Giant (Perennial Classics) [Paperback]

Edna Ferber (Author)

Book Description

Series: Perennial Classics | Publication Date: August 22, 2000

This sweeping tale captures the essence of Texas on a staggering scale as it chronicles the life and times of cattleman Jordan "Bick" Benedict, his naive young society wife, Leslie, and three generations of land-rich sons. A sensational story of power, love, cattle barons, and oil tycoons, Giant was the basis of the classic film starring James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A powerful story...truly as big as its subject." -- --Los Angeles Times

"Her vocabulary is rich and vital; she sees material objects with a penetrating and delightful vision." -- --New York Tribune

"Miss Ferber at her best, and that's very good indeed." -- --St. Louis Globe-Democrat

From the Publisher

10 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: It Books (August 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060956704
• ISBN-13: 978-0060956707
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great satire of Texas life, March 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Giant (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

I loved the movie Giant, but was bowled over by the book. Ferber is a first-rate storyteller-- each character is appropriately developed and the language and phrasing are amazing. The landscape imagery is fantastic, but Ferber's genius is in describing--both visually and in the narrative--the delicate social structure that is the underpinning of the entire plot.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slice of Texas History, December 8, 2005

By 

Ngoc Nguyen "Lorelei Nguyen" (Plano, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Giant (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

I have to admit that when I started out reading this book, it was terribly confusing. The first five chapters take place in the future, then the story backtracks to explain the events that took place before. After a while, though, it became apparent that this unconventional ordering only made the story even more enchanting.

Being a Texan myself, I found the setting and social customs described in the book very accurate. Leslie was a mesmerizing main character, possessing wisdom beyond her years that outshone all of the other characters' intelligence combined. Parts of the book weren't very characteristic of her--Leslie does eventually end up settling down a bit and loses a lot of her initial independence and do-good attitude that made her so attractive in the first place. Also, there are many aspects of the story that weren't very realistic at all--Jett Rink's obsessive, yet weakly explained, infatuation with Leslie, for example.

But overall, this is a wonderfully-written book with very memorable characters, is a realistic love story, and is a dazzling slice of Texas history that you likely won't be able to put down until you've reached the end.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Texas' greatest tales, August 5, 2004

By 

Stefan Huber "shicorp" (Bischofstetten Austria) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Giant (Hardcover)

To be honest, I'm one of the guys, who watches a movie and reads the novel it is based on afterwards. In the case of "Giant" this turned out to be a terrible mistake. I was more than happy, when I finally reached the book's end. But the fact, that George Steven's screen adaptation is that big, should not take you away from reading this novel.
Ferber painstickingly tells the story of Texas, from its very beginnings to the oil boom. Altogether, the book spans about three decades,from the years after WW1 to the industrial boom of the 1950's, but several interludes give you an insight about the history of the state. I personally think, that you have to read this book to understand single details in the movie and get closer impressions about the characters. While watching the movie, one always wonders, why Uncle Bawley is so much different than the other Benedicts. The novel will answer you this one and many other questions.
In fact, one can only be surprised, how true the movie is to the novel. Although some scene settings have been changed to fit with the length of the movie, the film captures almost every single dialogue contained in the book. One can arguably say, that Ferber needs many pages to deal with a single problem (and she has already dealt with this one in other works like "Show Boat"), racism, but hey, it has taken a long time and it will take some time until this problem is finally solved.
The novel (and the film) do not always portray a sunny side of the Texian population of that period, but somehow the whole story got a landmark of the state and Dimtri Tiomkin's music for the movie is a kind of a Texian hymn. In my mind, this is one of the true highlights of 20TH century literature.