Search - A Thousand Acres

The parallels to King Lear in this novel are so well-crafted and so subtly slipped in that the reader would not realize it unless it was pointed out. Smiley does a brilliant job of constructing believable characters - some fragile, others strong, all of them fully rounded. The way she describes the farmland is unmatched. Definitely recommended.

This book was a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The book is about the lives and loves of a farming family living in the midwest and takes place mostly in the 70's. Parts of it will make you laugh and some will make you want to cry--a very good book.

This was a real page turner. Within the confines of the King Lear story, Jane Smiley manages to draw us into an absorbing story of an Iowa farm family. We get insight into what it's like to live off of and depend on the land, to function within a tight-knit community that watches every move you make, and what makes those farmers of Northern European descent tick. The need to stick to the Lear story line, though, leads to some false notes towards the end of the story. Overall, a fantastic novel that will stay with me forever.

This retelling of the Lear tragedy in mid-20th century America gets a lot of things right -- particularly the mindset of the American farmer during a period when family-based agriculture was struggling to survive. But some of the actions of the main character seem to spring from nowhere, and that makes it hard to buy into the reality Smiley is attempting to create.