Announcing a new Meetup for The East Valley Book Club!

What: Serious Fiction Fan Club October meeting

When: October 13, 2008 7:00 PM

Where: Click the link below to find out!

Meetup Description: Our book for October is the Pulitzer Prize winner for 1992, “A Thousand Acres” by Jane Smiley, which later was made into a major motion picture.

Jane Smiley books belong in the library of any serious fiction reader. She took her masters and PhD in creative writing from the prestigious program at the University of Iowa and then taught undergrad and graduate creative writing workshops at Iowa State University from 1981 to 1996, along the way winning many awards for both novels and short stories. Along the way, she received a Fulbright grant that allowed a year studying Greenland, after which she wrote “The Greenlanders,” a book that was avoided by everyone except those fascinated by Viking culture of the early fourteen hundreds.

What makes her novels so engaging is that all have a theme. She obsesses on a topic, does exhaustive research, and finally explains the subject by creating a work of fiction. To name a few; “Horse Heaven” is about the horse racing industry, “Good Faith” covers real estate, “MOO” is about the life and politics of a modern state university, “The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton” is about the Kansas-Nebraska wars that preceded the Civil War, and her most recent, “Ten Days in the Hills” tells a reader everything he ever wanted to know about the film business.

Undoubtedly, her best novel is “A Thousand Acres,” a novel often described as a modern-day version of “King Lear,” perhaps the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. It is a remarkably satisfying read.

Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm–––from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders.

"Our farm and our lives seemed secure and good," says narrator Ginny Cook, looking back on the summer before her father capriciously decided to turn over the farm to his three daughters and their mates. Although Ginny's existence as a farmer's wife and caretaker of her irascible, bullying, widower father is not easy, there have been compensations in her good marriage, in the close companionship of her indomitable sister Rose, who lives across the road, and in sharing vicariously in the accomplishments of their younger sister, Caroline, a lawyer.

Having managed to submerge her grief at being childless, passive Ginny has also hidden a number of darker secrets in her past. These shocking events work their way out of her subconscious in the dreadful aftermath of her father's decision to rescind his legacy, shouting accusations of filial betrayal. Like Lear's daughters, the Cook sisters each reveal their true natures as the tragedy plays out.

Smiley powerfully evokes the unrelenting, insular world of farm life, the symbiotic relationships between a farmer and his land as well as those among the other members of the rural community. She contrasts the stringencies of nature with those of human nature: the sting of sibling rivalry, the tensions of marriage, the psychological burdens of children, the passion of lovers, and in the end, she has raises profound questions about human conduct and moral responsibility, especially about family relationships and the guilt and bitterness that incest inflicted by a father on his daughters begets.

This book will stick in your mind for a very long time and illustrates the enduring value of serious creative literary fiction.

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