Summary: OH FORTUNA, what a wicked world this is...
Review: If I re-write MacBeth it will go something like this: Setting: Wallstreet - Players: Trump as the Scottish King and Marla as his Queen. Would you people buy that too? Zoinks! Gadzooks! You folks have been snookered. Taken to the cleaners for $25 when you could buy the original version, a much more pleasant read, for $5! A housewife is sitting in her farm house somewhere in the middle of Iowa counting all YOUR money...maybe she should re-write Silas Marner too...
Rating: 
Summary: A modern King Lear?
Review: This book is in many ways a modern mirror of Shakespeare's King Lear, with some new twists of the legacy of modern soap opera.
Rating:
Summary: So real it's scary
Review: Not many Iowa farm families are willing to admit the truths in this book. But as a veteran of an Iowa farm and a survivor who still loves her family I would reccommend this book as must reading to every Iowa farmer, their sons and their daughters.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping, falters toward the end
Review: A book with remarkably strong narrative as well as personal detail. A really satisfying alternative to book-writing's current focus on self-involved confessional novels. I loved it, possibly because I haven't read King Lear and was often shocked by the plot twists. One of the book's great strengths, in fact, is the way it makes a plot as harsh and punitive as Greek tragedy look like the kind of bad luck that could hit any modern family.
Despite faltering around its mid-point, Acres is one of the best books I've read this year. Smiley's use of a passive, why-can't-everyone-just-get-on lead character as a lens through which to view a horrific tragedy is inspired. It gives her scope to examine the limited options of farm women, without making these "digressions" distract from a gripping central plot.
Rating:
Summary: Book has a good conception but less impressive results
Review: "A Thousand Acres" is a good book, but not a great book. Jane Smiley deserves credit for her concept, updating "King Lear" for modern times, but the fleshing out of her concept does not aspire highly enough. There are problems using the stream of consciousness technique and a first person narrator which are not solved in this novel. For instance, around page 100, the main character predicts that all hell will break loose within her family -- yet there is no connection between THIS thought and what comes before or after in her character's mind. For a professional novelist, this is a fatal error. Smiley goes to great lengths to describe every meal which her characters are eating -- hardly necessary to advance the plot, and quite tedious to boot. The ending lacks the climax of Shakespeare; the story simply peters out in descriptions of that cliche in American fiction, The Decline of the Family Unit. Much of what is wrong with the novel stems from modern feminist literary critism, which once was DEscriptive, and useful, but which now has become PREscriptive and inhibiting.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!!!
Review: For a fast reader this book is wonderful. I am a very fast reader and I think it helped me. The book, although packed with issues and happenings, spreads the action out. It wouldn't be a good book for a slower reader because it woul take them more time in between each situation and they would get bored. There were so many different situations that weren't included in the movie. I thought they should have put in the part about Howard going blind and Ginny trying to poison Rose. All in all, I thought it was awonderful book and I woul recommend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Heartfelt, vivid, effective, amazing fiction
Review: This novel by Jane Smiley is simply one of the best books I've ever read. This modern-day reimagining of the King Lear story, about a farmer, his three daughters and their relationship, is a vividly written, emotional story. When the father decides to divide his land between the three daughters, this decision unravels past secrets, changes relationships and lives forever. Smiley has an uncanny ability to write female characters well. The dialague and situation rings so true, it's amazing. If you love a good read, don't hesitate to pick this up.
Rating:
Summary: Depressing!
Review: I was in a hopeful mood while reading this book. I kept looking for the light at the end of the tunnel but never found it. Nor did any of the characters. You have all the ingredients within this book that make for an interesting page turner - child abuse, incest, adultry, revenge, attempted murder... but no one learns a "lesson" from their transgressions. No one is "remorseful" for hurting others. When I finished this book, I felt like taking a shower. Reading this book was like being involved in something that you don't want to be involved in but can't get out of. I had to finish it, couldn't put it down but felt sickend with the ending. At least I can say, it made me realize how lucky I am for the life I have. I'll give it that.
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