From the Bookshelf of DMPL Book Chat…

A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley

Start date: April 26, 2022

Finish date: May 18, 2022

Why we're reading this: A Thousand Acres is the selection for DMPL & Des Moines Metro Opera Book Club! This book club will be hel…more
[close] A Thousand Acres is the selection for DMPL & Des Moines Metro Opera Book Club! This book club will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, 5/18 at 6:00 PM. Visit our website or call 515-283-4152 to register or for more details.

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What Members Thought

Oct 09, 2019 Joe rated it really liked it

Is this what farming is? Y’all need Jesus.

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May 13, 2022 Karna Converse rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Family saga in a Midwestern farming community that has a little bit of everything—family secrets, community speculation, and controversies between farming practices of the past and those of the future.

I first read this 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in the early 2000s as I was beginning to explore my family's history. Like the Cooks, our farm has been in the family for several generations and like Zebulon County, my hometown farming community is replete with church dinners, community socials, Family saga in a Midwestern farming community that has a little bit of everything—family secrets, community speculation, and controversies between farming practices of the past and those of the future.

I first read this 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in the early 2000s as I was beginning to explore my family's history. Like the Cooks, our farm has been in the family for several generations and like Zebulon County, my hometown farming community is replete with church dinners, community socials, and caring/concerned neighbors.

Determining the best way to pass farmland on to the next generation or what to do if the younger generation cannot or is not able to continue the operation is a huge discussion and one that can be fraught with disagreement. This underlying tension that flows from beginning to end is as relevant today as it was in 1979, the year in which the novel is set.

Although my own story is not as drama-filled as that of the Cooks and the Clarks, I found Smiley's depictions of the challenges authentic; the conversations, true; and the experiences, believable. And this time, instead of reading for the story, I read to study how it was told, paying more attention to word choices, story structure, and point of view. The oldest Cook daughter, Ginny, is the narrator and through her eyes, we learn of the family's multi-generation relationship with the Clarks and the Ericksons (whose three hundred and seventy acres "was more like a petting zoo" and carried a mortgage). Tension increases as the younger generations of both families begin exploring expansion and the introduction of new techniques. Couple those disagreements with illness, death, and repressed emotions that slowly begin to emerge and this easily becomes a page-turner that is difficult to put down.

Here are some phrases I highlighted for how succinctly and subtly they captured the idea:

The car was the exact measure of six hundred forty acres compared to three hundred or five hundred. Pg 5

We might as well have had a catechism: What is a farmer? A farmer is a man who feeds the world. What is a farmer’s first duty? To grow more food. What is a farmer’s second duty? To buy more land. What are the signs of a good farm? Clean fields, neatly painted buildings, breakfast at six, no debts, no standing water. How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors. Pg 45

“Ginny, I don’t exactly know what to do, but I’ve always thought the best way to deal with your father is to sort of hunker down and let it blow over. In one ear and out the other. Grin and bear it. Water off a duck’s back. All those things.” Pg 143

At home, it was galling to think of how others were talking about us, bad enough to think of their ridicule or disapproval, but worse to think how they were surely entertained by us, how this stinging, goading, angry self-consciousness that impelled me every day, every minute, to seek relief was nothing to them, something they couldn’t feel and hardly ever gave a thought to. All these neighbors, close enough to know our business, but too infinitely far from us to feel a particle of what we were feeling, themselves feeling animated, more than anything, by the pleasures of curiosity. Away from the farm, though, that was okay, Pg 247

Rose left me a riddle I haven’t solved, of how we judge those who have hurt us when they have shown no remorse or even understanding. Pg 370

“Ginny, I don’t exactly know what to do, but I’ve always thought the best way to deal with your father is to sort of hunker down and let it blow over. In one ear and out the other. Grin and bear it. Water off a duck’s back. All those things.”

A Thousand Acres is a selection of Iowa Public Radio's book club.
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Apr 26, 2022 Jolie rated it liked it

Just because the source or inspiration is five acts doesn’t excuse making a new version five acts. Writing is good. Pacing is a slog. I can understand why this received a Pulitzer but I wouldn’t recommend it.

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