A Thousand Acres

Fülszöveg

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In her major new novel, Jane Smiley takes us into the world of a thriving Iowa farm: one thousand acres— unencumbered, unmortgaged—of the richest, flattest, most arable land on earth.
The time is 1979. Larry Cook, a proud and exacting farmer, whose family has lived on this land for four generations, unexpectedly decides to retire and turn over his valuable holdings to his three daughters. For Ginny, the courteous and accommodating eldest daughter, and Rose, her more caustic and determined sister, this gift seems like a just reward for years of hard work. But Caroline, the youngest, who is a lawyer in Des Moines, thinks it is a bad idea, and in anger her father cuts her out. As Ginny and Rose and their husbands fall eagerly to the task of making their new venture a success—expanding the hog-raising operation, building a new bam, taking on debt for the first rime—they begin to see a bizarre change in their father. Suddenly he takes to driving for... Tovább

Fülszöveg

' ' . I
fi^::
; I
! i' !

In her major new novel, Jane Smiley takes us into the world of a thriving Iowa farm: one thousand acres— unencumbered, unmortgaged—of the richest, flattest, most arable land on earth.
The time is 1979. Larry Cook, a proud and exacting farmer, whose family has lived on this land for four generations, unexpectedly decides to retire and turn over his valuable holdings to his three daughters. For Ginny, the courteous and accommodating eldest daughter, and Rose, her more caustic and determined sister, this gift seems like a just reward for years of hard work. But Caroline, the youngest, who is a lawyer in Des Moines, thinks it is a bad idea, and in anger her father cuts her out. As Ginny and Rose and their husbands fall eagerly to the task of making their new venture a success—expanding the hog-raising operation, building a new bam, taking on debt for the first rime—they begin to see a bizarre change in their father. Suddenly he takes to driving for endless, aimless miles around the countryside or sits silently in his armchair watching the cornfields. As Rose says, "Perfecting that death's-head stare will be his lifework from now on." Though Ginny beheves that her father's impulse was sensible and right ("if not for him, then for us"), she cannot shake her uneasiness about him. In time, it becomes clear that the transfer of land is the first in an unfolding of events that will dismember the farm, that wiU part father from daughters, sister from sister, husband from wife.
This is the story that Ginny tells, as she looks back into the past for some clue to what is happening to them. What she finds there wiU allow no forgiveness, only the unravehng of a world she thought permanent, solid, and secure, and the unmasking of a man who has always epitomized for her the concepts of father and farmer.
The forces that bound Lear and his daughters reverberate beneath the surface of Jane Smiley's extraordinary novel, the most powerfully dramatic work we have had yet from the author of Ordinary Love & Good Will, The Greenlanders, and The Age of Grief.
Jane Smiley is the author of six previous works of fiction, including The Age of Grief (which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award), The Green-landers, and Ordinary Love & Good Will. She teaches at Iowa State University and lives in Ames, Iowa.
Jacket art is a quilt, "Bars," by an unknown Amish quiltmaker. American, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, c. igzi, pieced wools, 76" x 84 ". Quilt courtesy of the Esprit Quilt Collection, San Francisco. Photograph by Sharon Risedorph and Lynn Kellner.
Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson
alfred a. knopf, publisher, new york


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In Praise of Jane Smiley
THE AGE OF GRIEF
"No writer of the generation now in its thirties has written more movingly about what it feels hke to become one's parents . . . The Age of Grief is a small masterpiece . . . [It] resonates with the simple pathos of Chekhov." —james atlas,
Vanity Fair
"A glorious achievement [The title novella is] a shameless, unblinking look at the sort of emotional accommodation made by partners in even the best marriage . Infinitely satisfying."
-anne bernays,
The New York Times Book Review
THE GREENLANDERS
"An epic masterpiece . . . Brilliantly alive . . . She transforms historic fact into a glowing world a world as spellbinding as any in literature." -muriel spanier,
Newsday
"Brilliant . . . Wonderful . . . An historical novel with the nearness of contemporaiy, fiction In its austerity and the caHber of its art it is jubilant." —verlyn klinkenborg,
The New Republic
ORDINARY LOVE & GOOD WILL
"Jane Smiley accomplishes a dazzling feat—without so much as a flashy phrase . . . [These] are unforgettable noveUas."
-matthew gilbert,
Boston Globe
"Superb . . . [She] can't be praised enough! It is one thing to declare, as many writers do, hfe as the realm of mystery, of constant surprise. It is yet another to dramatize these ideas, to make them shim-meringly alive. This is what Jane Smiley does."
-dan cryer,
Newsday Vissza