Cornflower Book Group - The Good Earth

 

    Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth is a book which plots the course of a life in exemplary manner, its style formal, appropriate and utterly consistent throughout, the arc of the story well-proportioned, its themes universal. It's about the ebb and flow of one man's fortunes, of times of plenty and scarcity of all kinds - not just in the material sense - and of impermanence, of how all things, good and bad, will pass, but within the cycle of life, and in the passage from earth to earth which shows that for everything there is a season, there is so much more about Chinese culture and society, the position of women, religion, superstition and the propitiation of the gods, of the 'false summits' of achieving one's desires, and of how a legacy is in the hands of those to whom it is left - the giver has given over and given up the gift in the fullest sense.

    It needs no more introduction than that, I think, but I will say that it made a huge impression on me, its style, simplicity and profundity, its distinctive voice, its fable-like nature and the wisdom it offers; I'd call it a special book.

    What did you think of it?