Like always, please respond to anything that interested you in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. Here are some topics to consider:
- Consider the novel’s epigraph from Meridel Le Seuer. How does this quote shape and inform the book?
- Is Ginny Cook an entirely reliable narrator? Can we completely trust her perception of events? Why do you think Smiley chose Ginny to narrate the story? How would the book have been different with a different narrator?
- If you’re familiar with King Lear, talk about Lear parallels in the novel. How well do you think these work?
- Some reviewers argued that Smiley went too far in her depiction of Larry Cook and what he does to his daughters—that she robs the Lear character of his majesty, making him unambiguously bad. Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?
- What are we supposed to think about Jess Clark? Is he a villain or a victim?
- How do you read the ending of the novel? Is it entirely tragic? Does Smiley leave us with any hope for the future?
I loved this novel. I found the prose beautiful and fascinating. I thought it was interesting that Smiley chose Ginny as the narrator. I don’t think Ginny is completely reliable due to being so engrained into the family. She is, in a psychoanalytic reading, completely intergraded into the enmeshment. By being in the enmeshment she is not bias but if Smiley’s purpose was to focus on the collective farm and family dynamic then I think for Ginny is the best choice for she is the most neutral among the family. I think Smiley matched Shakespeare’s Lear and gave it a refreshing Americana touch. I am unsure if that is Smiley’s writing ability or Shakespeare’s timeless structure. I think the book would have been interesting through Rose’s point of view but also heavily biased. Though Ginny is Bias, for a good proportion of the book she is also the peacemaker. I think it could be interesting to see the book from one of Rose’s daughters and give the events a little “To Kill a Mockingbird” kind of feel, but I think the novel is about family relationships, specifically fathers and daughters and I firmly believe that the death of Rose’s husband and the family he leaves behind creates a bigger impact BECAUSE of the relationship Larry had with his girls. I’d be interested to see this from Jess’s point of view, but once again- the perspective would have shifted the focus and purpose of the novel. Now, I liked Jess– for a bit. I am unsure if he a villain or a victim or more of device to move the characters along. He come back into town and spurs Larry to sell, He has an affair with Ginny which pushes her motive to stand up for herself, he pushes new and more “modern” farming which causes tension in the family, he sleeps with Rose and may have pushed her husband to his death, His actions, especially towards the end lacked character meaning to me and just seem to push the plot. One of the things Smiley does beautifully is isolate the different types of men and how their actions influence the women in their life. Larry is the symbol of dominate toxic male power, but Jess, Loran, Ty, Harold, and Pete also are male architypes all of which hurt and/or influence the women.
The end of the novel was bitter sweet to me. The idea that the sisters, who aligned themselves to one another for protection, now are isolated. The scene where Rose and Caroline are splitting up their mother and sisters things and trying to identify which is which is so beautiful and yet heart breaking. Not only do the realize and reconnect with their mother after all this time, but the fact that they cannot separate the different positions because the family has been so immersed in the farm. Each detailing out domestic items as the family collapse in on itself. (I wondered if the hog breeding was a metaphor for the procreation and productivity of the women in the novel).
I think Smiley leaves us with some hope for the future, the character of Ginny gets what she wants after all those years– children and independence. Though many of the characters are no longer together in a family unit and the death of the farm could be seen as tragic– In think Smiley uses the opportunity to say– maybe it’s better that this enmeshment died.
Second paragraph is supposed to say “Ginny and Caroline”
I have really enjoyed this novel. Although recurring to commercial-literature devices more than the others we have read so far with its richness of twists and turns —there’s a bomb waiting for us to explode pretty much at every turn of the page— I found it riveting and intelligent. Riveting because it’s been able to keep be stuck to the page until the very end and intelligent for its merciless, verisimilar portrait of what hides behind the walls of respectable churchy families. Not only that. I found extremely smart and endearing Smiley’s capacity of psychological introspection of people who, evidently, she knows very well, whose common denominator is the custom to calculate everything, and selfishness as their exclusive motivation to act. They only act out of self-interest and self-convenience, but never for pure passion or because something gives them joy, or to improve other people’s lives. Except for Ginny and in part for Pete —about whom I’ll talk later— their inner aridity doesn’t spare any of them: from the father, as ignorant as goat, passing to the other siblings, Ty, to end with Jess, whom I would define more like a wolf in sheep’s clothes and a neurotic cretin rather than a villain or a victim —but I’ll talk more widely also about him later.
Although Ginny is not a reliable narrator, I still found her a sympathetic and relatable character, wasn’t only for being surrounded by a pack of wolves. Not only she can’t trust anybody, but she must constantly watch her back from each of them. She is an unreliable narrator because for all her life she has been victim of abuse and gaslighting to the point that she is even uncertain if it is true that she and Rose mistreated the father, which is paradoxical since they have tended to him like to a child, despite his abuses. The fact that she has trauma amnesia with regards to sexual abuse happened during her childhood and early adolescence doesn’t diminish the gravity of the gaslighting that she receives from him. In fact, she still cares for him and takes care of him even after Rose passed her that information, that chunk of memory that she had lost about sexual abuse. After a life of manipulation, she seems to have lost the basic human sense of discernment to figure who is the abused and who the abuser, which is, sadly, a dynamic very common among women still now a day. Her not being a reliable narrator is very clear in the last paragraph of page 307, when she talks about everything that she thinks she had failed in her life. In that piece it is especially evident that she doesn’t convey the objectivity of the situation but her own distorted reality, namely the point of view of a person bulldozed by the monstrosity of her family members.
As far as what concerns Jess Clark, I really liked him and rooted for him for being a deserter and an outcast until I discovered that he was just a very average womanizer. I thought he was open-minded and cool, with all his ideas of organic farming and interest of Eastern pacifist philosophy, so when he turned out what he really was, he deeply disappointed me. I had no doubt that he would have left Rose, too —about her behavior, I would just lay a merciful veil. I should write an entire essay to say what I have to say about each of them, but I’ll just limit myself here to say that beyond Ginny, the one that in part I justify, despite being aggressive and abusive too, was Pete. If not else, he was genuine even in his anger. Unlike the others, he didn’t have any hidden agenda. His drama and the core of his frustration stemmed from the fact that he wanted to play music and found himself trapped in that dysfunctional environment instead. I really felt sorry for him.
Also, up to a certain point, I was prone to think, “oh, men in this novel are as terrible as the ones in Toni Morrison’s,” but then, considering characters like Caroline and Rose, I couldn’t avoid thinking that women are the deign companions of their hideous men. It turns out that at least on one thing Larry Cook was right: everyone has what they deserve —although I’d rather say, “whom they deserve.” Everyone except Ginny though.
I had a mixed response to this novel. I appreciate the re-telling of Lear, and the suitably epic scope captured the endless battle of farming, and the sense of tragedy / end-of-era feel of the death of family farms. The writing is beautiful and immersive. But sometimes I’d find myself impatient with that immersion – all the careful details of day-to-day life. And that’s where I felt most torn, because I recognize that those details brought us into the lives of the characters (Ginny in particular), but I found myself growing impatient just the same, impatient for the next move, next action. And while most of the characters are relatable and human (I understand where they’re coming from, I don’t actively dislike them), none of them are terribly likable; unlike some books, where I finish and feel sorry to be leaving that world, those people, I was not sad to leave these folks behind.
Ginny is an interesting narrator – she’s so passive, and has spent much of her life monitoring other people’s responses – it makes her a good observer. But I don’t think she’s entirely reliable for just that reason: she’s very concerned about what others think of her, and her observations are skewed and colored by that concern. The character I’d most like to hear their version of events from is Caroline. She clearly has a very different memory of her childhood than Ginny, and while Ginny makes it sound as if her exile from the family was entirely self-imposed, it’s also clear she was never part of the sisterhood that binds Ginny and Rose. And what Ginny tells us of Caroline’s childhood relationship with their father is sufficiently disturbing to suggest that her leaving the family was an issue of survival, not rejection (as Ginny seems to interpret it). With Caroline in particular, there always seemed to be something in the shadows of Ginny’s narration, something I felt needed to be read between the lines.
The only irredeemably despicable character in the story is the father, and I did think that was unfortunate. The sisters’ devotion to him seems driven almost entirely by fear – fear of him, and fear of what the community would say, if they weren’t “good daughters” caring for their (much respected) father. I think that’s why I grew impatient with them, their putting up with all his abuse, his capricious anger. And as a character, I think he’d be a bit more interesting if he were more morally ambiguous, if there seemed to be some love between him and his family.
I enjoyed reading this novel, especially as it picked up steam in the last quarter or so. Overall, the writing is incredible and the characters complex and layered. Jane Smiley is a gifted writer.
The characters are lost in their daily routines and work until the patriarch decides (or is manipulated) to pass down the farm to his three daughters. This one action suddenly disrupts the monotony and pattern of their days, and once their routines and roles are shaken, the fuse is lit and burns toward an explosive end. The characters don’t seem to fully appreciate or truly understand one another until the chaos reveals their true natures – their desires, secrets and addictions. The farm is a living thing that consumes their thoughts and energy – everyone plays their part to keep it alive. It’s as if they are frozen, stuck in an antiquated agricultural and patriarchal existence, as the rest of the world evolves. All the characters are flawed in their own way; there are no saints, and with the exception of Larry Cook, no villains. They are secure in their sheltered lives, which look idyllic from the outside. The townspeople revere Larry, unaware of his monstrous acts. Jess rides in like a white knight to rescue Ginny, but he, too, proves to be flawed.
Ginny, to me, is not a reliable narrator. Her justification for attempting to poison her own sister, who has already battled cancer, is childish and rash. Even though they have only each other to rely upon in this dysfunctional family, they fight over a boy like two schoolgirls. In fact, the whole canned sausage thread seems too far-fetched. The secrets of the past and the unfolding drama of the present are enough to propel the novel without the conniving canning. The attempted poisoning plot cheapens an otherwise artfully constructed narrative. The fact that Smiley returns to the poisonous sausage and kraut at the end as some sort of full circle reckoning for Ginny is, to me, trite. I thought the novel should have ended when Ginny is shown in her new life as a guardian to Rose’s daughters and as a waitress at Perkins.
Oops. Hit submit too soon. Anonymous is Ron.
As “Anonymous” 🙂 points out, Smiley’s characters are certainly complex and layered. Like Melissa, I’m not particularly attached to any of them, which sounds cold, but may be based on my not-very-midwestern sensibilities. Still, I can appreciate them and their routines, expectations, hopes, flaws and huge challenges. I’m a bit in awe of Smiley for all that she’s taken on here: King Lear, family dysfunction, patriarchy, feminism, ecological corruption, and the blurred lines of what things are and what they appear to be. There is so much to excavate and consider beyond the story line.
The epigraph from Meridel Le Sueur is profound and well chosen: “The body repeats the landscape.” Smiley talks about her awareness at a young age of the inter-connectivity of the land and people, of the “web” of all nature. We live in an age that increasingly distances us from the source of our food, water, air and Smiley both subtlely and dramatically portrays the price of that distancing in A Thousand Acres; we end up not only poisoning our planet, but ourselves in the process. Rose’s cancer and Ginny’s miscarriages are just two examples of the widespread consequences of the “terrible migrations of people”.
While reading this novel and examining the family dysfunction that plays such a prominent role throughout, I couldn’t help but think about how Larry’s character reminded me of Logan Roy from the television show “Succession.” Similarly, the dysfunction and ultimately negative/tense relationship that exists between the three daughters which allows their flaws to be put on display and childish acts and fights to occur is very similar to the three children in “Succession’s” plot as well. It is interesting to consider how obsessed our society is with stories that contain a powerful and tyrannical patriarch and an imploding family surrounding them; so many novels, movies, and television shows in recent years have focused on this theme. At the same time, it is interesting to consider how this contrasts with the depiction of the “perfect” American family that existed as an influential image society, particularly during the 1950s. Is Smiley’s novel attempting to make a mockery of that image of perfection? With that said, I do not think that Smiley went too far in her depiction of Larry. In fact, I think that may have been her goal all along: to take away from the majesty of King Lear in order to depict the harshness of reality that exists within society and families behind closed doors. Larry’s tumultuous relationship with his daughters is what ultimately pushes the button on the impending doom that awaits the family, aside from the return of Jess.
I agree with Eleanor that even though the end of the novel could be seen as tragic, it can also be read as a positive ending since the family unit and the farm are dead. Specifically, it is interesting to think about the toxicity that does exist either out in the open or as an underlying presence in families, and how breaking away from this toxicity can contribute to overall positive health and well-being. Ginny leaving was the best thing for her character. By staying, she would have remained engrained in the toxicity, leaving her in the same position that she was in at the beginning of the novel. Her departure and Rose’s death can be considered metaphors for the death and departure of the family unit- with Rose’s daughters, they are the rebirth of a new generation and a second chance to avoid the toxicity and the fate of those before them.
Simply put, no, I don’t think Ginny is an entirely reliable narrator. Even before the memories of abuse started to surface in the novel Ginny felt a little off to me, particularly in her relationship with Ty and her longing for Jess. The dynamic felt too much like a love triangle an author sometimes tries to force just to create drama or interest, but Smiley didn’t strike me as the type of writer to pull such a cheap twist; there is enough simmering disquiet and resentment with land and inheritance that I couldn’t grasp why a secret love interest/infidelity was relevant. As Ginny talked more to Jess and especially after the interaction with the older lady at the pool, when Ginny realizes she never really had the opportunity or chance to do something different in life, I began to question just how content she was presenting her life. Also, as an aside, whenever a narrator begins to say things like how they will always look back on something and remember specific details I begin to get suspicious, perhaps it’s my passion for the Gothic but I always get a sense of impending doom when that happens, that there is something I haven’t been told yet. All this being said I think Ginny’s slight unreliability works to the novel’s advantage, I questioned what I was reading and any biases that were presented, and ultimately I think the narration of Ginny worked perfectly for a story about family feuds and secrets.
I hate the love triangle. I hate that after everything the sisters endured as children, they are still being preyed upon and pushed around by the whims of men. I know that it’s just a book, but I just wanted affirm that I believe survivors. I believe Ginny and her incomplete memories. I believe Rose. It is hard for me to read the book through any other lens than psychologically, specifically in a trauma informed way.
One in five girls and one in twenty will be sexually assaulted before the age of sixteen. Forty percent of the abusers will be from the victim’s own family. Victims of child sexual abuse are four times more likely to form a drug addiction. Victims of child sexual abuse are four times more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. Victims of child sexual abuse are three times more likely to suffer from major depressive episodes.
Many victims of child sexual abuse go on to be abused in adult relationships. It is extremely predictable for Rose to be a victim of domestic abuse from her husband. And that is what she is experiencing. Ginny’s seemingly “passive” attitude and “childish and irrational” actions are extremely common traits of an adult survivor of child sexual abuse that has not been treated.
The book was well written. I do wish there would be a little more responsibility taken by the author of her characters. Smiley’s treatment of them felt very male and predatory. In “Tracks,” there was acknowledgement that the sexual assault of Fleur was a horrible, horrible thing. She even receives a modcom of justice in that the men die violently. In this book, “A Thousand Acres,” it was not addressed well.