Rating: 
Summary: who is the child in the picture?
Review: A brilliant examination of a troubled farm family. A vivid depiction of farm life: the toils, the relationships, the hard-work, the chemicals. Who is that baby in the picture? The feelings run deep. Ginny is a middle-aged woman who has never faced the issues in her life head-on. She seems to have become a shell of a person. Rose confronts the issue of molestation head-on. Caroline seems detached from it all. Who is that baby?
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Be Fooled
Review: Don't be taken in by that sticker which proclaims, "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize!" or all those great reviews. This is a bad book and unworthy of your time. A dull story, duller characters, and poor writing style combine to create a a novel that plods along until the final page.Virginia "Ginny" Cook, the narrator spends more time detailing what she's cooking for breakfast/lunch/dinner/supper or discussing mundane farm matters with her remarkably dull husband than anything else. The potentially interesting things that do happen: Harrold Clark being blinded by acidic chemicals, Daddy Cook dropping dead of a heart attack in the cereal aisle, Pete (Ginny's brother-in-law) driving his truck into a water-filled quarry in a drunken rage are all drained of emotion because they're told third-hand, which is the big drawback to this novel being written from Ginny's mundane point of view. While based on Shakespeare's "King Lear", I never really felt there was any tragedy in this story. Certainly bad things happen to the characters, but tragic, no. Nothing that happened in this book affected me emotionally in a positive sense and that is the biggest problem. The writing, in my opinion, was subpar all through the book. Smiley ignores a cardinal rule of writing by not breaking up dialogue so that she has two (or more) characters speaking in the same paragraph. This is very confusing to me, the reader, and after a while it becomes irritating. Also, the choice of Ginny as a first-person narrator was a poor one because she doesn't really understand the central characters like her father and sisters, hence the reader never really understands them either, forcing us to make our own conclusions. To put it bluntly, this is a bad book. The story is boring, the characters are uninteresting, and the writing is not up to snuff. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Dull as dishwater
Review: I almost feel guilty criticizing this book since it got the Pulitzer. Almost. I've read other books by Jane Smiley and they bored me too - most of her characters have the bland sameness of university professors and her books have the conception of life's dramas that you get from an introductory level college lit class. I couldn't get through the first fifty pages without suffering narcoleptic fits. I finally gave up and decided that Dorothy Parker could sum up for me - this is not a book to be tossed lightly aside but rather hurled with great force. The Pulitzer committee must've been reading Smiley's press releases about this book, not the actual book.
Rating: 
Summary: A powerful story of one family
Review: While this book deals with almost too many issues-incest, infidelity, sibling rivalry, domestic abuse, alcoholism, losing a parent at a young age, just too name a few-the characters are richly drawn against the backdrop of farm life in Iowa from the 1950's to 1970's. The family and ever-present, ever-judgemental townspeople leap to life on the pages of this heartwrenching novel.
Rating:
Summary: Unique yet somewhat twisted?!?
Review: "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley is a wonderful novel. It revolves around 3 daughters, their father and their families living on 1,000 acres of land that belongs to their father, Larry Cook. The novel itself is somewhat twisted to follow because it is set in the mind of Ginny (one of the daughters). It is mostly her thoughts on life and the past things that have happened to her. She reminisces about her mother before she died and how she and her husband, Ty, got together. Later in the book the conflict arises when her father decides to divide the farm between Ginny and her other sisters, Caroline and Rose. Caroline thinks that her father has gone crazy and won't take part in the farm, so her father then gets angry and decides to give the farm to Ginny and Rose and their husbands. Rose is all for getting the farm because of all the abuse her father inflicted on her and Ginny when they were younger. She thinks that she deserves it and has earned and so she convinces Ginny to think the same way. After Rose tells Ginny that their father abused them sexually, Ginny's thoughts and perspectives start to change about everyone around her.
I didn't believe that the story was as well developed as it could have been, but all in all it was a really engaging book to read and held my attention until I finished it. I thought that the characters were very realistic in that Ginny talks about her dealing with the miscarriages that she and Ty deal with and how she deals with Ty giving up on trying to have a child. This, I think, makes her hold some type of grudge against Ty and this is the reason for her adultery with her childhood friend, Jess. Later in the novel Ginny talks about her and Rose dealing with Rose's cancer and then later discovers that it was a result if the well water that they have been drinking all of their lives and this could have caused Ginny's miscarriages. Rose's husband, Pete, kills himself later and then she admits to her adultery with Jess Clark also. In result, Ginny holds another grudge against her and tries to poison her.
The ending, to me, was wonderful. Ginny finally gets the life that she deserves.
Rating:
Summary: A Thousand Acres
Review: I have read very similar novel before, which was by Russian author and it was very helpful to understand this story. Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres" is truly a powerful novel. Although it starts slow, the pace grows quicker and stronger. A Thousand Acres is a novel about a family torn by anger, dark secrets, and avarice. This is a wonderfully written book about a family living during the 1950's on a small farm in Iowa trying to deal with their pain of the past. This novel is a drama to the extreme. The thrust of the story is the relationship between the three sisters as they deal with their monster of a father and his decision to give the farm to his three daughters.
After reading this book, I felt as if something had been added to me, as if I had been enlightened somehow. It shows that even the perfect life can have its problems. I became more aware about how a one step can ruin the whole life.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable but Flawed
Review: The Beautiful way Jane Smiley describes a midwestern farm was excellent and in my opinion the best part of the book. There are a few flaws with the plot and characters, but if you can overlook them this is an enjoyable read. The main plot involving Larry Cook giving the land to his daughters and later fighting them in court to get it back was intriguing, however I felt the sexual abuse turned this into a bad TV movie of the week. It would have been more interesting if Ms. Smiley would have the more with the issue of the well water causing Rose's cancer and Ginny's miscarriages, which would have tied right in with the main plot of the land tearing this family apart and explained why Jess was always there. The problem with the characters is that you can never figure any of them out. Ginny didn't seem like the type to commit adultry or attempt murder, yet she did both. I never understood how Rose could help with her father's care and still carry such hatred for him. And why Ty became so cold to Ginny after the problems with her father started is still baffling me. I recommend this book to anyone who can forgive some flaws because it is enjoyable especially if you love to read descrptions written well.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best book I've read!
Review: A Thousand Acres is one of the best book I've ever read, so far. The novel vividly describes the farm life of characters. It tells the story of a Midwestern family that tragically splits apart because of a thousand acres. From the beginning of novel, Jane Smiley describes the places very calmly and vividly. The way she introduced the story was truly astonished and it gave me a good visual of the places. As she reveals her characters, I started to understand the pasts and roles of each characters. I have never been in farmland, but the story actually gave me an idea of what the farmland looks like. Jane Smiley knows how to describe a reality. She weaved the story like real. I thought it was realistic. The story is very similar to Shakespeare¡¯s King Lear which also deals with family and lands. A Thousand Acres is a modern King Lear. For those who haven¡¯t read King Lear because of Shakespeare¡¯s difficult writings, I would recommend A Thousand Acres. The book does not have difficult words, Smiley had arranged the story together well, and she had told the story very abundant; a reader like me was honestly astonished at her work. Smiley is a great writer. She deserves readers¡¯ credits for describing one fictional family¡¯s tragedy into realistic family's tragedy, her imagery words and rewriting Shakespeare¡¯s King Lear into modern version.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent adaptation
Review: When I first read this book, I was horrified. The first hundred pages were wonderful, then it started getting really really ugly. After I found out if was adapted from King Lear, my mind was changed. This is an excellent adaption of Lear and one of my favorites. Smiley is a great writer, she's exquisite with details and with the really intense relationships that develop in this book. It's certainly not an uplifting story, but one that's I feel is important.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, great character development, wonderful story!
Review: These are just a few words of a long list I would use to describe "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley. I have always been entranced by American Tragedies - and this one fits the bill. The story is very complex, interwoven character developments that make you love and hate each one of the characters, and come away feeling like you have known them and lived next door to them your entire life.
The book is narrated by Ginny, the eldest daughter of an Iowan farmer and controlling patriarch. And without giving away too much detail - I was completely blown away by the tragic events that unfold. I rejoiced when they rejoiced, and was devastated when any of the characters were devastated. I feel that it is appropriately narrated by Ginny. She seesm the most level-headed and honest of the lot. I need to give kudos to Smiley for the wonderful descriptive and accurate detail of farm-life. She has it down to a tee - with the terms, the attitudes, the emotions that are tied into farming... just superb research on her end that attributed to a very well written and engrossing story.
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