This is the story of a poor farmer who married a slave girl. Buck was the daughter of missionaries in the late 1890s through the early 1900s, and so I don’t doubt she describes the average life of a poor man in China, and the role of women. Perhaps it is so striking to know that the book may accurately describe the treatment of women then. The farmer, a hard worker with immense love of the earth, becomes prosperous thanks to his wife’s stoic selfless sacrifices she makes to work the fields beside her husband up to the moments of giving birth. She was endlessly giving of herself. But the farmer only belatedly learned her value only after breaking her heart for years. I was hoping this was a story of love and sacrifice, but it became a story of what happens when a hardworking-successful man cares more about what others think than the one who saved him in the first place. ( )

Like poetry ( )

The Good Earth Trilogy Book 1 of 3, a classic Chinese fable, originally published in 1931.

This novel shows lessons in life of what becomes of hardworkers and what becomes of idleness. It also shows the complications and problems that come along with the riches when you lose and forget your roots of where you came from. The author who had lived the first 40 years of her life in China before returning to the States to live near her daughter, was actually banned from China in 1979, a year before her death, from ever returning to China because of this book. They didn't appreciate the light she cast on their poor peasant farmers and on little girls in front of the world. But, inspite of being banned, she was still considered a friend of the Chinese.

As Wang Lung moves up in class structure, from becoming a poor, hard-working peasant farmer who loves and honors the land that feeds him and his family, to a very wealthy landowner who rents out his land to other poor peasant farmers, he gets all caught up in the rich man's sins and wastefulness in life, bringing in a multitude of anxiety and complications into his life.

You begin to see from Wang's father, to his sons, how the more each generation is removed from its dependency on the earth and are able to spend more time in wasteful idleness, to now having plenty of money and plenty of food provided by the hard work due to the father, how life can begin to unravel. It is greed of instant money and not understanding that life, and even survival in hard times, comes from the earth, and from hard work, not in silver or gold coins, that will eventually send it all spiralling down. You can see how if he had kept life simple, with clean good living, the family may not have had all the problems upon them.

His sons just didn't appreciate the land like their father, and the last scene left you hanging to read the next book. The richest man in town now, Wang, old and dying, returns to his old homestead to die. The two oldest sons were standing in their fathers field talking about how to divide the sell of their family's original piece of land when their father walks up behind them and over hears this conversation. He begins to cry and hollar that the land is the only way to survive. To calm him the sons both start saying, Oh we aren't going to sell the land, Father. Don't worry! We aren't going to sell...yet smiling behind his back....Part 2, "Sons".
----------
MOVIE: "The Good Earth" came out in 1937, starring Louise Rainer as O-Lan and Paul Muni as Wang Lung. ( )

No review - read too long ago to recall. ( )

One of the many that was left unread on The Modern Library list. A story of a man and his family, and their village life, in the first part of the 20th century in China. Told in a simple, straight forward, almost biblical sounding way. The characters don't speak much. Story elements address social class and family conflict. Won every award there was in the 1930's. I don't think I've seen the movie. ( )