Customer Reviews

Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I found this book immensely entertaining. I am delighted that Mr. Korda found the people in the country as enigmatic as I am sure they found him over the years. Pigs as pets, a Porsche and a monstrosity of a building for the horses could only have had the locals in stitches down at Cady's Bar. Mr. Korba is to be commended for the way he adeptly sidesteps local gossip and remains focused on those who work for him, creating a tale of country cunning written by the very man signing the checks. That his humor fails in certain parts of the text is understandable given the differences between the people of the town and himself. His irritation seems to increase every time someone refers to his house as the "old Hewlett farm" or the "old Hubner place". This is common in small towns, but probably not familiar to Mr. Korda. One need only to ask directions from a local to find out they call roads by names on signs long ago taken down and designate turns by where so and so kept his cows a while back. In his irritation, the author confuses the story therefore; I will take the liberty of clarifying it. First, the house Mr. Korda bought was never part of the Hewlett farm. The Hewlett family now owns a much larger farm in Northwestern New York. There are no trailers. In Pleasant Valley the "old Hewlett" farmhouse is the house two doors down from the "old Hubner place", or if Mr. Korda insists the "Korda place". The book alternates between disdain for the people of the town and subsequently trying to impress them. The author fluctuates between fencing them out, and waiting for them enamored of him. They are a tough crowd. As a former local, born and raised in Pleasant Valley, but living closer to the city, I can agree without hesitation that it is no Walden pond. It is full of people. People who do not post their land, or drive Porsches without waving, or chat about themselves at length. Thoreau did not buy Walden pond; he left it, undisturbed. Loons, ants and all.

...who finished this book thinking that Korda was a pompus twit with more money than good manners. His condesending observations of his neighbors left me irritated time and time again, as well as the name dropping and implied superiority of himself vs. the "lowly" country folk.
If you discounted the snide comments, the first part of the book was pretty interesting. However, the last 4 chapters became rambling and could have been condensed into one chapter.
It was great reading the reviews from the Hewitts on this forum. It made me remember that there are ALWAYS two sides to every story, and that Mr. Korda took some literary license in his book.

The New York Times sparked my interest in this age-old literary subject--city dweller finds renewal in the country, with all the highs and lows and informative or interesting tidbits of making the transition. My interest in this subject goes all they way back to Crazy-White-Man (Sha-ga-na-she Wa-du-kee) by Richard Morenus, published by Rand McNally and Co. in 1952. So, I am not a newcomer to the genre. In fact, my wife and I recently put the finishing touches on a 3-year restoration of a century-old lodge on an island in Maine. Therefore, I do not place a low rating on this book without careful thought and regret. Usually, one thinks that if the Times views a book as newsworthy, it will be a bit special. In this case, I think it is Korda's professional connections in the publishing industry (and not the merit of the piece) which earned the publicity, and possibly the initial printing. Korda would like the reader to believe that he is about to introduce them to the quaint, evolutionary transition of a (very, very sophisticated) city couple and a country estate from strangers to partners, each helped to reach the synergy by a cast of colorful local citizens with special skills and memorable characters. The book fails, however, to continue its early, promising pace, and eventually trails off into a series of random recollections, failing to develop the supporting characters in favor of repetitive, gratuitous references to Mrs. Korda's achievements as a horsewoman, and Mr. Korda's irrelevant pride in having read the classics. In the end, the country life which Mr. Korda portrays seems as shallow and trite as the city life he almost left behind. He is more often a disconnected observer than influential participant, and leaves the reader wondering whether, for the Kordas, the country really matters.

If you have read A Year In Provence or any other of the many books of this genre you already know what this book is about.

Instead of laughing at the locals and the countryisms I was laughing at the author's unbelievable name dropping and snobbery. His every extravagant expenditure is detailed in order for you to be sure of his status in the community. The other things he thinks will interest you are his showbiz friends, his English ancestry, his horsey activities, etc. In fact as I read the book I found myself betting when the next boastful statement would pop up. However, I would say it's a good read if only for those reasons.

The author can be happy now in the knowledge that all of neighbors now what a grand person they have in their midst.

My name is Kathy Hewlett, wife of a family member who use to live on "the old Hewlett farm". Mr. Korda must be mistaken. As I read page 22 of Mr. Korda's book I have to disagree with his reference to "but the Hewlett's had long since fallen on hard times, either through improvidence or bad farming, sold off their land in bits and pieces until there was nothing left, and now lived in trailers scattered all over the local country-side."

Some of the Hewlett's are alive and well in upstate NY living on a thriving dairy farm in Otego, NY. The farm was not sold off bit by bit, it was sold to purchase the upstate NY farm. The owners of "The Hewlett Farm" since then have sold it bit by bit.

I would be pleased to hear from Mr. Korda to learn more about where he researched his project.

Thank you.

I love books of the city-dweller-moves-to-country variety, provided they are interesting, practical, humorous, and well-written. This book fails all of these, although I kept reading to the end, largely to see if anything of interest was going to happen.

Basically, the book may be summed up as follows: our fearless protagonist, an eminent editor and author, buys a farm in the country. He hires the entire neighborhood to work for him in various capacities, lavishly redecorates his house, builds a house for one of his employees, buys a Ferrari to become "one of the guys," supplies his wife with endless numbers of eventing horses and pieces of farm equipment, builds an indoor riding arena (or rather hires someone to build one for him), and, in case you hadn't gotten the message, leads a nice life. His efforts at humor tend to sound patronizing, particularly when they are at the expense of his neighbors, and his fund of wealth is truly staggering. (I thought that it was only in Regency romances or Pygmalion stories that the heroine would receive a choice between a diamond bracelet and an indoor riding arena, but I was wrong.) The person whom I would most like to be in this book is his wife, who leads a life of wealth and privilege that passes belief.

In spite of the fact that Mr. Korda is an eminent editor, the book was loaded with grammatical mistakes, some of which were so consistent that they cannot be called typographical errors. One example, appearing throughout the book, is Mr. Korda's use of "that of," which is supposed to replace the possessive. But the possessive remains. For example (not a quotation, but an example of what I am talking about): "the horse was grayer than that of Mr. Korda's." This phrase should read: "the horse was grayer than that of Mr. Korda."

I plan on passing my copy of this book on to someone else. Mr. Korda does not need any more royalties.

I was about halfway through this work when I began to read the reviews here. I was heartened to find that I was not alone in finding Korda's tone condescending, snobbish, and in its own way, extremely provincial. He seems to value his neighbors, if at all, for one reason: their utility. That is, their usefulness to himself! He displays very little genuine interest in these hardworking people in terms of their histories, their interior lives, their unique stories. They're just there to fix stuff and do the physical labor which is apparently beneath Mr. Korda.

Despite the author's long-time position as editor at Simon and Schuster, I did not find the book particularly well-written. Indeed, I found it riddled with cliches, especially "in our neck of the woods." Did the editor not submit his work to an editor?

I almost always finish books once I start them. In this case I made an exception. Life is too short to read unfunny and basically insufferable books like this one.

Witty and hilarious anecdotes, well observed and cleverly described, make up the first part of this book. Apparently Mr. Korda ran out of material, for he has resorted to a series of faintly condescending tales of how his presence elevated the tone of the neighborhood to extend to book length what should have been an amusing article. There is a distinct sense of "not quite our class, dear" in his descriptions of his neighbors, his adopted countryside, the available local food, and the level of ambient taste. A bit less self-congratulation would have made this book more palatable.

I suppose rich editors (did they really buy him a motorcycle for his 25th anniversary at S&S? No wonder books are so expensive!) don't need their own writing edited (run-on sentences, anybody?). Mr. Korda's ego would have been less damaged had he moved to the place he clearly thought he belonged - with the other "gentry" in a house with "a tennis court" and "a swimming pool" (how many times is this mentioned in the book?). At least Mr. Korda's ineptitude served to enrich the local economy. His will never truly be the "Korda farm". He never rightfully belonged in the country.

It's a misleading title and should not have been marketed as a "back-to-the-land" book with its Farmer's Almanac cover design. Judging by other reviews, it is clear that other readers felt the same way. Memoirs are a popular genre but usually the author has something interesting to tell. This does not. Don't read this unless you are a rich person looking for what you would like to call a country estate where you hire people to do everything and yourself don't know one end of a screwdriver from another. Maybe then you could relate.

This book is good - for toilet paper. Of course if you're a sucker who has Kindle then I guess you're SOL.

For an interesting book and relief from this terrible work, I suggest Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" or anything by John Seymour.

The New York Times sparked my interest in this age-old literary subject--city dweller finds renewal in the country, with all the highs and lows and informative or interesting tidbits of making the transition. My interest in this subject goes all they way back to Crazy-White-Man (Sha-ga-na-she Wa-du-kee) by Richard Morenus, published by Rand McNally and Co. in 1952. So, I am not a newcomer to the genre. In fact, my wife and I recently put the finishing touches on a 3-year restoration of a century-old lodge on an island in Maine. Therefore, I do not place a low rating on this book without careful thought and regret. Usually, one thinks that if the Times views a book as newsworthy, it will be a bit special. In this case, I think it is Korda's professional connections in the publishing industry (and not the merit of the piece) which earned the publicity, and possibly the initial printing. Korda would like the reader to believe that he is about to introduce them to the quaint, evolutionary transition of a (very, very sophisticated) city couple and a country estate from strangers to partners, each helped to reach the synergy by a cast of colorful local citizens with special skills and memorable characters. The book fails, however, to continue its early, promising pace, and eventually trails off into a series of random recollections, failing to develop the supporting characters in favor of repetitive, gratuitous references to Mrs. Korda's achievements as a horsewoman, and Mr. Korda's irrelevant pride in having read the classics. In the end, the country life which Mr. Korda portrays seems as shallow and trite as the city life he almost left behind. He is more often a disconnected observer than influential participant, and leaves the reader wondering whether, for the Kordas, the country really matters.