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

“People keep secrets when other people don’t want to hear the truth.”“A Thousand Acres” is one of those novels that kind of creeps up on you. You do not realize it is pulling you in, but it does so, bit by bit. Every time I picked up the book, I read for long periods. The novel is a modern version (slight retelling) of Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” The text begins in 1979 on an Iowa farm, and is told from the perspective of the eldest of three daughters, Ginny Cook. Ginny is the surrogate for Shake...

“…Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s 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 he’s done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there’s true remorse. Nothing will be right until there’s that.” “He looks so, sort of, weakened.” “Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isn’t enough. He’s g

In the beginning I felt there were a lot of characters to keep track of, but while some names are mentioned later on that I did not recall that was not actually a problem for me. I only realized while reading other reviews that this was a spin off of King Lear and that helps explain why some of the characters, while otherwise humble, cheated on their spouses and even tried to kill the people closest to them. I thought that the idea of “the death of the American farm” was the most powerful part o...

A nuanced and multilayered family drama set in 1970s Zebulon County, Iowa. Jane Smiley’s distinct voice births the characters of Larry Clark, and his three daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. Although it shares some characteristics with Shakespeare’s King Lear, it has its own shape and form and carries its own profundity. Smiley is specific about the history of Larry Cook’s thousand acres, its genesis through ‘sweat equity,’ the draining of its marshy waters to reveal the fertile and generativ...

The family dynamics of this knock-about tale remind me of a ride that I haven't been on since I was a kid: Bumper cars. Chances are, you've been in one too. This character-driven narrative hammered out many complexities shared among family members. In this case, the Cooks. The author presented a dynamic, well-written storyline with twists and turns that kept me amused, bewildered and saddened. The main characters and there were several, were well-developed. So much so that I felt a connection wi...

Smiley 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 you’re reading you’re 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...

King Lear + 1970's Iowa farm dynasty = riveting storytellingHaving never read Jane Smiley before, I'm glad I started with this dazzling 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner. Set in 1970's Iowa farm country, we follow the Cook family: Larry, the cruel, no-nonsense patriarch, and his daughters Ginny (the narrator), Rose and Caroline. At the onset of the story, Larry decides to retire and pass down the farm to his daughters and their husbands. Caroline, the youngest, the only daughter who managed to get off

Rose: "Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment."This is a story about a family and their one thousand acre farm in Zebulon County, Iowa. It is a detailed account of life on an American farm. Three sisters had to live through the memories of their childhood, the death of their mother, and the relationship they all had with their father. Betrayal, trust, loyalty, and fate were slowly building up a towe

SLATTED CORNCRIBS AND MARY JANESIt’s kind of slightly fun to see how Jane Smiley gets all the lurid plot of King Lear into her tale of the decline and fall of an Iowa farming family. For instanceOut, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now? the famous scene where the Earl of Gloucester is blinded onstage (ewww, really?) gets transformed into an accident with a farm machine which squirts ammonia into a farmer’s eyes; and a war between the branches of the family becomes a court case. And the reason th...

Hawkeyes, Hayseeds and HotheadsFlammable Flamily SecretsWinner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 1991 National Book Critics Circle fiction award, Jane Smiley's novel represents a robust, red-faced reworking of Shakespeare's King Lear, a family tragedy set against the bucolic Iowa farmland. Lear here is Larry Cook, an elderly farmer who owns 1,000 acres he decides to gift to his three daughters via a business entity. The oldest daughter Ginny is thrilled, the youngest daughter Caroli...

This won a Pulitzer Prize and acts as yet another testament to why the Pulitzer Prize should largely be ignored. However, the fact that it did win a Pulitzer makes me feel less embarrassed about reading it...even if it was just for class.A Thousand Acres, told from the middle of three daughters, is a story about a small farming community in rural Iowa during the mid-1970s and is loosely based on King Lear. A bunch of tragic shit happens that is mostly the fault of the men. This proves to be Smil...

There’s more to the Cook farming family than a slice of after dinner pie and a cup of coffee. Microscopically, Jane Smiley unravels the family’s complex dynamics starting with their outside appearances then progressing to the inner rationalizations and defense mechanisms of this complex family and farming community. The paced revelations keep stacking up amidst the Iowa farming landscape and the farming culture. There is an undercurrent that begins oozing questionable behaviors from more than on...

For three generations, the Cook family have worked hard to create a thriving agriculture operation, draining swamplands, turning the weeds and grass into rich fertile soil. As time went on, their holdings eventually reached what felt like a magic number to the family – a thousand acres.Larry Cook decides he wants to ensure his legacy continues to flourish and presents a plan to split it between his three daughters and their husbands. Ginny, the eldest and Rose, two years younger agree to comply

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. An...

A Thousand Acres was a beautifully written dark novel about life in Zebulon County, Iowa on a large farm that won the 1992 Pulitzer Price (and deservedly so). It was competing with two books that I have read and enjoyed, Mao II and Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals, but it was superior to both of these. I have not read Jernigan however.We are introduced via first person interior dialog to what looks like a normal and prosperous farming family, with some parallels to King Lear, Larry "Daddy" Cook, the...

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, dus...

This is a retelling of King Lear set on a Iowan farm. I have no attachment to the play whatsoever, and even if this novel borrows major themes from it, the book stands on its own as a complex family saga. I liked its feminist lens, and I loved the dynamics of this tortured family. The novel drove home the idea that the same events could be experienced by different family members in starkly different ways remarkably well.

Written in 1991, Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres pretends to be about the death of the American farm but, if I’ve 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 1970’s. 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...

I know a guy who grew up in a small rural village in Sweden. It was a small, tight-knit community. Everybody knew everybody. And nobody was different. If someone took up a hobby, say, macramé pretty soon all the women would be doing it. It was all very Stepford; difference was not something to be encouraged. He got out of there as soon as he could. Imagine, though, how it would be to live like that: under the constant eyes of your community, gossip buzzing around about you, judging you and weigh...