Saturday, April 21, 2012
The Good Earth
The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided(1935).- taken from Wikipedia
This book has been in my little book of "to reads" for quite awhile. I really had no idea what the book was about. For some reason I thought it was about people during the great depression. I was totally off. This novel whose main character Wang Lung is a Chinese farmer and is the story of his life- starting in young adulthood and until the end of his life. I thought it was a very easy read and flowed very nicely. The story looks at so many topics of a real life: marriage, bringing children into the world, poverty, famine, work, leisure/pleasure, and death. I was unaware that this was the first book in a trilogy and I may be reading the other two soon. I am amazed that the author is not Chinese, but American, however, she lived many of her early years in China with her missionary parents. So she pulled from that experience her ability to write about these Chinese people, their customs, and their character. I really did enjoy this book and if you are up for a novel which reads somewhat like an epic this one is for you.