Barn Blind

Reading Jane Smiley's first novel was a pleasure and a revelation. I've only previously read one of her books: Good Faith. I liked it a lot but didn't love it. I've read most of her book about writing, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, which is a bit dry in parts but from which I learned more a......more

Smiley's farm books--A Thousand Acres and this one--touch me deeply. Kate Karlson's family live and work on a farm, a horse ranch, really. It is Kate's vision to make of her family the best at horses, at riding, breeding, and instruction. And it is her dream that drives the family in large ways and......more

An amazing debut novel, which I read back in the '80s and loved enough to carry with me throughout my years wanderings and adventures. And it was all "new to me" on the re-read some 40 years later. I had completely forgotten that Kate was such a damaged, obsessive, controlling, passive-aggressive pe......more

Kate Karlsson owns stables with some 40 horses that she loves more than anything. She is also wife of Axel and mother of four children. It doen't really go together. Kate is Barn Blind. She sees nothing but the barns. She doen't understand her children. The only thing she wants of them is them o be......more

5 stars for the terrifyingly impactful ending, but the first half of this book took a while for me to get into (partly because of the constant drone of their hard work, and also for their über-generic names). Kate Karlson, the mother of all Equestrian Tiger Moms, runs a successful family horse farm......more