This is an engaging family history, and the way an unsympathetic character mellows is well done. However, the fact that Buck's parents were missionaries is demonstrated by a dated writing style that is reminiscent of the King James Bible. Although not preachy in content, I found the tone increasingly incongruous and irritating, though I was still keen to read to the end of the story.

It tells of Wang Lung's life from young adulthood till old age, in rural China before the second world war, though the protagonists are only vaguely aware of distant upheavals. He is a peasant farmer, in need of a wife, but without the means to be an attractive prospect. He marries an unattractive slave from the big Hwang house (local landowners) and it is one of his best decisions: O-lan is skilled, shrewd, very hardworking, loyal and deferential. He becomes proud of her, and this raises his ambitions. As they have some success, the permeation of the Biblical language makes the reader expect a fall.

As the title implies, land is at the heart of the book and is Wang Lung's true love. He is a farmer who lives for the land and from it, and whatever the ups and downs of his life, he never loses that deep bond. He is nourished by it in every sense and is lost when he is unable to tend it, whether through drought, flood or old age. "It was true that all their lives depended upon the earth." When he has a little silver, he is conscious that it came from the earth so naturally having more land is "the desire of his heart". He even uses earth to hide silver that is not invested in land. "It is the end of a family - when they begin to sell the land. No one can rob you of land." (Sadly untrue in Communist China.) Land is also his escape, "as was his wont when the affairs of his house became too deep for him, he took a hoe and he went to his fields".

Wang Lung is a man of his time and place, so he is autocratic and sees girls as a worthless burden or commodity - and yet he does love his disabled daughter ("poor fool") and, sometimes, care for his wife (though he never fully appreciates all that she does for him). As the book progresses, Buck is keen to contrast Wang Lung's darker side with his gentler one, "he was a man so soft-hearted that he could not kill an ox" and who buys a starving child as a slave, but pets and protects her. Such instances are all the more poignant because they seem slightly transgressive in his world.

Although Wang Lung's love of the land never diminishes, in later sections, the quest for domestic peace within his extended family is a more significant driving force than the quest for land, yet this doesn't derail the narrative or change the characters in an implausible way.

The other, far odder, change in the final third or so is that suddenly most of the characters develop the habit of prefacing almost everything they said with "Well, and". I haven't run a word count, but it suddenly became very noticeable, and remained so, in a way that was distracting and increasingly annoying.


Biblical notes: Here is a passage that sounded very like a New Testament parable:
"'Sell me the little parcel of land that you have and leave your lonely house and come into my house and help me with my land.' And X did this and was glad to do so."
In another section, sex with a prostitute proves unfulfilling in a way that was very reminiscent of Jesus telling the woman at the well that if she drank the water of life she would not be thirsty again.

While I did find this an interesting account of peasant life in China, I failed to understand the overall point of the story. Pearl S. Buck's parents were missionaries in China, and Pearl herself spent a good portion of her life there. I am certain that this first hand experience gave her an extraordinarily true glimpse of the every day life of these people which afforded her the opportunity of writing this book.

I would most likely have rated this book higher if I had liked the characters. O-lan, the first daughter (a.k.a. the fool - Did the book ever mention her name?), and Pear Blossom were the only characters I really liked. I also enjoyed the third son and would liked to have learned more about what happened to him after he left his father's house. Since the second book is titled Sons, I am hoping that it talks more about him and have added it to my want to read shelf.

My heart really ached for O-lan in this book. Although I know that geishas were, and may still be, a normal part of Chinese culture, I couldn't understand how Wang Lung could love O-lan so little. Everything he had was because of her and the help she gave him. I was cooking dinner when I was listening about Wang Lung making O-lan prepare the house for the arrival of Lotus. I'm not so sure that it was a good thing that I was holding a knife at that moment. I was so furious! Those potatoes really got chopped that night. Lol! Even on her death bed Wang Lung couldn't love O-lan because she wasn't pretty. Is that really all that was important to him? O-lan worked in the fields for you immediately after giving birth! She gave you children, raised them, and provided for you when you were on the verge of starving to death. And all you can think of is how small Lotus's feet are and how badly you want to sleep with her? Wang Lung sickened me. He deserved so much worse than he got in the end.

I read "The Good Earth" for the second time while we lived in a remote area of the Zambian bush. I had read it in highschool and found it more boring than Silas Marner. I had by then lived among peasants scratching the soil for a meager living in several countries and it meant more to me on the second reading, especially having just finished Jan Myrdahl's Report from a Chinese Village written in the 50's. No doubt, Buck's Good Earth is a classic work and deserves to be read.

I've heard of this book for years & am glad I finally got around to listening to it. Not bad, although not quite what I was expecting. To start, it's told in the fashion of a fable, even though it's set around 1900 in China. The narrative was simplified to exclude many details, the most glaring of which is there seems to be no taxation or government oversight of any sort. That detracted from the attempts at realism.

I really liked & empathized with the love of & importance of the land. Being born on a farm, fleeing it as soon as I could, yet eventually returning & treating it in a more loving fashion than most, I live this central premise. Everything else comes & goes, but my land is the foundation of my life. Not necessarily more important than family, but a permanent part of it. It doesn't have to be the same patch, just some that is mine to live with & care for.

I didn't find Wang Lung's characterization entirely believable, but generally so. He was too much of a push over in many instances. A man who grew as much as he did has more spine, IMO. I liked him, though. I know he was an ass at times, but generally he was one hell of a good man. (See the comments below, #4-6, for my opinion on his treatment of O-lan.)

I didn't care much for a couple of things toward the end. I thought they detracted from the novel. Specifically,  the nephew returning as a soldier & his last fling with the little girl. Neither added anything to the overall plot, just distracted from the message of 'rags-riches-rags' in a few generations OR his family being the same as the previous occupants of the house. Still, they weren't awful. They just dragged out the novel a bit more.

Overall, it's a darn good book in many ways. While the customs were a bit different, it showed that people are people all over. Race has nothing to do with it & I suppose that was part of its purpose given the general opinions when it was written.

Nice touches on the struggles and resilience required of rural families in early 20th century China, but overall all this saga was too much of a morality tale for me. We follow a poor farmer, Wang Lung, as he is steered by his elderly father to buy a slave for a wife, O-Lan. She is a quiet saint and applies her hard work to help them make a success of their farm and delivery several children by herself.

The following schematic plot summary can benefit the potential reader with an idea of the book’s content (and some may find spoilerish). Hard times from drought leads Wang to take his growing family to a large city to avoid starvation. They eke out a living through their begging and his work driving a rickshaw. Eventually, a windfall brings him back, where greed for land and financial security becomes an obsession. That drive helps them sustain the economic hardships from floods, but his growing wealth begins to corrupt him and lead him to neglect his loyal wife in favor of a prostitute.

In the process of this tale, the book illustrates the temptations and just rewards for most of the sins in the Old Testament. Despite Buck coming from a missionary family, there are no obvious elements of a Christian theme or religion in general. And despite casting the wealthy class in a poor light, I detect no signs of this story being some socialist paen of the virtues of the proletariat. Instead, it seems a straightforward honoring of the virtues of respect and nurturing of the land that feeds us. Wang can be a pig when he gets some wealth, but like good wine he improves with age. I didn’t get the same level of uplift from emotional connection to the land like I get from Willa Cather or the depth of empathetic rendering of the struggles of the downtrodden like Steinbeck pulls off.

this book Followed the life of Wang Lung, a Farmer in China. the story ordinary as it is is so touching and a lot of people can relate to it.
I loved it and I think this book is one everyone must read.

تعرفتُ عليها من خلال أحد مقاطع
Ted Talks
حيث ذُكر اسم الرواية على لسان المتحدثة.

رواية لا أظنّها تُنسى؛ واقعيّة ويكمن جمالها في واقعيّتها!
ستترك بك أثر لا محالة.

Dopo la piacevolissima sorpresa di "Vento dell' est, vento dell' Ovest", che mi aveva fatto conoscere per puro caso la Buck su una bancarella di libri usati, con questo "la buona terra" affronto quello che viene da tutto considerato come il classico indiscusso della premio Nobel americana.

Libro eccellente intendiamoci, pensavo meglio. Nel senso che il libro è scritto comunque in modo spettacolare (esattamente come Vento dell' est, vento dell' Ovest) soprattutto se si pensa che siamo nel 1931, ma questa volta non sono riuscito ad avere quel senso di scoperta che ogni occidentale dovrebbe avere quando si accosta al lontano oriente ed alla sua storia. Facendo la conoscenza pgina dopo pagina di Wang Lung e della sua famiglia, ho avuto più di una volta la sensazione di trovarmi davanti molto più ad una Cina americanizzata e non reale che non al dramma ma anche ai forti legami valoriali della campagna di quel paese grande e misterioso.

Non mi ha stupito per niente la scoperta che la Buck ha conosciuto il continente che è poi diventato la sua sorgente di ispirazione in quanto moglie di un missionario presbiteriano. La morale del duro lavoro, ils ignificato morale dato al patrimonio ed alla ricchezza, la celebrazone di una vita povera e semplice, sono caratteristiche troppo fortemente caratterizzanti dei pilgrim fathers per non destare sospetti.

Manc qui quella cognizione del dolore che si trovano in opere egualmente biografiche di autori cinesi, come Jung Chang o Mo Yan.
Conseguentemente pur restando un grande libro, credo che "La buona terra" non riesca a rendere completamente invisibile quel velo interpretativo occidentalizzante del quale, forse, uno scrittore dell' ovest che parli dell'est non può fare a meno.

E' una difficoltà che "vento dell' est, vento dell' ovest" non deve affrontare, perchè dichiaratamente parla di un incontro. Ed è per questo che è proprio quest' ultimo romanzo quello che mi permetto di consigliare per cominciare a leggere una scrittrice tanto di valore quanto poco conosciuta.

Books like this are routinely read by high school students as a literature assignment. I went to a fairly good liberal arts high school and this is how I was introduced to the great classics of literature. Unfortunately, all of these books were read with the understanding that there would be an exam afterwards and I would be required to reveal my understanding of the book for the evaluation of a teacher. While I actually enjoyed reading some of these books the experience was seriously diminished by the onus of having to perform for the approval of another whose opinion I needed to divine and repeat if I wanted a good grade. Can you imagine a high school student telling a lit. teacher that a particular classic was dull as dishwater and the plot was beyond silly? No? Me either. Too bad I guess. So with that said I will state that I am really glad that this book was never part of any required reading list in my academic experience. What a joy to read this book unencumbered by the intimidation of needing to be examined on its meaning. I was able to just transport myself to China and observe the life of this Chinese family in what I can only guess was the late 19th or early 20th century. Their life was the essence of simple poverty and constant struggle for the basic necessities of survival. The story is classic in its arc and the book a delight to read.

Understanding that this book was published in the 1930's it is easy to see why it became so popular. At the time of publication the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were in full force and fury. The people in this country could well identify with the struggles of Wang Lung and his family regardless that their plight was being experienced thousands of miles away in China and at another time as their struggle is timeless and known in every culture of the world. Buck lays out a classic rags to riches story followed by the corruption of wealth and lives of ease. In this story the only constant is the land which is forever while the lives supported by the land are temporary and repeat cycles of existence that flourish with the understanding of the land's importance. It's a great book and well worth reading and maybe more than once.

This is a very unsentimental look at life in rural, pre-revolutionary China. Though she is American, Pearl Buck maintains an objective stance regarding Chinese cultural practices from the time, including foot-binding and the enslavement of women. Yet one encounters the unspoken torment of countless generations of women. The wife O-Lan is particularly well-drawn; in her rough-hewn features and ox-like devotion to the earth, the reader intimately feels her tragic solitude.

In Chinese society, she knows that she is "too ugly to be loved," and her husband seems to love Lotus, the live-in waif-prostitute, more than her-- despite her thankless contributions to the family's health and home. The scenes of famine and desperation strike epic chords of Steinbeck and Rohinton Mistry, the great author of "A Fine Balance," about Indian untouchables. As in all great novels, the setting of jade-green rice fields and gilded wheat becomes a living character with its own destiny and course--at times cruel; other times, benevolent.

I felt so sorry for his poor wife.

No reflexion on my high school English teacher, but I have to say that after reading The Good Earth now, 45+ years later as a (very) mature adult, I am so much more appreciative of the book than I was as a teenager. As I remembered it back then, the story was all about poor, heroic, homely O-Lan and mean, selfish Wang Lung, her husband. I remembered O-Lan working in the fields with her husband, and then giving birth to her children, alone in her room. Not much more than that. But now, thanks to a very different point of reference ("real life"), I found that it's actually a rich and touching tale of family, devotion, betrayal, extreme poverty, greed, sacrifice, resilience, and how financial success can change everything, and not always in a good way. The overriding love of Wang Lung's life was always the land, not O-Lan, not Lotus, not his family. He was a good, hard-working man, although flawed like everyone else. There were heroes, villains, victims, and ungrateful children. And although the book's setting was Pre-Revolution China, it's a universal tale that can be reworked for anyplace in the world, and probably already has been. Ms. Buck's writing was a bit formal and stilted at times by today's standards and for my taste, but it's obvious to me why this novel has stood the test of time and is so admired. I'm very glad to have revisited this book again after all these years. 4 1/2 stars.