Rating: 
Summary: Contrived
Review: Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres" is a clumsy retelling of the old King Lear story set in midwestern USA farm country. The story is too contrived at times; odd things happen that seem were written just to make the story fit in with the King Lear premise. There are no characters that I came away caring about; Smiley plays with our emotions too much by hiding important developments until the last minute, and being too quick to send the plot through chaotic twists and turns. It feels voyeuristic; you watch these people's lives but at the end you haven't really accomplished anything. Smiley is a talented writer (try "Moo") but this book certainly did not deserve the Pulitzer Prize.
Rating: 
Summary: A Thousand Acres To Remember
Review: 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. The family, the Cooks, all have to deal with the problem of their father who abused them when they were young. The book shows each daughters feelings, from the two who witnessed it first hand, to the youngest who was sheltered by her older sisters from the truth. It is a creative book about how the family tries to forget, and to seek revenge on their father when they are older. Smiley writes in the Epilogue about one sister thinking about the other and their life, "Rose left me a riddle, of how we judge those who have hurt us when they have shown no remorse or even understanding." I believe this is the theme of the book that Smiley tries to describe to the reader. Throughout the book each sister tries different ways of dealing with their tragic past, and judging their father. Rose has her anger and hatred, Ginny trying to forget what really happened, and Caroline who was so naive and young to know what her father was really like. In the end, it takes a trial of who is to get the land that is their fathers, that they realize the daughters just want what is their fathers and something that he loves to be taken away from him, the thousand acres of land, so they can pay him back for all that he took from them.
I recommend this book because it is so well written and the personal connection that you feel with all the characters is amazing. With each character you feel that you understand how they feel and what they are going through. You feel Roses anger towards her father because of how he abused her and Ginny remember as time goes on what really happened and why she tried to forget. I also believe that this story may relate to a lot of people about dealing with their pain or trying to forget what really happened in difficult times in their lives.
Rating:
Summary: Reality Based? Definitely.
Review: I am about to read A Thousand Acres for the 5th time. The first time I read it, I was a sophomore in college and had to read it in conjunction with King Lear. The two have many similarities. However, I won't bore you with a comparison of Shakespeare and Smiley.This book is about life, pure and simple. The main players are 3 daughters (Ginny, Rose, and Caroline) and the father, Larry. Larry treats his daughters Ginny and Rose horribly. However, he is revered in the church and by the town. You can make allowances for him by realizing that he's getting old and having to learn to deal with the fact that he is losing some of his freedom due to his age. He can't drink as much and he can't drive as well. He orders Ginny around constantly. Ginny is soft-spoken. Throughout most of the book, you could call her a whimp. But, as you find out, Ginny has inner strength that she has to discover. She has memories that she has blocked out. It isn't until she is in her old bedroom at the house she grew up in, sitting on her old bed that she's making up for her lover, that she remembers what used to go on in that room. Rose is the loud daughter. She fights with Larry constantly while Ginny tries to keep the peace. Rose has always been strong. When Ginny's memory comes flooding back, Rose is the one who stands by her. Caroline lives in the city by herself. She's the only one who escaped the farm, and that was only because Rose and Ginny forced her to go to college and get away. If you read A Thousand Acres, you'll get a picture of life in the south on a farm through the eyes of a family that becomes so real, you feel as if you know them. You won't feel happy all the way through. You'll laugh, and you'll cry. And in the end you'll feel triumphant as Ginny finally figures out who she is and exactly how much she can do on her own.
Rating:
Summary: an ordinary girl's perspective on an extraordinary book
Review: This novel was assigned to my AP English Lit class as a companion to King Lear. I was less than thrilled by the selections since I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare's plays and I thought that A Thousand Acres would be boring because it was set on a farm. Actually reading the works dispelled those prejudices: King Lear became my favorite Shakespearean play, and to say that A Thousand Acres changed my life would not be hyperbolic. A Thousand Acres is indeed about farm life, but it is so much more than just that. It's about family dynamics and the secrets that shape children into the adults that they become. The Cook family patriarch is Larry, a prosperous farmer. He's laconic but prone to abusive outbursts, and this volitile temperment makes him unpredictible. His wife died when his three daughters were children and he raised them alone. Ginny is the oldest, but the least assertive. Her role in the family is to placate Larry when he is angered (which is quite frequently, given his mercurial nature). Rose, the middle child, is rather passive-aggressive. As a teenager, she acted out by sneaking out at night and engaging in promiscuous behavior. Even her choice for a mate was a rebellious act: Ginny married a hard-working farmer her family knew for years, while Rose wed a musician who never adapted well to farmlife. Rose is a survivor, and although she behaves badly (like cheating on her husband with the man that Ginny is also sleeping with), she is my favorite character because of her strength. At the end of the book, Rose says that her "sole, solitaty, lonely accomplishment" was that she "didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know." Caroline, the youngest, is the only one who moved off the farm. Because she lives in the city, she is exempt from the cooking and cleaning for Larry that Ginny and Rose perform daily. Caroline is Larry's obvious favorite, but he cuts her out of his legacy when she shows some skepticism to his plan to give the farm to his daughters immediately. The transfer of power symbolized by Larry's gift to Ginny and Rose changes the lives of all involved. After their father retires, he starts losing his grip on reality. Out of necessity, Ginny and Rose become more assertive to their father, and Larry chafes at the role reversal. Caroline returns to make ammends with Larry, and is appalled by the way her sisters treat him (which is really better than he deserves). With Caroline's aid, Larry attempts to regain the farm through the courts. I don't want to ruin the book for those who haven't yet read it, but several other reviews allude to a decades-old secret that Rose reminds Ginny of. She asserts that Ginny was sexually abused by Larry as well, which Ginny denies. Ginny later recovers a memory of the abuse, and this knowledge contributes to the acrimony within the family. Like King Lear, this story of an ordinary family in rural 1970's America ends tragically. The survivers are changed by the series of events- and not necessarily for the better. A lot of people think this book is depressing because the characters don't really become "better" for their trials. Well that's how real life is. As a person who had been abused as a child, believe me when I say that although most challenges once overcome, contribue to a person's character, child abuse is not one of them. And if there's one thing Smiley does fantastically in A Thousand Acres, it's depicting life as it is. Some of the plot was a little improbable (eg. Ginny's recovered memory of the abuse: I believe in repressed memories, but not without a little skepticism. From my own experiences, I can't really fathom that something that traumatic could be forgotten.), but it's a strong story. There are very few books that bring me to tears, but this was one of them. This is a taxing book to read because of the emotional involvement the reader experiences, but that is what makes it so worthy of being read.
Rating:
Summary: Midwestern Gothic
Review: I am still trying to shake off the creepy feeling I got from reading this book last week! It starts out as one thing -- an introspective, slow-moving study of two farm families -- and then turns into a bizarre, gothic roller coaster with plots and poison, insanity and sexual abuse. The main character and narrator, Ginny (rhymes with "ninny") is a soft-spoken married woman who longs for a child. She has had five miscarriages, but for some reason does not see this as alarming. She continues to try to get pregnant. Ginny is bullied about by her father and bossed around by her younger sister, Rose. The novel turns on the inexplicable decision of their father to divide the farm up among his daughters. Echoes of King Lear, but we are given no reason for this action beyond hints that the father is influenced by a banker friend. Many strange and disturbing events follow. A parallel is drawn between the chemically poisoned, overworked land and the people who work it -- people who have become sick to the core of their bodies and souls. Despite the excellent writing and the feeling for the Midwest and farming, the book is very uneven and never completely makes sense. The characters are driven by unconscious urges that never become clear. I kept reading to the end, hoping to gain some clarity on what this book was about. That was a futile effort.
Rating: 
Summary: A complete mockery of a Shakespearian Classic
Review: For those of you who are looking for a poignant, riviting read with round, interesting characters, perhaps you should read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Hugo, Virginia Woolfe,Faulkner,Dickens, Shakespeare...need I go on??? For anyone who possibly ranked this novel high on their reading list, I think reading those novels may come as quite a pleasent shock. While I had formerly read King Lear, and loved it, I was quite interested in it's 20th century counterpart. Moreover, I had the unfortunate luck to read this just after reading The Brothers Karamazov, which was simply astounding. Anyway, this novel was bad...mabe not exactly terrible, but very bad. The characters were unlikeable, and completely flat and not understandable. Smiley tried pathetically to mold her own whiney characters, who we are supposed to like and sympathize with, into a plot that completely conflicted with their nature. The incest idea was likewise ridiculous...it had no place in this novel. If Smiley had decided to expand on this alone, it may have worked, but no, she decided to toss it in there along with the plot for King Lear, which made no coherant sense. Moreover, the novel was boring...the talks about cleaning and cattle and the like, not to mention disgusting sexual fantasies and a "love" that was underdeveloped and made no sense, was terrible. I disliked Ginny completely...whiney and pathetic, she acts more out of lust than love, and moreover, is an unoriginal attempt at creating a woman protagonist (get over the "poor me, men walked all over me image" or the "I need a baby or my life is pointless" one)...plus I can't imagine this character poisening her sister...pathetic! Honestly, the land descriptions wern't bad, but were extremely repetative. If you want a grocery store novel, pick this up. It's one redeeming quality (besides the fact that it was short) was that it won the Pulitzer Prize....this gives me great hope, for my own novel that I am working on runs circles around this! (Sadly, it's the first attempt by a 17 year old)
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, Horrifying, True
Review: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres is a gripping book filled with memorable characters. It is a twist off of King Lear set in a farm in Iowa in the seventies. 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. There is a little dose of horror every few pages mixed in with marvelous descriptions of domestic housekeeping and farm working. It is sometimes hard to look at the tragedy directly and the author will often provide the reader with a way of looking at it indirectly where it sort of sneaks up on the reader. The terrible events these women face grow out of the ordinary things that fill their everyday life until both the ordinary and the terrible blend together. It is powerful writing that is both subtle and strong. Not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: WHOAH!
Review: Well, I must say i enjoyed this book, although not from the start, i havent read any others of Smiley's books, but i feel that she took too long to get into the story, i read this book for my literature class, and at the beginning, i regreted my choice, although it did get better as it went on, but as most books, it has its faults.
Rating:
Summary: Beneath the Soil
Review: I just finished reading Jane Smiley's astounding book A THOUSAND ACRES for the third time. The first time was in 1992 at the recommendation of a friend, a second time in 1993 for myself, and again this past week as an assignment for a History of Dramatic Literature Class I am taking in Graduate School. The purpose of my paper is to explore the themes in her book and compare them to those in Shakespeare's KING LEAR; patriarchal power, connection to the land, sibling rivalry, familial loyalty and it's repercussions. What is amazing about her work is that it explores his themes and expands on them; thus, becoming her own original story. It is almost a back-story to Shakespeare's play. The characters in her book are just as dramatic as those created by the bard and far more accesible. They truly represent the American trait of letting family secrets fester, of the patriarch of the family taking control; the result being disastrous. There is a reason I have always come back to this book. It truly speaks to the human being in us all whose family lives in quiet desparation, never speaking the truth. The brilliance of her novel is that she does not try to repeat verbatum what Wm. Shakespeare wrote, but uses it has a starting point to take off and create a different world and time that we all could identify with; issues that are current. My only hope is that each time I read this book I will continue to find something new and enlightening. It is like an old friend who tells me what is what and reminds me that it is important to take the risk of facing things and not burying them; because, otherwise it is a poison that will eat away at you and take from you what is most important; YOU.
Rating: 
Summary: good
Review: A warning, the first 50 pages of this novel don't pay off, even marginally, if the entire book isn't completed. Read them knowing something WILL happen soon. Getting through those pages is why I gave this book a four in lieu of a five.
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