The Farm She Was: A Novel

By Ann Mohin

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. A story of love and loss, and the evolution of farm life as the 20th century unfolded, narrated by a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1882593219
• ISBN13: 9781882593217
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Bridgeworks
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

She was the farm

Irene, age 90, lies essentially bedridden in the parlor where she can still feel part of the farm. Her bedroom upstairs lies vacant now, along with the rooms of her dead parents and brother. Insistant on maintaining imput on the goings-on, she tries to keep the upper hand in everything. Lying quietly, she has embarked on documenting her life on the farm she was born on. Her mind is as sharp as the pencil she scribes her memories. Her notebooks serve as her testimony to the past and the very present. Among her reminisces are her present day quips targeted at those that seem to be circling her, poised to take advantage of this old woman's lurking day of death. She fears losing the farm in her death, the land cut up into suburbs, the old machinery auctioned and the house left to those who will never understand the sacrifices and joy that have walked in and out the kitchen door. As she gazes out the window, she can see the graves of her parents, her uncle and the many faithful collie that guarded over the flock of sheep. It is a fearful thought that in the modern day, she would not be allowed to be buried alongside her family.While she fights to maintain the bare bones of the farm in her later years, she recalls the years she spent keeping the farm going after her father's death at an early age. Passive in grief, her mother steps aside and lets this young woman manage the intricacies of a sheep farm, a large garden and the general upkeep of the land in the mid 1900's. Praised in national magazines for the quality of her sheep's wool she gains the respect in the community for her work. It is this woman's memories that are golden as she recalls ninety years on the farm. Particularly insightful are Irene's recollection of seeing the first automobiles driving along the road at night. Unfamiliar with headlights, Irene and her mother stand nearly terrified as they ponder what those lights coming across the valley floor are. It is her impression, once the car has passed by the dirt road in front of their farmhouse, that things will never again be the same.Living over 90 years is a sure bet that things will never be the same at one time or another. It is the wonderous theme of this lovely novel that allows Irene to move on but look fondly back.

Life connected to the earth

I cannot express have wonderful I found this novel to be! I could not read it in public, because I was so filled with emotion at so many places throughout the story. The story of Irene's life itself was rather straightforward but the rich punctuations of reflections on nature, life on a farm, the essence of what a farm life means,and insight into the process of aging and dying ,raised the novel to great heights. For any reader who does not understand the attraction of life connected with nature, this book will provide refreshing insights. For those of us who were bitten by the bug to farm (certainly it was not in my NYC bred genes for generations!) it helps us to explain why we feel the way we do about the farm life, surrounded by animals. It actually awakens an awareness so that I found myself exclaiming why had I never thought that out loud but already knew in some deep place of the soul! For the farmer, it provides a possibility for keeping the working farm long after hehas moved on. For the person simply living a life, this book offers a perspective into the process of dying and into the exhilaration of the soul that dying a meaningful death can hold.

A truly memorable and moving novel.

Irene Leahy is a strong and resilient farmwoman struggling to save her land and animals against the encroaching forces of "progress" in an America where make-a-buck greed has a stronger hold than tradition and life on a small farm. When the self-righteous Reverend Throne tries to convince the aging but tought-mined Irene to leave the upstate New York farm where she was born and move into a nursing home, she scoofs. When the Ruby Red Real Estate agent presses her to sell out, she roars. As modern life steadily invades, Irene goes back in memory to her childhood and relives family and personal relationships, conflict between generations, love and betrayal, loss, longing, self-sufficiency, and joy. The Farm She Was is a truly memorable and moving novel of a woman's enduring relationship to the land, to animals, to nature, to the environment, and to the men and women who helped to shape her life -- and she their's.

A wonderful story with vivid descriptions throughout.

My wife and I enjoyed this book immensely. With the exception of Frank McCourt and his mother in "Angela's Ashes," I can't remember when I've cared about a character in a book so much. Irene Leahy reminds me of my wife's Great Aunt Leah Joy, who lived in Massachusetts from around 1880 to 1966. She didn't live on a farm, but she was a tell-it-like-it-is rugged individualist who never married.Though this is a novel, it reads like a true story. Ann Mohin's descriptions leap off the page. I recommend this book to anyone who knows or would like to know what life on a farm is like or who wants to get to know a wonderful, independent lady.

A magnificent testament to the vanishing farm era in America

The mark of a great novel to me is that I don't want it to end. After reading most of "The Farm She Was," I found myself wishing it would go on past the thirty chapters. This magical book brings the rural farm period in American history into focus for me the way the camera frames a shot of my farmhouse in upstate New York. I walk this land every day and feel the pulses of those that lived here and farmed the land -- those that lived in Irene (Reeni) Leahy's world. It was the way of life that built this country and, despite a rebirth in recent years, it's a life that is now over. The testament Ann Mohin has written to the generations of Americans that walked the fields, suffered with the animals and toiled until dark, has a grandeur one would not expect from such a soft, delicate book. Though the ninety year-old Reeni is spunky, I thought I could relax and let her gentle memories wash over me. Then, something about the waves of reminiscences created an impact so powerful that I found myself weeping as I remembered my own relationships with father, mother, siblings and lovers."Yes, I close my eyes and inhale, and the years left in my life are still high in number," Reeni says at the end of Chapter 15. Is she talking about now, or is she talking about then? Is it then, the past -- you know, when Reeni was young -- or is it now when she's -- dare I say it -- old? Then I realize that the time confusion Mohin has created cleverly makes me, the reader, feel what the character is feeling. Reeni goes between the present and past like a bee choosing its flower. In the past she was the independent, self-sufficient master of her life, in the true American spirit. Now, with all good intentions,"they" are trying to take control and dare to tell her she should leave the farm, not knowing, as the title suggests, that Reeni and the farm are one. I'm also eager to find out how she's going to handle the situation. Someday I will grow older and someone will be trying to take things I cherish from me. So an amiable suspense exists in the story, like in any good mystery. There's another question that possesses me though, besides how Reeni solves her problem. Why does the end of the family-farm era strike such a chord in me, and so many others? For us, and for all those who aren't afraid of facing their own memories, this book is a must-read. --------------------------------------------------