Giant

I love Edna Ferber and I love this books. It's one of my all time favorite novels. Giant is a bit long, and does drag on at times. (The movie is long too- but it's not exactly like the book). The love story of Leslie and Bic is nothing like Gone with the Wind. It's the real struggle of a man and woman born in two different worlds (Virgina and Good ol Texas) and the culture struggle Leslie faces with life on a ranch. Vashti Hake is one of my favorite characters. (There really are women in Texas just like her) Leslie Benedict struggles throughout her marriage in a changing world and trying to keep her love and marriage strong as the horizon of Texas changes from a rancher's paradies to an oil booming feast. Bic struggles as well with the wants of his children, and his desire to have the family ranch, Reata, live on through his son who wants to become a doctor. It's a classic novel that I first read in highschool, and just read again this year. Maybe because I am a Texas girl...I don't know...but I adore this book. When Ferber first penned this novel it was not well received in the Lone Star State because of how she depicts Texans. It's a great cultural read.

Having enjoyed the Elizabeth Taylor/James Dean/Rock Hudson film, I decided to read a wonderful old first edition of this novel and was thoroughly engrossed from cover to cover. Different in many ways from the motion picture but still a treat for its fans, the book is as much a glimpse into the evolution of 20th century Texas as it is a family soap opera. Strangely, it is even more of a love story between the Leslie & Jordan Benedict characters, who are its central characters. Definitely a great, timeless read regardless of whether or not you've seen the film.

I have to admit that when I started out reading this book, it was terribly confusing. The first five chapters take place in the future, then the story backtracks to explain the events that took place before. After a while, though, it became apparent that this unconventional ordering only made the story even more enchanting. Being a Texan myself, I found the setting and social customs described in the book very accurate. Leslie was a mesmerizing main character, possessing wisdom beyond her years that outshone all of the other characters' intelligence combined. Parts of the book weren't very characteristic of her--Leslie does eventually end up settling down a bit and loses a lot of her initial independence and do-good attitude that made her so attractive in the first place. Also, there are many aspects of the story that weren't very realistic at all--Jett Rink's obsessive, yet weakly explained, infatuation with Leslie, for example. But overall, this is a wonderfully-written book with very memorable characters, is a realistic love story, and is a dazzling slice of Texas history that you likely won't be able to put down until you've reached the end.

To be honest, I'm one of the guys, who watches a movie and reads the novel it is based on afterwards. In the case of "Giant" this turned out to be a terrible mistake. I was more than happy, when I finally reached the book's end. But the fact, that George Steven's screen adaptation is that big, should not take you away from reading this novel. Ferber painstickingly tells the story of Texas, from its very beginnings to the oil boom. Altogether, the book spans about three decades,from the years after WW1 to the industrial boom of the 1950's, but several interludes give you an insight about the history of the state. I personally think, that you have to read this book to understand single details in the movie and get closer impressions about the characters. While watching the movie, one always wonders, why Uncle Bawley is so much different than the other Benedicts. The novel will answer you this one and many other questions. In fact, one can only be surprised, how true the movie is to the novel. Although some scene settings have been changed to fit with the length of the movie, the film captures almost every single dialogue contained in the book. One can arguably say, that Ferber needs many pages to deal with a single problem (and she has already dealt with this one in other works like "Show Boat"), racism, but hey, it has taken a long time and it will take some time until this problem is finally solved. The novel (and the film) do not always portray a sunny side of the Texian population of that period, but somehow the whole story got a landmark of the state and Dimtri Tiomkin's music for the movie is a kind of a Texian hymn. In my mind, this is one of the true highlights of 20TH century literature.

I loved the movie Giant, but was bowled over by the book. Ferber is a first-rate storyteller-- each character is appropriately developed and the language and phrasing are amazing. The landscape imagery is fantastic, but Ferber's genius is in describing--both visually and in the narrative--the delicate social structure that is the underpinning of the entire plot.