Farmer [Paperback]

Jim Harrison (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Delta; First Edition edition (February 1989)
• ISBN-10: 9993316024
• ISBN-13: 978-9993316022
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book That Made Me Try to Write Books, October 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Farmer (Paperback)

My sister, Christmas 1981, gave me LEGENDS OF THE FALL. I read it with a sinking vertigo occassioned by the haunting question, How - how could the guy write like that? To find out so that I might accomplish a paler emulation, I read every single word the guy had ever written. But nothing touched me as much as his novel, FARMER. Thin as a ghost in a mirage, this novel explores the affair a gimp middle-aged farmer and schoolteacher has with one of his students. The setting, rural middle-Michigan in the 50s, is SO unurbane, so unsophisticated, that you can smell the manure that Joseph, the twisted-legged yet mythic hero, one cold October morning spreads atop his crunching fields while abysmally hung over. And the woman his age that he deeply loves, Rosealee, is so wonderfully rendered that I spent the novel half-hoping Joseph WOULD indeed abandon her so that I could step inside the book and have her for my own. Finally, the story of their heartbreak and loss, is told in what is a poet's visionary and renengade voice, a voice gruff with whiskey, piercing and memorable with despair. If LEGENDS gave me vertigo, FARMER made me leap over the edge.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Transforming, April 29, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Farmer (Paperback)

I was but two pages into the book when I read the line "He pokes at the ocean with his cane,staring at it with the raptness he felt for the northern lights as a child." And I wept. I grew up in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and have stared at the northern lights with that same raptness. No other author captures the uniqueness and wonder of the place and the people like Jim Harrison. He understands the soul of the land and of the people who live there. His imagery and attention to detail are masterful.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thin Book, Giant Tale, August 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Farmer (Paperback)

I read Harrison's FARMER in one sitting, then made a pot of coffee, and read it again. I recall that I was terribly sad upon finishing, only because the sublime experience had ended. FARMER has no flaws that I can detect. It is simple and has a fierce ecomomy. Tiny book, BIG,BIG story. This is a fine book.