Book Journal: A Thousand Acres

A study in why Pulitzer prizes and other awards should be largely ignored. Unless you don't mind if the author writes for the critics and not the actual...readers. Hey, like my undergraduate major!


A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

So, this book has been on my radar for some time now--probably about two years, since I took what was probably the worst collegiate Shakespearean class ever taught in the history of literature study. A modern retelling of King Lear. Yeah, okay. Let's see.

Well, to start with--yes, yes this book is, and Smiley does a pretty awesome job of sort of sublimely paralleling the stories and characters. Plot points are touched upon and the characters match up well, with, of course, the exception of the sympathy for King Lear (and the lack thereof of Larry Cook) and the decision to make sympathetic Goneril and Regan (who are decidedly undeserving of any understanding in the play).

I didn't like this book because it bored me. Smiley does a great job of having her prose echo the landscape of this dusty, very authentically-written Iowa farm field, but it was a huge, dull bore, and it's almost like Smiley realized that, which is why she put in the whole incest thing. Which...was kind of shocking, kind of not surprising, certainly tragic, and ultimately another eventual ho-hum of this book. It's probably because absolutely none of the characters are sympathetic, nor do they experience any great psychological change. I get that Smiley is trying to show that sometimes you have to be resigned to the horror that you are dealt with, but even a small cathartic moment could have been warranted.

Ginny is a pretty horrible protagonist and her cohort Rose is equally as un-compelling. One of the biggest detractors of the book, aside from the crap characters, is the fact that the bigger points, the more exciting climactic moments, are few and far between, and the stuff that is between them is really, really horribly tedious.

You know how most people (who are these people? who are "they?") say "write what you know?" Well, most writing teachers will instead say, "Know your audience." Which is exactly why the guys I know who have read this book (1) and the male reviews of this book available on the internet are less than thrilled with this story. Because while this book is essentially touted as a modern retelling of King Lear, Jane Smiley isn't so famous and well-known that most people would also kindly point out that she is a very feminist writer. So...all her male characters kind of suck. In a way that is so incredibly Lifetime Movie-like that it's kind of distracting.

This would probably have been better for me if I had read it in a discussion class. Maybe.

4/10