A Thousand Acres

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket 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

UK Kirkus 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)

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