Recent Reviews
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
In 1992, Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize for her astonishing novel ‘A Thousand Acres.’ Rereading this novel heightened my admiration for this literary gem. Smiley’s ability to inhabit her characters is deep and nuanced. The book is tragic, but Smiley’s psychological acumen is remarkable. The story’s themes touch on aging, power, repression, competition, and control, but mostly the emotional cost of silence within a family and community.
Shakespeare’s King Lear provides the plot’s scaffolding. Larry Cook is an aging widowed patriarch of a respected farming family in Cabot, Iowa. Rather impulsively, he divides his land between his three grown daughters, Rose, Ginny, and Caroline. But when the youngest daughter Caroline questions his decision, he deletes her from the deal. Larry’s decision is rash and may indicate his emerging dementia. His choice catalyzes the dramatic eruption in the Cook family dynamic. Tragedy ensues.
Narrated by the middle daughter Ginny, the story shows the strain of farming the land and raising livestock. Decisions have life-and-death implications that empower and entangle families. Ginny, Rose, and their husbands struggle to maintain the Cook Family’s 1000-acre farm. Rose and Ginny glorify the family’s long history and traditions while feeling trapped in their roles and duties required to keep the farm going. They revere and resent their way of life and the small town where everyone knows each other’s business.
Ginny and Rose also continue to take care of their cantankerous and cruel father, who expects everyone he encounters to defer to him. Unlike the other characters, the origins of Larry Cook’s behavior are unclear. Smiley might say that thousands of years of patriarchy would best describe his callous conduct. He manipulates and denigrates his friends and family because he can; it is as if he is the king of Cabot, Iowa. Meanwhile, the youngest Cook sister, Caroline, has left the farm and is an attorney in Des Moines. Caroline harbors resentment toward her older sisters and blames them for her exclusion from the transaction. She knows nothing of what Rose and Ginny endured to protect her from their father.
Ginny says, “The wisdom of the plains. Pretend nothing happened.” But old wounds appear as Rose, Ginny, and their husbands make decisions about the farm. Repressed emotions begin to leak, and eventually, the characters will give voice to their feelings. The results of years of silence are like a tornado ripping the Cook family members from their foundations. By the novel’s end, the full tragedy of these repressed lives becomes clear.
And though ‘A Thousand Acres’ might sound depressing, it is not. Smiley’s ability to create complex characters and write precisely about their family dynamics is inspiring. Readers can gain insight into the human condition. Isn’t that the purpose of a well-written novel? 5/5
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this short literary gem in 1892. An active feminist and non-fiction writer, Gilman’s many other books addressed the harmful effects of women’s societal and legal subservience. She writes that without the autonomy to make decisions about their lives, women suffer under the weight of their subjugation. In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ Gilman narrows her focus to the sexual politics of marriage.
A woman, whose name is unknown, and her husband, John, travel to the country so that she might rest after the birth of their child. John is a doctor and believes his wife has a “temporary nervous depression – slight hysterical tendency.” Her husband is not cruel but arrogant, condescending, and distant. He doesn’t see his wife as a person. The woman is exhausted trying to be what he wants her to be, “I take pains to control myself- before him, at least, and that makes me very tired.” In short order, this novel indicts the sexism of marriage and the condescension of doctors.
This woman narrator has tried to conform to the norms of her day - keeping house and bearing children. She wants to write, but her husband believes it will hinder her recovery. But without autonomy, her sanity is at stake. Her soul is crushed by the realization that societal norms, including her marriage, imprison her. No spoiler, but the yellow wallpaper and her emotional stability intertwine.
Women’s lives have improved since 1892. Women can vote, own property, attend college, pursue a career, and travel alone. Women and men marry for love and embrace equality. Women certainly have more independence. And yet, women’s rights are still under assault. The ERA has yet to pass, the Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade, and contraception is on the chopping block.
When I read this book 40 years ago, I thought it was a historical glimpse into the treatment of women at the end of the 19th century. Rereading it, I am saddened that some people in power want to return to a time when men control women, even in marriage.
Gilman’s ability to convey so much in one short story speaks to her skill. ‘The Yellow Paper’ illuminates the cruel cost of women’s oppression and is a reminder that the struggle continues. 4/5
A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti
Jai Chakrabarti’s impressive debut novel, ‘A Play for The End of the World’ speaks to the power of art and literature to console and give strength. Taking place over decades and set in Bengal, Warsaw, and NYC, Chakrabarti’s finely drawn characters reveal his understanding of guilt’s heavy burden. The book would have benefitted from a narrower scope. Nonetheless, Chakrabarti evocatively speaks of existential themes that transcend ethnicities and religions.
The prologue’s date is July 18, 1942—the place: an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. True to history, Dr. Janusz Korczak (Pan Doktor), a Polish-Jewish educator, staged a play casting orphans as the actors. The play Dak Ghar (translated as The Post Office) was written in 1911 by Indian Nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. The play’s plot revolves around a dying child who is quarantined. He experiences life by living imaginatively, a perfect topic for the Warsaw ghetto.
In Part 1 of the novel, we meet Jaryk Smith. The year is 1972, and Jaryk has left his girlfriend Lucy in NYC to travel to Calcutta, India, where his best friend Misha has died under mysterious circumstances. Misha and Jaryk were friends when they were children in the Warsaw ghetto. It was before the Nazi’s horrific deportations began that Jaryk was assigned the lead role in Tagore’s play Dak Ghar. Soon after, Jaryk escapes the death train traveling to Treblinka. After a few years, he makes his way to New York City.
Over the next three decades, he cobbles together a life making money as a bookkeeper at a synagogue. He often spent time with his old friend Misha. Jaryk is plagued by guilt, knowing that the Pan Doktor and the other orphans perished at Treblinka. Given his guilt and self-loathing that he escaped, his ability to sustain a relationship with his girlfriend is in doubt. “What he’d wanted to tell her-what he hoped she now understood-was that he’d left his only family, everything he loved in this world” when he jumped off that train. He is not sure he can psychologically recover from all he experienced.
His gratitude to Pan Doktor for staging the play during the cruel circumstance has stayed with him. He says, “I remember what that play did for us. It made our days bearable, all that ghetto heat, all that feeling that reminded us just how unloved we were any time we stepped a foot from Pan Doktor’s house. We knew we were meant for death.”
While in eastern India, Jaryk learns that the local politics are turning violent and ‘Dak Ghar’ will be performed again. He slowly comes to terms with his choice so long ago and allows himself to feel the power of love and even a shred of hope. Chakrabarti’s ambitious novel reminds us that telling stories can redeem and heal us all. 4.5/5
