Blurb

Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck’s epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Oprah Book Club selection about a vanished China and one family’s shifting fortunes.

Though more than seventy years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. In The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck paints an indelible portrait of China in the 1920s, when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-Lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century.

Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel—beloved by millions of readers—is a universal tale of an ordinary family caught in the tide of history.

Review

This book was okay enough. I would say it was similar in vein to The Covenant of Water, which I also read earlier this year. The Good Earth was tighter in scope, covering just on generation, which I think helped me get through it. The strength of the book is not in the character development or growth, or really even in any drama at all. To me, it ready as a morality tale of the perils of the chase and then accumulation of wealth and influence. The rise and fall of the previous, and not learning their lessons and instead learning them all over from your mistakes. Some lessons can be taught and some lessons have to be learned. This book illustrates that.