Barn Blind

by Jane Smiley

Book Overview

The verdant pastures of a farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting. But the horses that graze there have become the obsession of a woman who sees them as the fulfillment of every... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449908747
• ISBN13: 9780449908747
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Book

I really enjoyed reading this book! Well drawn characters and excellent writing. The family dynamics were interesting and Smiley's descriptions had me re-reading passages for the pleasure of her writing.

Beautifully Written

Good story, excellent writing! Jane Smiley descriptions were wonderful and I enjoyed learning about the care and training of horses. Interesting and captivating novel.

Momentum Only Takes You So Far

Peter, John, Henry, and Margaret Karlson were the children of a father who drove an old Pontiac and a mother who drove a Datsun. Peter's height came from his mother, Katherine Karlson. Axel and Kate Karlson had a horse farm. The farm seemed to take all of Axel's salary and investment earnings and Kate's annual income. Kate was concerned that her best rider, her son Peter, and her best horse, MacDougal, did not get along. Axel feared for his quiet farm-bound children. While most family members were at the Barrington Horse Show, Axel cleared out the refrigerator and determined their establishment was a monument to waste. The novel details Peter's riding feats and victories and John's temper and involvement in a tragic accident. On another level the monomania of Kate to develop horses and riders even to the point of sacrificing her own family is portrayed interestingly and convincingly.

More than a horse story

This book literally haunted me. I found myself constantly thinking about the characters days after I finished it. It is a quiet kind of story, packed with repressed emotions, and somehow the ending felt cathartic although not immediately so. I could see chaos in this large rambling horse farm family and I could put together the events with a clarity I did not feel the moment I finished the book. It took awhile, and slowly these people took more shape and I began to understand more and feel the story's latent ending. I was intrigued by the family dynamics, the dominant mother/trainer, the passive, ever-loving, forgiving father, and each child responding in the only way their personalities would allow to the intensity of their demanding mother. The end was powerful. I reflected on the father holding his head in his hands as he realized there was no end in sight to his wife's sovereignity and determination to carry on at any cost. I crave a sequel, yet I already know it. It is the epitome of barn blind.

Pretty amazing for a first novel, with sufficient mystery

I have no great interest in horses, but my daughter does, so I found the horse aspects interesting. I have no idea if it was accurate, and the "convenient abrupt ending" another reviewer alluded to I found to make perfect sense with the flow of the rest of the novel. Throughout there was a sense that *something* was going occur and it was going to be very important, and well, finally it did. I didn't like the characters themselves a lot either, with the exception of Axel, but only when reading "Women in Love" by DH Lawrence, has that really mattered to me. I found the characters interesting and on the edge of transformation. What I really did wonder about through out was why Henry wasn't riding, but maybe he didn't know, and neither did anyone else, so why should we? My major objection to the edition I had was the cover. The farm in the book is a horse farm; the farmm on the cover was a crop farm.