Jane Smiley already said it

Jane Smiley (Los Angeles, 1949) weaves from the first pages of Heredarás la tierra (Sexto Piso) a very American reality that seems too distant from here. The writer is set on a farm in a county called Zebulon, in Iowa, with its own idiosyncrasy, such as everyone's worth being determined by the acres and debts they have. Little by little, Smiley delves into the story of Larry Cook's family, a landowner who rigidly dominates his lands and also his three daughters, already grown and even married, but always at the service of the patriarch's orders. The plot corners the members of the clan, and the reader, with losses, mistreatment, and abuses that tense the atmosphere, even making it unbreathable, so that everything explodes when the traumas are revealed.

Heredarás la tierra is a harsh and dark novel, very complex, but developed with a voice that manages to bring closer the stories of its characters, especially that of Ginny, a protagonist who does not wish it and who ends up becoming the best narrator. "She is the kind of person who doesn't usually express her opinions, but, as happens with many people, she is sensitive and attentive to others. Furthermore, she is very aware of everything that happens to her body and mind. This is what makes her a good narrator, she observes others a lot, but also herself, so she knows how to tell readers what she feels when she experiences everything she lives," explains Smiley.

However, the great omnipresent presence in the novel is Larry Cook, already senile, but doing and undoing at will to feel that he still has power over his three daughters and the world he believes belongs to him. Despite the novel being written more than 30 years ago, its lines still resonate too much today. "There are still many Larry Cooks. They are men who want to get their way and who don't want to humble themselves or change for anything. There are also other men, like most of my friends and all my husbands, who are decent, considerate, and attentive. In the world we live in, there is always this contest between people who want to get their way and those who want to help," says the writer, always cheerful and joking, also about her personal life. "And, for the history of humanity, 30 years are nothing. The habits of mistreating others have a long history. The best we can do is keep trying and hope things turn out well," she adds.

Jane Smiley wanted with A Thousand Acres to reinterpret the tragedy King Lear, without thinking too much about whether she was writing a feminist statement or not. "I can't say that my work was ahead of its time, I just wanted to rewrite Shakespeare's play and give them a voice," she says. She did so after having read the playwright several times and wondering what King Lear's daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, here transformed into Ginny, Rose, and Caroline, thought: "I had always wondered what they would say if they could speak."

And she managed to solve that enigma, even though it was difficult for her to imagine a family in which "they are constantly fighting and care more about property than about themselves." "I come from a family where money is distributed equally and what you are given is what you have, everyone is happy," she remarks, without failing to add that she did not like Succession.

Sexto Piso, a publishing house founded in Mexico that chose Barcelona for its landing in Spain and then moved to Madrid, has decided to recover A Thousand Acres, which had been out of print for some time. Tusquets had published it in the nineties, shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Despite this, and that Jane Smiley is considered one of the best living American writers, the novel was lost. Sexto Piso has also published the author's The Age of Grief, The Best of Will, and Ordinary Love. The next book Smiley will release will be her alternative biography, imagining what would have happened if she had been a musician and not a writer.