"The Living Reed" by Pearl S. Buck--Book Review

I have never made any secret of the fact that I love the writing of Pearl S. Buck who was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia and educated in Virginia during her college years at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Despite the many people who mistakenly believe that she was purely an Asian writer Peal S. Buck spent much of her life in America and wrote numerous books set in this country which are not nearly as well know as her works about Asia.  I have read "The Good Earth" and written about it on this blog.Due to the early years of her life which she spent primarily in

China and the fact that she is generally described as a writer about China, she deserves to known as an Appalachian.  I have also read the two other books in "The Good Earth Trilogy" and failed to write about them on this blog although I did post their titles on the ever growing list of books I have read which you can always find at the bottom of the page on this blog.  Those titles are "Sons" and "A House Divided".  I seem to remember that I was busy in other things at the time I completed both those books and am sorry for never having mentioned them at length here.  They are both excellent books and well worth reading although they are not at the level of "The Good Earth".  But then few books are.  The book we are discussing in this post, in my opinion, comes close to "The Good Earth" in quality.

"The Living Reed" is set in Korea from 1881 to 1945 and covers a great deal of Korean history, sociology, and culture just as "The Good Earth Trilogy" does for China.  The book is also a story about an Asian family and their lives as Korea enters, fights, and eventually survives conflicts with both China and Japan.  The characters and the plot are incredibly well written and the story deserves to have been a trilogy just as much as did "The Good Earth".  Phillip Gowman, in his review states that the novel "...is immediately comforting, enveloping you in warmth. The language is intentionally epic, giving a heightened sense of significance to the events you are reading about."  Through the course of this book, you come to feel you know the Kim family.

Pearl S. Buck

You cherish their successes.  You mourn their losses.  You respect their intelligence, class, honor, and integrity.  These characters are people well worth knowing.  Just as in "The Good Earth Trilogy" the family grows and they grow on you.  Members of the family live, grow old, and die.  They live their daily lives and play their roles both in the family and in the government of Korea in a manner which befits good, decent, honorable Asian people of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  You come away from this book feeling that you know a lot more about Korea and you come to respect it as a country and a culture.  This book is well worth your time.