The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club)

Rating:
Summary: Classic Story, Classic Writing...a Winning Book!
Review:
For me, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck is a magical book. My second favorite purchase off Amazon this year, after The Losers' Club by Richard Perez. In The Good Earth, the characters absolutely come to life. And even though the setting is China before the People's Revolution, there is a wonderful sense of familiarity to the story.

It is the characters, rather than the plot, that makes the strongest impact on the reader. This is the story of the life of a poor farmer, Wang Lung and his wife, O-lan. We follow their story as they endure hard times and enjoy success. That is: there is a cycle and rhythm to life. We are all on a journey back to our beginnings. It is no accident that Mrs Buck made her main character, a farmer. What profession is more aware or dependent on the natural cycles of the earth? Every year, they must pour their lives into the earth. Every year they pray, the earth will return the means to sustain life at harvest time. Every year, they must start over again.

I can highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good read and appreciates good writing. You will end up richer for having read it. The style of Pearl Buck's writing, her clarity and word choice makes her work easy to read. Don't miss out on this great book! I also loved The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, another Oprah pick and The Losers Club by Richard Perez.


Rating:
Summary: That Oprah sure knows her books
Review: "Evil idle sons! Never sell the land!!!"

That's all I have to say about that.

Oh, and this: "Everybody Wang Lung tonight! Every body have fun tonight!"

Really though, this book is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Epic
Review: "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck was a compelling read. I thoroughly was overcome by the diversity and frugalness of Wang Lung at the beginning of the story. His quiet humility in the start of the book over his young new wife.

This book held my interest for days. I could not put it down. I wanted to see how life progressed for this famil.y It appeared that Wang Lung through his humility and meagerness that he began to prosper. Thus, turning his small beginning with the purchase of a piece of land into a mighty clan.

Rating:
Summary: Why did it end?
Review: For the last couple of years, the books that I have read have, for the most part, bored me. This book has renewed my interest in reading!

The prose is so eloquently written, almost poetic. The storyline never faulters and keeps one's interest. The characters are developed so well that you can actually feel and understand their dilemmas in life.

What a beautiful novel. I was upset that it ended because it seemed like it could have kept on.

I will definitely read this book again because I'm sure there is a lot of hidden meaning that I missed the first time. The Fool has great meaning and significance, and I'm sure that it could be further understood with the second reading.

I've just purchased "Sons", and two other of Buck's novels.

What a treat!

Rating:
Summary: Probably my favorite book of all time
Review: I have never written a review of this kind, but I could not pass up sharing what a fabulously written book this is. Buck does an outsanding job of bringing real life to all of her characters, and soliciting emotion from the reader. The characters are all developed slowly but robustly, as well as the story line. There are numerous messages and conflicts in this book - good vs. evil, rich vs. poor, old vs. young, country life vs. urban life, the list goes on.

I don't appreciate when other reviewers give away the story line in their review so I won't do that here. However, I could not put this book down. Even if you have little understanding of Chinese culture, if you have parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles, you can understand the evolving and different ideals that each generation holds dear similar to Wang and his family and the potential for conflict these ideals have. I believe it will stir many emotions and feelings within the reader, which, to me, is the number one sign of a well-written book. Hope you enjoy it!

Rating:
Summary: A Classic of Classics
Review: I must admit a fondness for any novel that is complex metaphorically and that has multi-layered characters that stand for much more than one person, but for all humanity, like with Oprah's other recent picks, or like Jennifer Paddock's latest novel A SECRET WORD especially, even though it's a contemporary novel, and especially like this one by Pearl S. Buck. There is rich language and characters you can root for, in a setting you won't find as unfamiliar as you might think. It is set in China, but it could very well be set in the American South or the Midwest, anywhere rural and where people are hardworking and struggling. It's very moving and, ultimately, very hopeful and memorable.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: In high school we were assigned this book, and I've since reread it twice. Having just finished it again I realized that there were so many things I didn't understand before. This is the story of Wang Lung, land owner in China. The "good earth" is really a metaphor for Wang, who suffers and prospers along with the land. Wang begins to lose himself when he begins to put the wealth the land brings before the land itself.

Unlike the earth, Wang doesn't always appreciate the "rain" of good fortune, like a faithful and dedicated wife who labors to support his every move, raises his children, cares for his aging father. Yet he considers her as almost unintelligent. Because she is often silent, he does not hear her strength. What I had never noticed before was that Wang forgot that the "good earth" was his fortune. He began to change, and he never realized it, not even at the end. Wang becomes angry with his elder son because he falls in love with money, but he never realizes that his son learned this from Wang himself, when Wang began to store up riches, all the while believing that he was being faithful to the land. Money becomes his mistress and he protitutes himself to it. It is no wonder, then, that his sons have no love for the land, no respect for the earth from which they came. They see only that the land can be harsh, from their year of suffering in a drought. They see only the plenty that comes from wealth. They never want to be hungry again. So where Wang sees food coming from the earth, they see uncertainty. And as long as there is money, they feel safe. The irony is that Wang Lung has also shared this experience, and his awakening toward the end of the book comes to late for his sons.

I highly recommend this book. It is well written (the author's many prizes speak for themselves) and, if it's been a long time since you read it, worthwhile reading again.

Rating:
Summary: The Classic Tale of a Man, A Woman, and Dirt
Review: Pearl Buck was so popular that when I was a little boy she was regularly named as among the most influential women in the USA. Now most of her books are out of print, and even the publication of a marvelous revisionist biography a few years back did little to raise her profile among bookbuyers--until Oprah, who loves a proletarian classic. Wang Lung is the archetypal farmer with a mystic relationship to the earth around him. He is well matched in O-Lan, his ugly (OK, plain) wife whose quiet ways conceal a determination to survive and conquer the land and to see her family well-placed. Wang Lung and O-Lan are polar opposites in many ways, but there is a deep bond between them. I won't say what happens at the end but tears will come to your eyes when you find out what inspires the desperate cry:

"O-Lan, you were the earth!"

Famine, heat, the parched summers where nothing will grow in the earth, monsoons, constantly moving to find more land, drugs, disappointing children, the memories of slave existence, nothing gets O-Lan down for long--until the arrival of the concubine Lotus Flower. Lotus Flower is beautiful, calculating, manipulative, like Julie Cooper on THE OC, and in fact for many she will remind you of Angelina Jolie--the wife's worst nightmare!

She's great and this book does her justice too. It is not an ordinary morality tale where bad gets punished conventionally. It is a deeper book than that, with roots in the old China in which Pearl Buck spent her childhood )with missionary parents). The next time you get a chance to see the movie, try to see it too, as Luise Rainer hid her beauty behind Asian makeup and looked convincingly "plain," while as Wang Lung, Paul Muni also did his yeomanlike best. The special effects were miracles of precision and imagination in their day, thanks to producer Irving Thalberg, and they still look pretty sharp!





Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable
Review: This beautiful book captured my attention from the first paragraph, and I could not put it down. Immediately, I cared about the plight of Wang Lung, and admired his fierce determination to survive famine and overcome poverty. Buck has created a character who rises to the challenge of certain moral isses, but fails at others.

Wang Lung's attachment to the land is moving; he recogizes that only by owning land can he be safe from starvation. He is also a proud man who needs to work and craves self-sufficiency.

The role of women as slaves and concubines is portrayed with great empathy. Our hearts break when the women are mistreated or disappointed by the men of the culture, which is common.

This is a book that I will recommend to everyone I know, including my book club. It covers the cycle of life from youth to old age, the clash between rich and poor, and the ongoing strife between the genders - a timeless gem of a read.

Sigrid Mac

Rating:
Summary: A truly wonderful story of life and death.
Review: This book was recommended to me by my mother many years ago. I wasn't interested at the time because I was quite young then, but I did pick it up a little later. My mother was right. This is a truly wonderful book. The novel is so well written, and Ms. Buck follows the cycles of birth, marriage and death in the family of a Chinese peasant in the early twentieth century China. As it is in real life, there are good years and bad years. The family patriarch is Wang Lung, and he is an ambitious farmer who has a great love for the land. He has two sons that he hopes to pass this passion on to, but neither one is interested. Both plan to sell his hard-earned property when their father dies. Wang Lung's struggles and triumphs are portrayed throughout the book in the framework of the natural progression of life. It is a wonderful and heartwarming story.