Recently Read Books: A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

This book won a Pulitzer, but I completely hated it! In my opinion, the only redeemable qualities of this book are Smiley’s skill with words, and how deftly she unwraps this terrible story. I love books that expertly delve into the roughness of what it means to be a family with warmth, perception, and realism, but this story was a train wreck. At the end of the story, every individual is rotten, crazy, shallow, dead, or irrelevant. While I understand that some families truly have no redeemable qualities, Smiley stepped over the line with this tale of the unraveling of a farming family. Seriously, if a relatively sane adult  wanted to kill her sister, would she really chose the route of canning jars of poisoned food and leaving the jars on the basement shelves for years? I kept reading this book until the bitter end, hoping that there would be something of genius to salvage—at least some way to reconcile the mess—but nothing came. If you think all farm families live the idyllic life, you should read this book, but if you are already undeceived, I would suggest spending your time reading something else. Eli Weisel’s  book “Night”, heartbreaking though it be, is a better use of time in my humble opinion.