Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like A Thousand Acres
The best books like A Thousand Acres are Educated: A Memoir, The Glass Castle: A Memoir, and The Liars' Club. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley is about land and inheritance, family silence and secrets, female experience and abuse. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- Educated: A Memoir
01
Tara Westover · Memoir
Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Glass Castle: A Memoir
02
Jeannette Walls · Memoir
The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls's memoir about growing up as the second of four children in a family that moved constantly across the American Southwest and West Virginia, rarely had enough to eat, and existed almost entirely outside conventional institutions.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Liars' Club
03
Mary Karr · Memoir
Mary Karr's debut memoir about growing up in the oil-refinery town of Leechfield, Texas in the 1960s is widely credited with sparking the memoir boom of the 1990s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
04
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - This Boy's Life
05
Tobias Wolff · Memoir
Tobias Wolff's memoir of his childhood in the 1950s, moving with his peripatetic mother from Florida to Utah to Seattle to the logging town of Concrete, Washington, is one of the finest examples of what might be called the stepfather memoir — a genre that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as writers processed childhoods marked by violence, instability, and the particular powerlessness of being a child under an adult's authority.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
06
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
07
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Little Life
08
Hanya Yanagihara · Literary fiction
A Little Life follows four men from college into middle age and beyond — Willem, an actor; JB, a painter; Malcolm, an architect; and Jude, a lawyer with a past that is revealed in increasingly devastating detail as the novel progresses.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
09
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Visit from the Goon Squad
10
Jennifer Egan · Literary fiction
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel told in thirteen chapters, each from a different point of view and sometimes in a radically different form — including one chapter composed entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
11
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · Literary fiction
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where Tom Sawyer left off — Huck Finn, the outcast son of the town drunk, has been taken in and given a respectable life he doesn't want.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - American Pastoral
12
Philip Roth · Literary fiction
American Pastoral opens with a narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, learning at a high school reunion about the life and death of Seymour "the Swede" Levov — a man who embodied postwar American success so completely he seemed almost allegorical.
A kindred literary fiction read.
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Books like A Thousand Acres: quick answers
What are the best books like A Thousand Acres?
The best books like A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley are Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with A Thousand Acres, such as land and inheritance, family silence and secrets, female experience and abuse.
What should I read after A Thousand Acres?
A natural next read after A Thousand Acres is Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.
What books are similar to A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley?
A Thousand Acres centers on land and inheritance, family silence and secrets, female experience and abuse. Books with a similar feel include Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, The Liars' Club by Mary Karr, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
