Pearl Buck in China: Journey to the Good Earth

by Hilary Spurling

Book Overview

The much honored biographer unearths the life and work of Nobel Prize winner Pearl Buck, whose novels captured ordinary life in China.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416540423
• ISBN13: 9781416540427
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.9" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

great book,great seller

The book came in a very timley manner and is a great read.thanks so much...

pearl buck in china: journey to the good earth

i had other books started i wanted to return to but the pull of bucks amazing life would not let me. easy to read and totally absorbing

Loved this book!

I have never read anything by or about Miss Buck, although I do know who she is and the titles of some of her books. I thoroughly enjoyed this audio book. Hilary Spurling has done an excellent job in capturing Pearl's story. What an extraordinary life Pearl Buck led as the daughter of a missionary living in China for much of her life. This biography delves deeply into Buck's family life. It is the story of her growing up mainly in the Chinese culture, the hardship of living in China and living through some perilous times, The Boxer uprising, and several other wars. (Pearl lived mostly in China from 1892-1934). The hardships the family endured as a result of her father's passion to be a missionary at all costs. This story also talks about the difficulty in living in two cultures and not knowing where she fit in either. From growing up in China and not fitting in because of her fair skin and hair where she stood out from everyone else to going back to the United States after living much of her life in the Chinese culture and not really fitting in there. Pearl Buck won a Pulitzer prize and the Noble Peace prize for her writing of The Good Earth. She was the mother of two children, was married twice and has written many books. I found it very interesting how Ms. Spurling tells how Pearl wrote about her own family in many of her stories. This is such an interesting story. I would recommend this book. I think I now want to read The Good Earth!

A compelling life story told by a consummately skillful biographer

Decades from now, the biographer Hillary Spurling will surely rate as one of the best writers of our time. This latest effort adds to an excellent list of achievements and might be her most successful book, yet. Given her much lauded two-volume biography of Henri Matisse, that is saying a lot. In this book, Spurling brings to life a writer I had not much cared for. In fact, I knew Pearl Buck only for her titles publishes in volumes of the Reader's Digest Condensed Books, which had pride of place on my parents' bookshelves. My mental appraisal of her was simply horrid: drab, old-fashioned, famous mostly for being exotic in her time. How's that for my ignorance? Pretty good. As a result, I have always passed on opportunities to read Buck's writing. It shocked me to see that Spurling had chosen to exert her considerable talents in the direction of Buck's life story -- a surprise that evaporated in the book's first engrossing paragraphs. One of Spurling's great strengths as a biographer is that she requires characters to speak for themselves; they tell their own story. She quotes liberally from primary sources with the result that Buck and others define themselves and each other. These individuals existed independent of the biographer, as is not always clear when a biographer attempts to "read" lives instead of writing about them. Spurling wraps history in the impressions and responses of the story's characters, and yet the difference between the historicity of events and people's recollections is plain. Recollections and impressions evolve, as she shows in the way Buck recasts autobiographical aspects throughout her works. When a biographer chooses this approach, the result can be a shapeless muddle of quotations and dates: not so here. Documentation is shaped into a cohesive story, where the evidence is unvarnished but assembled into the unmistakable likeness of the subject's life and times. The narrative also makes a clear, but unobtrusive point that the author thoroughly immersed herself not only in events and even minutiae of Buck's life but also in her prodigious body of work. The unfolding life story connects here seamlessly to autobiographical and biographical elements of the subject's books. This is biography, not literary criticism, but what emerges is more than a reader's guide. Content has context. Spurling shows how writing, itself, is the great revealer of a writer. Spurling writes with a justly authoritative voice. As is usual in her books, the iteration of sources and notes is impressive. Nevertheless, she avoids a dogmatic tone. It is possible to take away from the book the idea that Buck's story still plays out in current events. At a moment when the United States is still struggling to adjust to the global impact of China's economy, this story offers greater perspective. It is a book that could be read profitably by anyone with an interest in current events, history, or -- not forgetting -- literature.

WONDERFUL BOOK ON PEARL BUCK

Hilary Spurling is a wonderful writer. A Brit that writes about people few of us would follow like Matiisse, Paul Scott, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Therese Humbert. People listen, Spurling is very, very good, read her works. That brings us to her latest, PEARL BUCK IN CHINA: Journey to the Good Earth. This is a marvelous marvelous book. Spurling give us the whole story without editorializing but in great detail. This is an interesting story about a very interesting person, Nobel and Pulitzer prize winner. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Read This