The Farmer's Daughter: Novellas

How can you go wrong when there’s a Brown Dog in the mix? Can’t get home to Michigan? Read Jim Harrison.

Few authors master the art of the Novella with the innate skill and ingenuity of Jim Harrison!Yes... he is macho!...testosterone driven, dark and lusty...but writes with such clarity...it is shiveringly stunning!He at once repels and then lures the reader back with jolting language and lucid descriptions.Reading Harrison is like a jeopardous journey...he takes the reader to places unknown, but that feel uncomfortably and vaguely familiar.The 'animal within' human nature is prodded out and laid bare with no apology for social conventions.Hate him or love him...this man is truly a master story-teller!THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER (3 very different novellas) is well worth the journey!

I gave it a try. I guess it is proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I know lots of people rave about his writing but I found the stripped down style so very dull. Not dry so much as parched. I am glad that there is room for a variety of writing styles in this world, but we don't have to like them all.

Jim Harrison RIP...I love you!

Jim Harrison's works have always been among my favorites. Legends of the Fall is a novella that stands with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Dalva one of the finest novels I have ever read. His poetry is masterful, muscular, spiritual, naturalistic. He is an American treasure, one of our most revered authors. In his books people actually breathe fresh air. They hunt, ride horses, camp, fly-fish, hike, living an active life. These are the books for the drawing rooms or the halls of academia. Harrison's characters have lives.The Farmer's Daughter is a disappointing effort. Perhaps Harrison has mined his rich vein too often. The same bowl of menudo and Patsy Cline's "The Last Word in Lonesome is Me" find their way into each of the three novellas. The novella that gives the collection its title covers well-trodden Harrison themes. As in many of his books and novellas a piece of property is inherited by the protagonist, giving a sense of freedom and isolation. The second novella features Brown Dog, Harrison's Native-American alter-ego, a libidinous ne'er-do-well attempting to rescue his profoundly damaged daughter from the clutches of the state bureaucracy. The third novella, the best in this weak collection, returns to another of Harrison's trusty themes, werewolves. (In his memoir Harrison confesses that one night he's convinced he himself turned into a wolf! He also mentions in the introduction to that memoir that memory is a funny thing and he couldn't vouch for even his own veracity.)Don't let this be your first introduction to Jim Harrison. Nearly everything else he has written is better.

Well, this book has just left me at kind of a loss for words. I've been reading Harrison for 40 years now, and I know he's had his highs and lows, but this may be a new low. Maybe I should first admit that I only read the first novella, the title piece. And I had to force myself to finish it, because it just seemed a bit too far-fetched, if not a bit moronic, in the way the story was presented as kinda from the viewpoint of a 15-16 year-old girl, transplanted from Ohio to Montana. But the girl herself was simply not very believable - either too sexually precocious or too innocent, mostly the latter, I'd say. Waaay too intellectual for a kid that age, supposedly reading stuff like Tristram Shandy and The Red and the Black. Maybe, but not very likely. Attracted to much older men. I mean, for me, this Sarah was simply the fictitious invention of a dirty old man. And the ending? Blecch! I just don't think so. This was basically a hundred-page adult comic book sans pictures - sans 'art' for that matter. By the time I'd finished, I simply didn't want to read any more of the book, especially that last story about a "retired vampire." Geeze, Jim. What were you thinking? This book is such an embarrassment. I wonder if you were curious just what you could get away with and still get critical acclaim. Well, just about anything, it seems, as Publisher's Weekly's starred review said "Harrison shows he is still at the top of his game ..." I wonder what book they were reading. Maybe I'll just re-read one of Harrison's all-time best books, FARMER. No daughter in that one, although the teacher-farmer protagonist did have a fling with a very precocious teenager. Hmmm ... Maybe Jim's still writing the same story and it's just me that's changed. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

great book,fast delivery

If you like Jim Harrison's other work you won't be disappointed with this collect of three stories (including a long B.D. one).

Lue en français en version pocket cette nouvelle que l on dévore d une traite mérite sa découverte dans la belle langue de Jim Harrison .Le grand écrivain (disparu en mars 2016 ) nous embarque dans ses paysages de l Ouest des USA et nous dresse le tableau édifiant d une adolescente qui grandit en milieu hostile et fait de sa vie un exemple rare en forme de conte .Si le mouvement ME TOO vous interpelle ce récit vous passionnera.