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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful writing, profound truths,
By
This review is from: The Farm (Paperback)
The Farm is a beautiful story about the settling of America and about a love for the land. Told in narrative form, it traces the lives of several early settlers in north central Ohio over a period of about 100 years. The Farm presents a picture of how quickly life changed over those years due to immigration, industrialization and the evolution of democracy. This is a semi-autobiographical story by a writer who has been all but forgotten.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Important novel by an under appreciated man,
By
This review is from: The Farm (Paperback)
I've been wanting to read a Bromfield novel ever since I saw a PBS special on him.
This was an interesting work, about fifty percent biography with rich scenery and descriptions of the lives of multiple generations of an Ohio family from the 1800's to the 1900's, and the other fifty percent scathing commentary on the destruction of the family farm by industrialists and politicians. I think I enjoyed the PBS movie more, but this was still worth the time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Farm,
By
This review is from: The Farm (Vintage Signet, D1260) (Mass Market Paperback)
ASIN B0017L1TL0; Also ISBN 1888683333, ISBN 0451012607, ASIN B000MI08IY, ASIN B000GR7RYO, ASIN B000L1Y45K, ASIN B000MC7G1M, ASIN B000ON8RLM, ASIN B000VL3OS8, ASIN B001G0Y6K8, ASIN B001TE95DE, ASIN B0026PK3WW, ASIN B002HOYDUU, ASIN B002JMMO3S, ASIN B004JOV2HI, ASIN B004UNASVE, ASIN B00507LV38, ASIN B0000CIOFO, ASIN B001E2ZPSA
Johnny is of the last generation to live on The Farm, land owned and farmed by his family for over 100 years (about 1794, just after the Battle of Fallen Timbers, until about 1915, a year into WWI. A brief revisiting of the farm, twelve years later, extends the tale to the late 1920s). The story begins with him and his first memory of the farm, arriving in a horse-drawn sleigh in the winter, in his mother's lap. This very short lead-in is captivating, as the author describe the smallest details, from the odor of the old buffalo robe across their laps to the sound of the sleigh bells; from the moment the door opens and music pours out until he's warming in the Colonel's chair, a little terrified by all the adults, and "the grandmother" brings him a cookie. If you're a jaded modern reader, you're probably going to expect the web Bromfield weaves to disappear immediately. That always happens in books, lots of pretty prose and evocative imagery to suck you in and then, bam, boring story that drags on forever without the least bit of eloquence. It doesn't happen here, I promise. In fact, the web merely draws you in further, instantly transitioning from Johnny to the Colonel, the ancestor whose chair Johnny occupies, and the farm as it was when that ancestor first set foot on it and began to build a family legacy that would both sustain and destroy their dreams. The quiet war that even the Colonel doesn't see looming is set up in the first pages, with the shopkeepers on one side and the farmers on the other. The war is conducted throughout the book, with never a shot fired or even a mean word said. The book details the lives of the generations and their interactions with each other and the nearby Town, introducing characters ranging from stoic and hardworking to eccentric and isolated, just like almost any family in America. The Farm is home base to the family, a touchstone even for those that move far away, and serves as shelter in times of trouble or joyful gathering place for holidays and weddings, a place everyone returns to eventually. Until, that is, they don't anymore. The end isn't any more sudden than the Farm itself was sudden. The Farm took time to build and it took time to decay. It wasn't bulldozed and didn't vanish, it merely sank back into the earth from which the Colonel had pulled it, a slow and almost imperceptible death. The former Underground Railway stop becomes more of a burden than a blessing as industry crowds out farming, landowners lease farms to slovenly, uncaring tenants and, all around, young people leave their family farms, never to return. National and local politics play a part in the demise of the farms and rise of the towns and, eventually, the shopkeepers that the Colonel despised are the victors. In the end, it is Johnny who is left to determine that the dream of the Colonel is over. I've been working on my genealogy for decades and love the idea of the family homestead, something that's disappearing from American life, where generations worth of treasured possessions, letters, photos and memories are available to each generation in turn. I was also raised by a father whose disdain for the crowded village that grew up right on top of the farmland he'd known all through his childhood was immeasurable. Reading this book gave me a strong and somewhat heartbreaking idea of the things my father felt he'd lost with the farms. For that reason alone, I love this book. I don't think I've ever read fiction that is more blatantly personal that The Farm. The author's life parallels Johnny's in many ways, and it's clear that he loved the Farm very much and probably regretted deeply the way things ended, and that they ended at all. Bromfield manages, throughout, to paint an extraordinarily eloquent picture and convinces you that you can smell the hay, hear the birds, feel the breeze. It's a book that's difficult to hurry through because there comes a moment when the reader simply knows how this is going to end and doesn't want it to. There's also a very 2011 reason that you should read this book, especially if you have an interest in politics and/or history. It's amazing how little has changed in the last 140 years. Circa 1875: "Once he had been a Republican because he was an Abolitionist, but by nature and principle he had always been a Jeffersonian Democrat, and once he left the Republican Party for good and found himself allied with the part which professed to follow the teachings of Jefferson, he felt freer and more happy... the battle was no longer over Secession and Abolition, but a struggle between farmer and industrialist... he fought on the losing side... On the other side there was power, wealth, dishonor, corruption, tariffs, and all the instruments of great manufacturers and bankers, many of whom, in another time and in another country, would have been judged criminals. But in the 'nineties and the beginning of the twentieth century there was no one to judge them save a few conscientious men within the Republican Party and the mass of Americans belonging still to a dying tradition who saw political power slipping farther and farther from them... The opposition brought out its time-worn weapons and denounced all Grangers as 'enemies of society' and above all else of PROSPERITY. At that time they had not yet the words 'Red' and 'Bolshevist' to cast about carelessly in the direction of anyone who threatened the strongholds of money and privilege... In some of the Western states which were purely agricultural the Grange did succeed in passing laws establishing railroad rates, and the cry went up from the big men of the New Era that this was Socialism, which was the worst word they could think of at that time." Apparently they STILL can't think of a worse word, 136 years later. It's fascinating to discover how little progress America has made, in some ways. One last word, not quite negative, more of a caution. Bromfield disparages entire groups based on their nationalities in the book. This might offend some of those people of those nationalities. I did a kind of double take, myself, when he assaulted Bohemians, so it's something I can understand. I think it's important to keep in mind the times in which he was writing and maybe more important to remember that we're not much different in that way, either, with discrimination against blacks, Hispanic groups and anyone who "looks" Muslim running rampant these days. It's an ugly mirror, sometimes, but you can spend five seconds in someone else's shoes. It's a stunningly well-written stroll down a memory lane that is more that nation's than an individual's and it's very well worth reading. Slowly. - AnnaLovesBooks
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