A Thousand Acres : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Lear on the farm
Review: I read this about 12 years ago and loved it. Smiley has a way with words. She describes anything well, whether it's her characters' thoughts, farm work or a dream. Her word choice is immaculate. As for the story, how can you go wrong with "King Lear"? Smiley transports Shakespeare to the modern family farm and keeps all of Shakespeare's power. It's not a ripoff as one reviewer put it, but an homage to the master. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Despite my friends highly rating this book, I just couldn't get into it. I found it unconvincing with weak premises and I failed to establish a strong bond with the characters. Very disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: Smiley weaves a story that slowly draws you in and once hooked, it's hard to put down. The drama is subtle, in the beginning we learn about the characters and their somewhat simple life. But as we get to know them we learn of their haunting secrets and go with them into their fear, their anger, and choices they make to grow into the people they wish to become. I found myself gasping at times. I couldn't believe that the simple family had such underlying issues. I loved this book.

Rating:
Summary: Nonstop Thrill
Review: In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley keeps her audience wanting to read more with each word. This novel is an drama to the extreme. Between Rose's breast cancer and the horrible truth that comes out about their father, the reader can't help but wonder what will happen next. What happens in the novel is that Ginny's dad decides to retire from being a farmer. He offers the land to his three girls, but the youngest, Caroline, refuses the land causing her father to cut her completely out of everything. This causes many painful memories from the past to return. Smiley shows a good use of detail. She paints a perfect image in the readers mind. She also uses extreme irony, in the fact of what the father did to his girls. She shows the audience that asumptions from Rose thinking that Ginny knows what her father did to her as a child are not true. This novel discusses many issues, but what is feel is one of the main issue discussed in it is child molestation. The author shows it's reader that this event in a child's life can severly change his/her feelings about that parent. This relates to the larger issue of rape that is sweeping over the country. I feel that this is a serious issue and should be addressed, and that kids should be aware that it is wrong for their parents to do that to them. In conclusion, this book is a nonstop thrill, from the minute you read the first word, until the moment you read the last phrase.

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Summary: Poor parallels
Review: While reading and scanning some of these summaries, I felt urged to write in response to some of the supporters. Most especially, there was one man who claimed that people who did not this book were younger people forced to read it for school. Well, I will admit that I am a seventeen year old girl forced to read it for her AP Literature class. However, that does not change the fact that my high expectations for this novel were poorly realized. "King Lear", which I adored, was the assigned reading book before "A Thousand Acres", and I was thorougly disappointed to the point of extreme anger at Smiley's perversion of Shakespeare's classic tale. Her parallels were ill-made and strove too hard to make the link. As a classmate of mine observed "it stands well-enough on its own". I agree with that, but will take it further by claiming that she should have left "King Lear" completely out of this book, which I feel is better suited to be a Harlequin Romance as opposed to a heralded piece of literature. Her action is completely coincidential, and the events which she forces these characters she's formed go completely against their nature. Her writing style is stilted and boring and, frankly, I don't appreciate having to go through the sexual fantasies of the main character, especially when she thinks of herself as a sow. I regret to say that I feel that Smiley pushed her creative talents too far and forced this story of hers to consent to being this inferior piece of work. I cannot believe that she dares to compare the incestuous relationships between Larry Cook and his daughters Ginny and Rose to Lear's pure father/daughter relationships to Goneril and Regan (another thing which annoyed me, incredibly unoriginal names; Larry - Lear, Ginny - Goneril, Rose - Regan, Caroline - Cordelia... she even named Caroline's husband Frank: in King Lear, Cordelia married the king of France. That is not wit, Ms. Smiley, that's just plain idiotic, and rather silly too). In addition, her sentences were full of redundancies and somewhat stupid-sounding phrases, such as "they crossed the road the way one does in the country a hundred times a day without looking either way". What is that point of that? Does it contribute to this 'literary art-form'? To all you 'adults' out there who feel that we students are too young to understand this "deep" piece, think about why that might or might not be. I resent her storyline about incest and extramarrital affairs, why don't you? I pray to God that I never become mature enough to accept such a thing as normal and genius.

Rating:
Summary: Interminable and Pointless
Review: This is a book about which reasonable people obviously are going to disagree, but I found it so dull as to be a simply excrutiating read. Smiley's story of the decline of an Iowa farm family has the makings of a modern-day tragedy, perhaps, but her prose style, which dwells on innumerable tiny but insignificant details of everyday life--every vegetable in the garden, every hot dish at the social, every item in the closet of the narrator's mother, list after list of details that play no discernible role in the story--makes plowing the thousand acres of the book's title seem a lot easier than plowing through this interminable novel. For page after boring page, nothing whatever of significance happens; instead, Smiley's prose reads like an exercise in descriptive language from a creative writing class. And despite all this description, the characters of the novel remain curiously beyond our interest and seem often to act out of inexplicable whim. Such is true even of the narrator, whose most bizarre act (I won't reveal it, but it has to do with liver sausages) comes out of nowhere and ends up meaning nothing. Smiley obviously knows farming, but her writing in this novel cries out for the touch of a careful editor.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful..
Review: book full of rich descriptions making you feel as if you are there. I couldn't put this book down. I do however feel that I didn't understand the dad fully and wanted to know why he was really acting that way in court etc. Caroline's part could have been developed a little more, but that is life! All in all a wonderful read!

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Book
Review: This book leaves the reader with many questions about human nature and the meaning of family. It begins with a detailed accounting of life on a family farm in 1979 in Iowa. The father, Larry, and his three daughters, Rose, Ginny, and Caroline, are willed the family farm when Larry retires. This is a dark story, with secrets, many tragic figures, recovered memories, greed, deceit, and betrayl. It is a powerful story and it is beautifully written. Smiley is very gifted in shaping language and her characters are complex with all their flaws and strengths carefully revealed. I recommend this book to readers who are looking for a book that will stretch their mind and draw them into an elaborate and well crafted story.

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Summary: Modern midwestern farm version of A Thousand Acres
Review: This novel feels slow and heavy for about 100 pages. But the description is wonderful. The novel then picks up as the story of the family unfolds. For me the slow opening seemed like what the average person thinks of farm life viewed from afar i.e. that it would be dull and burdensome but down to earth. Yet, like most of life, upon closer look, farm-life and farm families are laden with their own drama and turmoil. Some of the visuals and the sounds Smiley evokes still haunt me and it's been years since I read this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: I had seen the movie a long time ago, but was interested to read the book and discover Jane Smiley's style. Many friends had recommended the book and the author. I really enjoyed it, and couldn't put it down. I loved the description of farm life in Iowa. Definitely give this book a try.