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2 thoughts on “Reader Comments”
I loved this book. I loved most of all the descriptions of the earth and I loved her characters, who were portrayed magnificently, I thought, through their large actions and their smaller mannerisms. Stockman went deep, finding time to bring her picture into focus again and again without being redundant. For me, this was an essential part of the story in that Time was needed to sense everyday nuances of life in the Kansas farmland. Stockman took that time to bring the reader into this special and different world, finely detailing everything from car mechanics, farm equipment, and harvesting methods to descriptions of the landscape. By permeating her story with this truly awesome focus, she presented a wonderful balance between objectivity, poetry, and storyline. For me, the story she told was both bold and brilliant.
I had the great pleasure of reading Kirsten Stockman’s “Remembered Earth” and “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck, back to back. Both books are about farming families, one family in China in the 1890s and the other in Kansas in the 1990s. The books have a similar cadence and both have that uncanny ability to transport the reader, instantly, into another world. “The Good Earth” was written in 1932 but it is timeless and will continue to be a classic down the generations.
Stockman’s novel, her first, was my pick for favorite read of 2016. It helped that “Remembered Earth” is about a young 19 year-old girl who turns to farming, and that I was bitten by the farming bug at that same age. The heroine of the story, Anna, is taciturn and stubborn with a rich interior landscape that Aunt Bea, her guardian, is hardly aware of, but we, as readers, are privy to. It is a coming-of-age story, it is a love story, it is the story of a girl who must find her own path.
I loved this book. I loved most of all the descriptions of the earth and I loved her characters, who were portrayed magnificently, I thought, through their large actions and their smaller mannerisms. Stockman went deep, finding time to bring her picture into focus again and again without being redundant. For me, this was an essential part of the story in that Time was needed to sense everyday nuances of life in the Kansas farmland. Stockman took that time to bring the reader into this special and different world, finely detailing everything from car mechanics, farm equipment, and harvesting methods to descriptions of the landscape. By permeating her story with this truly awesome focus, she presented a wonderful balance between objectivity, poetry, and storyline. For me, the story she told was both bold and brilliant.
I had the great pleasure of reading Kirsten Stockman’s “Remembered Earth” and “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck, back to back. Both books are about farming families, one family in China in the 1890s and the other in Kansas in the 1990s. The books have a similar cadence and both have that uncanny ability to transport the reader, instantly, into another world. “The Good Earth” was written in 1932 but it is timeless and will continue to be a classic down the generations.
Stockman’s novel, her first, was my pick for favorite read of 2016. It helped that “Remembered Earth” is about a young 19 year-old girl who turns to farming, and that I was bitten by the farming bug at that same age. The heroine of the story, Anna, is taciturn and stubborn with a rich interior landscape that Aunt Bea, her guardian, is hardly aware of, but we, as readers, are privy to. It is a coming-of-age story, it is a love story, it is the story of a girl who must find her own path.