Remembering Stegner

I recently read an essay by Wendell Berry in which he discusses and praises Wallace Stegner's first novel, Remembering Laughter, published in 1937. It is very different from Crossing to Safety and Angle of Repose, both of which I read years ago. 

The novel centers around Margaret and Alec Stuart, a prosperous couple living on a farm in Iowa.  When Margaret's younger sister Elspeth arrives to live with them, a chain of events are set in motion that ultimately leads all three of them to live separate and unfulfilled lives.   This was a very beautiful book - exquisite writing, crystal clear scenes, a brilliant capturing of unspoken grief, hurt, and love.  This is an early contender for one of my favorite books of 2016. 

The novel reminds me of other books featuring love triangles, such as One Foot in Eden and Ethan Frome - might be interesting to read these books back to back.  All are brilliantly written!  

Shakespearean Tragedy Amidst the Corn Fields

Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991.  Her novel takes place in 1979 and centers around the Cook family and their farm in Iowa.  Larry Cook, the patriarch, decides to retire from farming and leave the land to his three daughters.  The youngest and the only one who no longer lives on the farm but instead became a lawyer and lives in Des Moine, expresses her concern about this to her father, and he impulsively decides to cut her out of the deal.  The story focuses largely around the other two sisters, Ginny and Rose, and their struggles in their marriages, with each other, with Rose's cancer, and with the sexual abuse inflicted upon them by their father.  It's a bleak tale, in fact there are very few happy scenes or moments.  Nonetheless, it is a powerful story that moves along quickly, and I understand is a modern day version of King Lear.