A Thousand Acres: A Novel

By Jane Smiley

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "powerful and poignant" twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear (The New York Times Book Review) that takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride—and centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. 

When the youngest daughter objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, A Thousand Acres reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.

“A family portrait that is also a near-epic investigation into the broad landscape, the thousand dark acres of the human heart.... The book has all the stark brutality of a Shakespearean tragedy.” —The Washington Post Book World

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307787712

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

Reviews for A Thousand Acres

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is almost 30 years old now but it seems current. Maybe because the essential story is as old as time; certainly Shakespeare when he wrote King Lear (on which this book is based) was reformatting some ancient tale because that's how he wrote all of his plays. Issues of trust/distrust between generations will probably show up even when humans have ventured to the stars.The story is told by Ginny, oldest daughter of Larry, and is set on and around their prosperous farm in Iowa. The title refers to the amount of land Larry has accumulated after inheriting about 640 acres from his father. Larry is the father of three girls, Ginny, Rose and Caroline. Ginny and Rose are married and they and their husbands live on the farm and everyone helps run it. Larry is a good farmer and there is no debt on the land. The girls' mother died when Ginny was twelve, Rose was ten and Caroline was only six. Ginny and Rose raised Caroline and carried out all the functions (and I do mean all) of their mother. Ginny never aspired to leave the farm and while Rose went away for a few years at college she came back after she married. However, Ginny and Rose made sure that Caroline got away and now Caroline is a lawyer in Des Moines. When the neighbour, Harold, bought a new expensive tractor Larry was green with envy. He decided that he was going to put the land into a corporation with the girls as the principal shareholders. When Caroline expressed doubts about the scheme Larry disinherited her. The corporation could get bank financing to make improvements and Ginny's husband, Ty, was anxious to improve their hog operation. This met with Larry's approval until it didn't. Senility started to set in and he made accusations against Ginny and Rose and then set out to walk home in a driving rainstorm. After that Larry with support from Caroline started a court case to dissolve the corporation. From then on everything deteriorated. The marriages of Ginny and Rose imploded and then Rose's husband killed himself. Work on the new hog barns had to be stopped until the court case was decided. Ginny lost trust not just in her father but her husband and her sisters and even neighbours and her pastor. This is a tragedy for all involved. As the daughter of a farmer I understand how attached a farm family is to their land. Although I did not aspire to farm I base my existence on knowing intimately all the 360 acres that I grew up on. To lose that would shake my foundation and that is what Ginny and everyone else in this story experienced. Truly a great tale.

[tkcs-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This Pulitzer Prize winning modern twist on King Lear, set in Kansas farm country, is truly affecting and very well written. I read it quite a while ago but it's stayed with me. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 for the adult themes which might offend some.

[sraelling · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have dear friends who are farmers and while the setting is spot on (buildings, crops, roads, weather), I had a difficult time with the characters. The reason this family is so dysfunctional? What Daddy did to his daughters? The importance of continuing to increase the amount of acres that a family farm can handle?How everyone thinks they know each other's business?I don't know and I didn't care.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very vivid and well-written book showcasing a rural farming community in Iowa. I did not really want to give it four stars as I could have faced this better as history or sociology than as fiction. I hope it was well researched and based in truth as the picture given showed abuse of all kinds as normal and supported by the community through the isolation of each family. The wider community certainly existed but serving only to assist the already powerful and suppress the human rights of all other individuals.

[sianpr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A literary tour de force and a gripping story.

[kaitanya64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Despite its many positive reviews, I do not think this is Smiley's best. She misses the sense of engagement and community that is much more for people of these Iowa farms than just a nice setting for a remake of King Lear. The dilemmas ring true, but the solutions seem contrived. No Iowa farm family sends a kid off to boarding school, no matter what the home life is like. Also, no Iowa farm family lives in such splendid isolation from neighbors and extended family. An entertaining book, but much of it utterly fantastic.

[carmenere_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A family saga, taken from the pages of Shakespeare, contains Larry Cook as patriarch, farmer and owner of 1,000 corn luscious acres, and his daughters Ginny, Rose and Caroline. Living and tending this land, surrounded by family and friends, sounds ideal. Yet, as with every perfect picture, this one has tiny fissures that become crevices once Larry decides to divide the land between his daughters. Caroline, the youngest, walks away from the deal but remains in the background. The older two manage the land with their husbands and despite their cool feelings toward each other run it quite well. With old age, Larry becomes paranoid and wants his land back. Hey wait, you've heard this story before, haven't you? Well, sure, it's King Lear but Smiley brings the old story up to date and sheds light on a world unbeknownst to many, the ins and outs, ups and downs of farming. She raises awareness of farming methods that in 1979 were just beginning to become a concern.The reader meanders through this story as if traveling a country road but be watchful, the author, occasionally, throws you a curve ball which makes you stop, back up and travel that sentence again thinking, "What?! Did she just say what I thought she said?!Highly recommend you pluck this one off the shelf soon.

[justablondemoment · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was really hard for me to get into.I ended giving it 3 stars because there were many parts that I could sink my teeth into. Sadly that was only a small percentage of the novel. While I thought the plot was good i just kept yawning.While the book may not have been my cup of tea I think the movie I would enjoy so I'm gonna try that.

[whiteroseyes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You know a book is good when immediately after finishing it you grab the source material (King Lear) to extend your pleasure from it just a little longer. I hadn't previously read King Lear, and this re imagining was absolutely spellbinding to me. Shakespeare's high drama plot benefits from this novel's extra scope for character development. Family relationships are nothing if not complicated, and each character relates to the others with a blend of love and resentment that drives the novel. The farm setting was the perfect modern equivalent to a kingdom- the father is passing down both freedoms and responsibilities, making for a challenging inheritance. Loved the narrator and the limitation of only seeing her perspective. It made it feel more like an experience than a story.Read if you are interested in family dynamics, farm life, personal motivations. If we were friends, I would have pressed it into your hands with a crazed look in my eye as soon as I finished so I could have someone to obsess about it with.

[lakobow · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I tried really hard because this was supposed to be a great book that everybody loved, but I was bored. I hated all the characters and by page 207 nothing had actually happened yet, so I put it down.

[lsh63 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This 1992 Pulitzer winner is the story of Larry Cook and his daughters, Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. Larry is a successful farmer with a 1000 acre farm that he intends to divide equally among his three daughters and their spouses. When the youngest daughter Caroline, has a problem with her father's plan, she is cut out of his will.The story is told from Ginny's viewpoint, who at times feels as though all she does is cook, clean, and take care of everyone else. The one thing that she longs for, she can't seem to have, and she shares a very difficult relationship with her father and sisters. There are also some very deep rooted supressed memories that come to light, that make for a very emotional story.A Thousand Acres is touted as a "reimagining" of King Lear which the reader is able to pick up on immediately.Overall, this was an ok read for me.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a tremendous read with incredible characters and a vivid sense of place. Coming from a country background I've seen first-hand how the question of farm inheritance (who? when? how?) can be so difficult to navigate smoothly, between sibling jealousies and parental inabilities to let go of the reins. It's a fantastic plot base for a novel, and Smiley handles so deftly the repeated misunderstandings and horrific family skeletons in the closet that gradually seep under the doors of the families involved like filthy rising water, soaking into every aspect of their daily lives until everything is rotten.Much too great a book for me to ever have a hope of doing it justice in a review, so I'll leave it there.4.5 stars - gripping and much deserved of it's Pulitzer award.

[janerawoof · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting refashioning of KING LEAR. A father divides his thousand acres among his daughters and an already dysfunctional family breaks apart completely starting with that action and the slipping into strange behavior of the father. The story is updated to farm country in Oklahoma. A bit long and melodramatic for my taste. Why it won the Pulitzer escapes me.

[castlelass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A dysfunctional Iowa farming family falls apart when the patriarch decides to leave his thousand-acre property to two of his three daughters. His mental state deteriorates. Family infighting ensues. A neighbor’s son, who had gone to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, returns to the area and develops relationships with two women. It is set in 1979, a time when family farming was becoming increasingly difficult.

Protagonist Ginny, eldest of three sisters, is the narrator. She is married with no children. Her mother died at an early age and she has had to play a motherly role in her sisters’ lives. It is not a cheery story. Several female characters have experienced abuse. The writing is eloquent. It is character driven and none of the characters is particularly likeable. The plot is about a farming life and the relationships among the characters.

I liked the first half of the story better than the second. This book is a retelling of King Lear. It is not essential to know ahead of time in order to enjoy it; however, if I had figured it out sooner, some of the plot transitions, which seem to come out of the blue, would have made more sense.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. I am slowly making my way through Jane Smiley’s catalogue. My favorite remains The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, which I highly recommend.

3.5

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The retelling of King Lear. This is a story set in the heartland and features a farm family in Iowa. The father of 3 daughters decides to incorporate the farm and give to his daughter's ownership. This is the impetus of everything going awry. Its a great story, retelling that incorporates the historical aspects of farming turning into large industrial farms, loss of the family farm, poor management and disregard of the environment for profit. It's also a hotbed of family dysfunction. Worthy of the pulitzer in my opinion.

[ennuiprayer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

good book, i guess. It's not my sort of book, but it's there and it exists.

reminds me of that Tolstoy story...about the land...and the guy who wants a lot of land...

[leslie398 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow!! The drama and impact of this story increases more and more the further you go. The family dynamics of both the Cook family and their nearest neighbors, the Clarks, start off seemingly so smooth and normal and unravel so completely.Plenty to think about so more may come...

[auntieg0412 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Depressing -- it's as if the author took every possible type of dysfunctionality and poured it into one family. But I liked her writing; I appreciated several unexpected twists and revelations, and the ending was a bit of a surprise. Pretty good read.

[melorak-374565 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I stopped on page 313 of this 371 page book. I couldn't bear to read the ending. It's a difficult book, subject matter-wise, and while it is a
testament to a great writer that I should continue reading even as my apprehension grew, I ultimately decided to discontinue. The narrator discovers more of her history on her scenic Iowa farm and small town than she knew as she and her husband receive the mixed-blessing of ownership of the family farm, the 'thousand acres'. The relationship of her and her sister was especially compelling. Great characters--a 'man of few words' father; a good, gentle husband; a modernized, prodigal organic-farmer son. Putting it down equates to putting my hands over my eyes during an intense movie scene, not uncommon for me.

[claudia.anderson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

very disturbing topic, most of the characters not very likable, well written

[mjlivi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A grand family tragedy, based loosely on the King Lear story but transposed to farming country in 1970s Iowa. The two central sisters were wonderful characters, sympathetic but flawed and with complex feelings and motivations. Some of the other characters were less well drawn, and the occasional plot point felt a bit arbitrary (until I realised the Lear connection anyway). The book takes on big, important themes and is heartbreakingly sad.

[atreic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Story of King Lear retold in the American mid-West. One of those books that leaves you wondering what the difference is between really good fanfiction, and things that win the Pulitzer Prize. It seems stupid to complain that a King Lear retelling is a bit bleak, but, well, it is.This book is mostly about the stories of the women, told from the perspective of the eldest of the three daughters. So it is full of themes of 'women's stories' - miscarriages, breast cancer, living with childhood abuse, mothering and taking mothering roles, marriages and affairs. It's much more show than tell, with a tense current of emotions where Things Happen, and the reader thinks 'huh? Oh, of course'If what you're looking for is a retelling of King Lear, sympathetic to R&G and filled with the stories of the women's side of things, full of uncomfortable atmosphere and ponderings on how families shape who we are this is probably exactly the book you're looking for.

[brendaklaassen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was read for an in-person discussion. When I first picked up the book, I had not expected the story to be so dark. There was a lot of negative life issues in the story, so I had to take breaks while reading it. I did not like how the author wrapped up all the story lines in the end, but I understand why she did. I will give this author another chance in the future

[anniemod · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are two ways to look at this novel - as a King Lear reinterpretation set in 1979 Iowa or as a novel of rural Iowa. Both will be correct - and both will be incomplete. It is the masterful mix of the two that makes this novel what it is. In the spring of 1979, the patriarch of the Cook family in Zebulon County, Iowa, decides to split his farm between his 3 daughters. The decision comes as a surprise -- he had been a farmer all his life and stepping away is not what anyone expected. Except that one of them, his youngest, does not show enough enthusiasm so is cut out and leaves for her lawyer career (it is 1979, invasion won't happen - the battles when they come will be in court). In case you had ever read King Lear, you already know where this one is going... or can go. Smiley does not change the main fabric of the play... but she shifts it. The second family drama is also in full play - being born out of wedlock is not such a big deal anymore so the son is a draft-dodger instead. Shakespeare gave us the "external viewer" viewpoint; Smiley gives the oldest daughter, Ginny, the speaker part. And that changes things - partially because now we may be dealing with unreliable narrator and partially because Goneril was never given a chance to explain herself. But that shift also means that we see the underside of the play - the good son is almost just a shadow because the 2 older sisters rarely have anything to do with him. The novel follows the plot of the play faithfully... which initially worried me - because it almost sounded like a recipe for a predictable plotline. But instead it helped - if you knew what was coming, you were always looking into things thinking on how they tie into it; if you did not know (because you never read King Lear), some of the turns may come as a shock. But when you remove the veneer of King Lear, you find another novel under it - the novel of the changing times of 1979 in rural America when the farmers were facing the changes in the world. Smiley writes this novel with as much mastery as she does the overlaying story - with all the nitty gritty details (get yourself access to wikipedia if you had not read about farming before -- a lot of the descriptions are extremely detailed but they are done by a farmer's daughter who is herself a farmer.And as a third layer is the back story of Zebulon county and the Cook family - which is the story of the people that made Iowa and its neighboring states and how American farming came to be what it was. There is a lot of personal heartbreak in this novel - on all 3 levels of the text and there are awful things that happen and that had happened. The evil sisters of the play turn into the victims here (how much they are and how much of it is the narrator is open to interpretation) and the formerly good characters appear to be either vindictive or just shadows. Old secrets also resurface - some of them so disturbing that it makes you wonder if another play's line about things being rotten should not apply here. The sexual tension of the play is also here - as it cannot not be - and unlike the bawdiness of Shakespeare, it is also explored a lot more carefully. The end is expected - everything dies. Not literally this time (although enough people do die) - but a way of a life is dead nevertheless and the people still standing are different people. It is a hard novel to read in some parts - some of them because of the farming narrative, some of them because of the pure awfulness of the past of some of the characters. And it is not a happy story - for anyone. But then... the dying of a way of life never is.

[vashonjim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pulitzer Prize winner. Smiley manages to take 1,000 acres of farmland, stirs them up with three siblings born to a father who ravages his children, and produces a thorough and complicated look at complex lives. The writing sings at times, and the book is worthy of all the honors it gets. That said, I can say I liked it, but can't say I loved it.

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well styled family saga that is a faithful reinterpretation / reimagination of King Lear. I will need to come back to finish as I only made it 3/4 of the way through by book club

[nancyjean19 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I love King Lear, I usually like Pulitzer prize winners, but something about this re-imagining just didn't do it for me. Maybe it was all the descriptions of farm equipment, maybe it was the irritating narrator with and her inconsistent character. I think it mostly just didn't jibe with my interpretation of King Lear. Overall I don't recommend this one.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I knew nothing about the plot of King Lear but as this novel is based on it, I did hurry off and google it. Crikey, what a convoluted story! I was glad this was easier to follow, though it did add an interesting element to my reading of it - trying to figure out who was being represented by which of the characters.It's a long, dense book. There is a tendency for dramatic events - and there are quite a few - to be described in advance in quite bland simple terms, only for the following chapters to go over them in forensic detail. It was exciting enough to keep me reading, but there were times, wading through another paragraph of navel gazing psychoanalysis, when I wondered if it had to be quite so long winded.It's highly instructive as to the ways of the farming communities of North America - not something I'm much of an expert on, and I was glad of the education.

[memccauley6 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As many reviewers have said: this story starts slow. But I felt that every word was necessary for the incisive portrait Smiley painted of each of the characters. She captures the inner workings of close-mouthed, emotionally repressed farm people so perfectly you feel like you are inside of their skins. There is a subtle genius in the telling of the mundane details of farm life and the way the narrator uses it to hide from her own feelings.

This is a retelling of King Lear, so I was familiar with the basic plot, but I was still anxious to see what would happen next when events started spiraling out of control. I was grouchy every time I had to put it down and couldn’t wait to get back to the story. I look forward to seeing the Jessica Lange movie that was made in the 90s.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was always aware, I think, of the water in the soil, the way it travels from particle to particle, molecules adhering, clustering, evaporating, heating, cooling, freezing, rising upward to the surface and fogging the cool air or sinking downward, dissolving this nutrient and that, quick in everything it does, endlessly working and flowing, a river sometimes, a lake sometimes. When I was very young, I imagined it ready at any time to rise and cover the earth again, except for the tile lines. Prairie settlers always saw a sea or an ocean of grass, could never think of any other metaphor, since most of them had lately seen the Atlantic. The Davises did find a shimmering sheet punctuated by cattails and sweet flag. The grass is gone, now, and the marshes, “the big wet prairie,” but the sea is still beneath our feet, and we walk on it.Jane Smiley translated the timeless elements of Shakespeare's King Lear to a Midwestern farm family. In many respects, Smiley's adaptation improves on Shakespeare's Lear. Larry Cook owns one of the most productive farms in Iowa's Zebulon County – one thousand acres resulting from the consolidation of several adjoining acreages. The widower Cook farms with the assistance of two sons-in-law, the husbands of two of his three daughters. Cook's sudden decision to incorporate the farm and cede control to his daughters and sons-in-law is the first in a chain of events that leads to tragedy. The return of draft dodger Jess Clark, prodigal son of Cook's neighbor, Harold Clark, becomes a catalyst for growing feelings of discontent in Cook's eldest daughter, Ginny, the first-person narrator. As sisters Ginny and Rose and their husbands extend themselves beyond their means, the family rift grows, and their neighbors in the small farming community choose sides.The Midwest farm crisis was an inspired choice as the modern setting for this tragedy. This was a period when many multi-generation family farms were lost to corporations. Many smaller tragedies took place throughout the Midwest during this time period. Smiley's novel carries an authenticity that will resonate with readers with ties to the Midwest and its farmers. Highly recommended.