A Thousand Acres... Part 2

The back cover says that A Thousand Acres is  “An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear cast upon a typical American Community in the late twentieth century” which pretty much sums it up. I read King Lear a very very long time ago. So long ago that the details are fuzzy. For that reason, I spent a lot of time feeling like I was reading through a haze – trying to make the correlation between the people and events in A Thousand Acres to the foggy memory I have of King Lear. When I finally lost patience with my own horribly memory and gave into the story, things began to clear up and some of the fog lifted.

I was recently reminded of the mantra that every student in every English class hears over and over and over (and over and over), to “Show Not Tell” in your writing. This means that you should, through your writing, paint the picture so to speak, instead of flat out telling your reader what is happening. This is how mood, tone, and style are created. Jane Smiley does this expertly. She creates the world of a rural Midwestern farm in the late 1970’s through the detail and scope of her story. This is my fancy way of saying that the impression I was left with was that life on a farm is slow. Very slloooooowwwww.  

This in not a complaint. Though sometimes it did feel a little like I was watching corn grow this book has such a slow pace. But, Smiley has a way with words that brings you into the world she creates and submerses you in the details. From the names of plants, the intricacies of the harvest, to the details of a clean kitchen, I was IN the house and ON the farm along with Ginny and the rest of her troubled family.

And troubled they are. Sheesh. The web of lies and deceit and all out kookiness read like a Shakespearean tragedy with all the melodrama and plot twists that go along with it. It’s a crazy world this Cook family lives in, one I won’t even attempt to detail for you – because I think you should find out yourself.