BARN BLIND - Softcover

Smiley, Jane

3.36

819 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007291280 ISBN 13: 9780007291281

Publisher: Flamingo, 2008

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The verdant pastures of the Karlson farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting, but the horses that graze there have become the consuming obsession of a woman who sees in them the ultimate fulfilment of her every wish - to win, to be honoured, to be the best. Her vaulting ambition becomes a tragically destructive force; a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and have unforeseen and brutal consequences for them all...

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Review:

‘Smiley’s achievement is to communiate so successfully the failure of communication. She has anatomised a network of relationships, focusing with almost impossible subtlety on the gaps between people.’
Lesley Glaister, The Times

‘Entirely gripping... This book is so alive in its detail that you can practically smell the tack and the straw and hear the animals shifting in their stalls. Jane Smiley’s unobtrusive prose is very good at evoking the bleakness of the heart, but it can also illuminate moments almost beyond articulacy.’
Anita Mason, Independent on Sunday

From the Back Cover:

The verdant pastures of the Karlson farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting, but the horses that graze there have become the consuming obsession of a woman who see in them the ultimate fulfilment of her every wish – to win, to be honoured, to be the best. Her vaulting ambition becomes a tragically destructive force; a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and have unforeseen and brutal consequences for them all ...

“Smiley’s achievement is to communicate so successfully the failure of communication. She has anatomised a network of relationships, focusing with almost impossible subtlety on the gaps between people.”
LESLEY GLAISTER, 'The Times'

“Entirely gripping ... This book is so alive in its detail that you can practically smell the tack and the straw and hear the animals shifting in their stalls. Jane Smiley’s unobtrusive prose is very good at evoking the bleakness of the heart, but it can also illuminate moments almost beyond articulacy.”
ANITA MASON, 'Independent on Sunday'

“Smiley’s lyrical ambition and mercurial insights elevate her subject to the status of a haunting inquisition into the precarious future of rural culture. She writes with such an understated intensity that the power of her narrative creeps up on you like the fall of darkness.”
GQ

“Smiley is terrific at nailing down the odd, unbalanced love that siblings have for each other, the encoded, stifling games and secret languages that shape family life. A wonderful novel.”
PENNY PERRICK, 'Sunday Times'

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