Publisher Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers.
Larry Cook's farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic.

Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out.

In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare's original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America's highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.

Notes

Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from one of America's leading contemporary novelists.

Author Biography

jane smiley was born in LA, grew up in St Louis and studied at Vassar and Iowa. She won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award in 1992 for A Thousand Acres.

Review

'A Thousand Acres is a strong, gnarled shocker of a novel... superb. Its success is down to Smiley's ambitious gusto, her intuitive handling of the relationship between character and landscape, and her willingness to haul genuine moral freight across the panorama she has so expertly painted.' Sunday Times'Epic fiction of the very highest order, naturalistic , penetrating and wholly absorbing.' Literary Review'Superlative, extraordinary, amazing. A Thousand Acres is a great American tragedy about the failure of a family's land and the failure of its love. There may have been better novels than A Thousand Acres, but I fear I didn't read them -- a haunting inquisition into the decline and fall of a family.' Independent'A studied, ingenious variation on the brutal clashing of sexes and generations in King Lear. Its style is relaxed, conversational, unhurried; the novel flows gently onwards like a broad river. In its solidity and poise, A Thousand Acres is a book that will outlast this year's rainy season.' Vogue 'Powerful, poignant, intimate and involving.' New York Times

Kirkus UK Review

Gripping family drama set in the Great Plains. The towering figure of the three Cook sisters' father gradually topples, which results in the division, then loss, of the thousand acres of farmland that has sustained three generations and causes the family skeletons to rise from the fields. Ginny and Rose between them brought up their sister Caroline, who became a lawyer while the elder sisters married and stayed on the farm. In a Lear-like scenario, complete with storm, Caroline is cut off by Daddy but later turns the senile old man against the other two. Sibling rivalry, incest, patriarchy, love, ingratitude and responsibility add up to a Pulitzer Prize-winning effort. And this intense, intelligent novel also raises questions of modern agricultural practice, pollution and pacifism. (Kirkus UK)

Kirkus US Review

Lear in Iowa. In a seaming, 20th-century version of Shakespeare's tragedy, Smiley - clawing open the "ingratitude" of a monarch's elder daughters to reveal a rage that could out-tempest Lear's - once again examines the buried secret hurts within families and the deadly results when damaged egos are unleashed: "The one thing...maybe no family could tolerate was things coming out into the open." Living under the iron order of that tyrannical, successful farmer Larry Cook, owner of 640 Iowa acres, are: daughter Rose, 34- year-old recovering cancer patient, mother of two and wife of ex-musician Pete, the perennial outsider, object of Larry's contempt; and childless Ginny, married to Tyler, an easygoing man who can betray with silence. Youngest daughter Caroline, whom motherless Rose and Ginny had raised and unfettered from Daddy, is a lawyer in Des Moines. It's at a well-liquored neighborhood social that Daddy announces he's giving up his farm to his three daughters. "I don't know," says cool lawyer Caroline, and Daddy slams off in a fury. As Rose and Ginny and their pleased husbands prepare for a release from Daddy's overlordship, something else is released when Rose - scenting out weakness in the terrible old man - hungers for revenge at last. Nothing but Daddy's repentance will do for deeds in the past so foul that Ginny has blotted out the memory and Rose has kept her silence. Circling around Rose's sizzling path toward impossible satisfaction, with Ginny in tow, are their husbands - one blunted, one death-bound - and a self-exiled native son who will drive a wedge between the two sisters, mingling a hate and lust/love that brings one to murder. As for Daddy's angel Caroline - come back to flight for Daddy (senile? maybe), never battered by home maelstroms - he's been simply a father "no more, no less." With the Bard's peak moments - the storm, a blinding, etc. - a potent tragedy immaculate in characters, stately pace, and lowering ambiance. (Kirkus Reviews)

Prizes

Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1992
Winner of Pulitzer Prize Novel Category 1992

Long Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers. Larry Cook's farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out. In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare's original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America's highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics' Circle Award.

Review Quote

'A Thousand Acres is a strong, gnarled shocker of a novel… superb. Its success is down to Smiley's ambitious gusto, her intuitive handling of the relationship between character and landscape, and her willingness to haul genuine moral freight across the panorama she has so expertly painted.' Sunday Times 'Epic fiction of the very highest order, naturalistic , penetrating and wholly absorbing.' Literary Review 'Superlative, extraordinary, amazing. A Thousand Acres is a great American tragedy about the failure of a family's land and the failure of its love. There may have been better novels than A Thousand Acres, but I fear I didn't read them a haunting inquisition into the decline and fall of a family.' Independent 'A studied, ingenious variation on the brutal clashing of sexes and generations in King Lear. Its style is relaxed, conversational, unhurried; the novel flows gently onwards like a broad river. In its solidity and poise, A Thousand Acres is a book that will outlast this year's rainy season.' Vogue'Powerful, poignant, intimate and involving.' New York Times

Feature

* A Thousand Acres has now sold over 100,000 copies in paperback * A major Hollywood film of the book, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange and Colin Firth, and with a screenplay by Jane Campion, was released in 1997 * Will be given a stunning new jacket treatment to tie in with the Perennial fiction promotion Competition: Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, Nadine Gordimer, Louise Erdrich, Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Rose Tremain

Description for Sales People

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers. Larry Cook's farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings. Immediately, her father cuts her out. In A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare's original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America's highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics' Circle Award. * A Thousand Acres has now sold over 100,000 copies in paperback * A major Hollywood film of the book, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange and Colin Firth, and with a screenplay by Jane Campion, was released in 1997 * Will be given a stunning new jacket treatment to tie in with the Perennial fiction promotion Competition: Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, Nadine Gordimer, Louise Erdrich, Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver, Rose Tremain

Details