Identify Regarding Books A Thousand Acres
| Title | : | A Thousand Acres |
| Author | : | Jane Smiley |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 371 pages |
| Published | : | December 2nd 2003 by Anchor (first published 1991) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literary Fiction. Contemporary. Literature. Novels. Family. Adult Fiction |
Jane Smiley
Paperback | Pages: 371 pages Rating: 3.81 | 56537 Users | 2715 Reviews
Relation In Favor Of Books A Thousand Acres
Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny, and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders. In this winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence of such a life with stark, painful detail.
Details Books To A Thousand Acres
| Original Title: | A Thousand Acres |
| ISBN: | 1400033837 (ISBN13: 9781400033836) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | United States of America Iowa(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1992), Ambassador Book Award for Fiction (1992), Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction (1991), National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (1991), Society of Midland Authors Award for Fiction (1992) |
Rating Regarding Books A Thousand Acres
Ratings: 3.81 From 56537 Users | 2715 ReviewsJudgment Regarding Books A Thousand Acres
Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings hes having right now. Thats how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what hes done before is still with us, still right here in this room until theres true remorse. Nothing will be right until theres that. He looks so, sort of, weakened. Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isnt enough. Hes got to repentSmiley uses King Lear as her framework for this novel. We have the ailing patriarch, a kingdom in decline and his three contesting daughters. And as youre reading youre often wondering to what extent Smiley is going to mirror the Shakespeare plot. The plot of King Lear would be melodramatic vaudeville in the hands of a heavy handed author so Smiley is setting herself a huge challenge here. The novel is narrated by Ginny, the eldest of the daughters. In other words Goneril, the most treacherous,
Well that was depressing. I don't even know what to say about it, other than the fact that despite my serious issues with the lack of morality and accountability from both older sisters, and the obnoxious baby sister who deliberately stuck her head in the sand, the book moved me deeply.Perhaps it's because I related to the darkest parts of it all too well. The melancholy mixed with the loneliness that the choice to stick up for oneself and break free will inevitably bring, felt like a heavy,
Ok, I got to page 267 of this book and I figured that life was too short to go ahead with this torture. What was the Pulitzer committee thinking when they awarded the prize to this DREADFUL book? I found it so excrutiatingly dull as to be an exercise in nothing more than endurance. Smiley's story of the decline of an Iowa farm family is ostensibly based on King Lear. In reality it has no remote resemblance to King Lear, who was a sympathetically tragic character perhaps one of his greatest. And
When this book was chosen by our book club for this month's theme of "tragedy," I approached reading it with some trepidation. There are a number of things that I don't care for in literature, and one of them is the family drama which centers on the drama as drama for its own sake, rather than to say something more about the world. Part of my bias against this kind of writing comes from having cut my eyeteeth on science fiction, the literature of ideas which, at its best, is about today as much
Written in 1991, Jane Smileys Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres pretends to be about the death of the American farm but, if Ive ever read a book richer in subtext, I cannot recall it. She tells the story via the lives of three daughters of a third generation farming family in Iowa in the 1970s. Through the obsequious character of Ginny, Smiley describes the ethos of small town/agrarian American life in unrelenting detail and, by doing so, she describes the death of an American myth.The layers of
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.