Sons by Pearl S. Buck

 

Title:  Sons

Author:  Pearl S. Buck

Narrated by:  Adam Verner

Publisher: Oasis Audio

Length: Approximately 14 hours

Source: Checked out with Libby through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Do you like to read family drama books that carry the story through the generation?  If so, what books have you enjoyed in the past?  I loved the Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes which tells the story of an American family from the Revolution through the twentieth century.

This summer I read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck for my Back to the Classics book club at the Kewaunee Public Library. I learned it was part of a trilogy and I really wanted to see what happened next in the story.  I got the second book, Sons, on audiobook from the library and I greatly enjoyed it.

Sons picks up immediately after The Good Earth Ends.  In the Good Earth, Wang Lung starts as a poor farmer, but works his way up to becoming a very rich man in 19^th century China.  As he is dying, he implores his three sons not to sell the land.  At the start of Sons, he is still dying and his life is celebrated after it ends. 

All three sons are very different men.  The novel focuses primarily on the third son, Wang the Tiger.  In the first book, he had run off to be a soldier.  In this novel, he is able to get his two older brothers to fund his life as a warlord.  He has many adventures which include love, betrayal, and war.  He wants a legacy of his own through marriage and sons. 

I enjoyed the overall story and how it was very different than the first book.  I also enjoyed the exploration into Chinese culture.  The story was epic in grandeur, but I also liked how it showed that Wang Lung’s sons are following the decaying cycle of the House of Hwang before them.  I am very interested to read the third and final book in this trilogy.  Wang the Tiger’s son is also not taking the path he would like him to take.

I did miss the strong female characters that were in The Good Earth.  The female characters in Sons were not as well developed.  I did enjoy getting to see how life turned out for many of my favorite characters from The Good Earth, including Pear Blossom.

Adam Verner was a fine narrator of this audiobook.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

 

Title:  The Good Earth

Author:  Pearl S. Buck

Narrated by:  Anthony Heald

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 37 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com

 

What book has a character in it that you have a love / hate relationship with?

Tonight, for my Back to the Classics Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library, we are going to discuss Pearl S. Buck.  We all picked a Pearl S. Buck novel to read and share.  I was going to read Sons, which is the second book in the House of Earth Trilogy.  Then I realized it had been twenty or so years since I read the first book in the Trilogy, The Good Earth, and I didn’t remember much from it.  Therefore, I read The Good Earth instead.  The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel for 1932 and was the best-selling novel for both 1931 and 1932 in the United States.  Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.  Buck grew up in China as the child of missionaries and wrote the novel while she lived in China using her firsthand observations of village life.  This novel brought a story of rural China to many people in the United States for the first time.

Wang Lung is a farmer in a rural village.  The novel starts the day of his marriage.  He is going to marry a woman named O-Lan who had been a slave at the House of Hwang.  Wang Lung and O-Lan have a good partnership with both working hard on the land.  Things are going well when a famine strikes.  They work through the hardship to become a wealthy family.

I liked the characters in this novel and the picture it captures of a rural village of China at an indetermined time (there are trains – late nineteenth or early twentieth century).  I like how it goes through about forty years of this family’s story.  I also enjoyed that the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger, so I do want to continue this trilogy by reading Sons. 

The love of the land was a constant theme through this story. I also liked how it showed that once the person that did all of the hard work has accumulated wealth, their descendants can find themselves destroying the family through their vices.  This was the end of the House of Hwang, and Wang Lung’s sons seem to be going down that same pathway.

The famine was brutal and devastating.  It was terrible to realize this happened several times during the farmers lifetime and they had no safety net to fall back on.

 The real hero of this story was O-Lan, and I felt very conflicted about Wang Lung.  He treats O-Lan terribly.  When O-Lan gives birth and then immediately goes out to the field to work. Wang Lung won’t even let her have a bit of time to rest, which did not endear him to me.  O-Lan is always selflessly working for her family only to be replaced by a concubine.  O-Lan has two small pearls that are her only special treasure.  Wang Lung takes them from her and makes them into earrings for his concubine.   O-Lan dies of cancer and Wang Lung is sad at the time but can’t help thinking about how unattractive he finds her.  I just wanted to smack Wang Lung.   He seemed to have problems with not being able to control himself around the ladies.  The other part I had a problem with was when his son told him that he liked a slave that they owned.  Then the 70-year Wang Lung decides that the 16-year-old slave is pretty attractive and takes her for his own concubine.  He then wonders why his son runs away.  I would run away too Wang Lung.    Thinking about it, Wang Lung is a good three-dimensional character with both good and bad traits.

Anthony Heald was a good narrator of this audiobook.  I enjoyed listening to it and found the story to be very engaging on my drives.

Laura’s Favorite Classics (Part 1 from Austen to Dreiser)

What defines a classic? Is it something that a stodgy college English professor tells you to read? Is it something that you read and enjoy? Is it a book that taught you a lesson? Is it science fiction, a graphic novel, a children’s novel? Is it a book that is often read and cited by other people and pop culture in general? I think a classic novel is all of these things. I loved my high school and college literature classics, but used them as a spring board for where to start in my search for great novels to read. Going through the lists of “classic” novels has made me think about my own personal library and favorite classics. I’ve also had several friends tell me that they are going to read “the classics.” This is part one of my favorite classic novels.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Angelou writes a tale that is funny at times and heartbreaking at others. Overall it’s unforgettable.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Little Women was one of my favorite books as a young girl. I just reread it a couple of years ago and loved it again. While there are “moral lesson” parts that drag a bit, the overall love for family in the novel, and engaging stories of home life make this novel a classic.

Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion by Jane Austen. All six of Austen’s novels are excellent and must reads. I’d start with Pride and Prejudice. I love the humor and the social commentary. Persuasion is my other favorite. It is a tale of true love and how far we will let our friends “persuade” us against our better judgment.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. The Bronte sisters and their passionate tales are must reads. Anne often gets short shrift, but I feel her novels are as good as her sisters. While all are passionate tales, they can also be taken as stories that bring to light the position of women in Victorian society. Each of these novels is my favorite by each sister (I’ve read all of their collected works).

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Buck was a very popular author in the early part of the twentieth century. Reading her novels of life in China and the eternal questions of love and life as a woman, it is easy to see why.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. This riveting tale of murder in rural Kansas is a classic. This book was the start of literary true crime narratives.

Death Comes for the Archbishop, O Pioneers, and My Antonia by Willa Cather. Cather is one of my favorite novelists. Skip her Pulitzer Prize winning novel (One of Ours) and opt instead for three of her masterpieces. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a wonderful story set in the Southwest that is full of descriptive narrative and wonderful characters. O Pioneers and My Antonia are unforgettable tales of the hardships of life as a pioneer in Nebraska.

David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I would like to read all of Charles Dickens novels before I die. These three are my favorites of what I’ve read so far. I love Dickens detailed descriptions and quirky characters. David Copperfield is his most autobiographical tale, A Tale of Two Cities is a tear-jerker that is one of his most quotable books, and A Christmas Carol is beloved and known by all.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy while I was in college (on my own – although I would have loved to discuss it in a class). It had a slow start, but once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down. It was only a few years after the OJ trial when I read it and I found that not much had changed in the 70 years since the book was written. Not only is it a love story gone wrong, but it’s also the story of a boy trying to get ahead in the world, of a system that doesn’t care for the individual, and public officials who only care about getting ahead and not about the people they serve. This book changed the way I feel about capital punishment. It is not a quick read, but by the end I cared enough that I cried.

I hope to continue posting on this subject in the future. This is my look through my first book case… I’ll do bookcase number two next!

As I look back through this list, I am struck by the fact that I didn't read any of these books for a high school or college literature class. The only one I did read in college, Pride and Prejudice, I had read on my own before and after the class. I think a lot of it was that for some reason in high school and college, not too many women authors made it onto the "great novels" list that we read. In fact, P&P was in my British novel class and the only book we read by a woman. My American novel class had not one book by a woman. What do you think about that? Why do teachers and professors (or at least mine) usually pick men authors?

I would love to keep discussing this in the comments section. How do you feel about these classics overall? What are your favorite classics?