I unfortunately was never able to download this file, and thus was unable to read it : ( 5 stars for picking me though!

'The Good Earth' by Pearl S. Buck with adaptation and art by Nick Bertozzi is a graphic novel adaptatin of the classic novel.

The story takes place in China in the 1920s and the main character is Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan.  As the fortunes of the country change, so do Wang Lung's.  He goes from poverty to wealth by using great care, but his wealth brings new problems.  Along the way there is drought and floods and famine.  His wife O-Lan works hard, brings him children, and ends up only earning his scorn.  In his later years, Wang Lung is concerned with leaving a legacy for his children.

It does a decent job of adaptation, and the art is good, but it's so wordy and laid out so plainly that I found myself drifting away as I read it.  It could be that it isn't a good story to adapt.  I admire the effort, but I was happy to have it done.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Simon &  Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Always a great addition to any classroom library, this graphic novel adaptation is perfect for reluctant readers and avid readers alike. The graphics were engaging and the storyline remained true to the original work.

Sorry for the inconvenience but I have lost interest in the concept. Thank you for providing the copy though. I look forward to reading some more titles of yours. Thanks!

I have never read The Good Earth, but this graphic novel piqued my interest. I have already purchased this one for my classroom library and look forward to reading the original soon.

It seems like everyone read The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck during their high school years and even if they didn't, they've at least heard of this book. Buck, as a Westerner, was criticized for daring to write a story about a family in China. Taking place in the 1920's it's a universal story about a man's struggles in life from his years as a young farmer through his old age, dealing with the numerous trials which come from overseeing a large extended family. He makes mistakes, lives through various crises, has disgruntled sons, and supports a bunch of leeches who take advantage of his hard work as he moves from poverty into wealth. In the background is the Chinese Revolution and the shedding of the old ways. As the reader becomes immersed in the story, they grow to understand something of the culture from that time period. Published in 1931, this book was considered a ground breaker for a generation who knew nothing about the Chinese people.

This review does not attempt to rate Pearl S Buck's The Good Earth. Instead I would like to focus on the adaptation by Nick Bertozzi who has created a graphic novel illustrating the plot line of the original work. While it helps if you've already read the book, the reader can easily get more than a gist of the tale through this condensed version of Buck's words. The black and white line drawings, however are problematic. I received an ARC from Netgalley so perhaps additions have been made to the illustrations for the final copy to make them clearer and more defined. While in the beginning there are some relevant details, as the book progresses there is less and less definition to the drawings. You definitely need the text, at times, to figure out what is going on in the picture. So even though the adaptation is adequate, the graphics are not. While I wasn't expecting color (it just wouldn't have been appropriate in a story reflecting the grayness of their lives), I was expecting a sharper image with characters who were well shaped instead of resembling  a blob. My main complaint is the abrupt ending with a final panel which only vaguely captures any of Buck's nuances unless you just happened to have recently read the final paragraph of the book.

Hopefully the final draft has addressed these issues. Regardless, illustrations always enhance a work, which is why graphic novels are so popular, and I appreciate when the classics are made more approachable for the upcoming generation of readers. 

A thank you to Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review. (A generous) Three stars.

When I requested this from NetGalley I didn’t realise it wasn’t Pearl Buck’s novel as such but a graphic adaptation by Nick Bertozzi.  I’m not a fan of graphic novels but now I had this one I gave it a try and I must say Bertozzi has done a grand job with it. He has kept the flavour of the book and his version will no doubt bring the book to a new readership. There seems to be some confusion on the review pages of Amazon, with the reviews mostly about Buck’s novel not Bertozzi’s. This is a shame as the graphic version deserves to be more prominently featured.

I have not read the book but have meant to for some time. The graphic novel was a great introduction to it and I really enjoyed it.

Having never read The Good Earth in it's novel form but had heard it praised so often that I thought reading it as a graphic novel would be a good way to see if I would enjoy it. Now I know I would most assuredly not enjoy it. It is not a pleasant story and I was often moved to anger and grief for poor O-Lan. Yet, it is through reading of a time and place not my own that I saw the value of such a story. If you've wanted to read the book but feel like it might be daunting I think this graphic novelization would be a great way to do it. (4 stars)

The Good Earth is a book I had heard about, but never seen in print in the UK. I'm always looking for graphic novel adaptations of classic (and modern classic) texts to recommend, as well as classic books by female authors…but I'll admit to being a little wary of a book set in China, written by a white woman (especially one who worked as a missionary- I don't know much about this line of work, but the idea of converting "heathens" to the "true" religion leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth) My fears turned out to be unfounded- there could many things about this book that are inaccurate (I'm not an expert on Chinese history either), but I found that the story is, quite simply, presented without comment. Both the author and the artist refrain from making value judgements- the reader is given space to consider exactly how they would have acted if faced with the same hardships or blessed with the same successes as Wang Lung and O-Lan.

One event in particular drove home to me just how hard it must be to 'buck the trend' when everyone around you expects you to act decisively and without sentiment.. It took me a long time to realise that Wang Lung's treasured daughter, the 'Little Fool', was left disabled due to the family's poverty. If her family had enough food to give her during her first few months of life, her brain and body would have developed like a normal child's. I am fairly desensitised to stories of rural hunger, particularly after reading books set during the Communist revolutions in China and North Korea. But I was shocked to learn that so much of the physical damage caused by malnutrition is irreparable. Wang Lung loved his daughter, perhaps more than his sons (who were ordered into careers and marriages that they didn't want, and weren't suited to, in order to increase the family's wealth). This is hardly a redeeming feature- to my eyes, it would be monstrous to sell a daughter into slavery (or marriage- which is barely a step removed) But the people around Wang Lung are doing exactly that- his decision to abandon the established rules and make a pleasant home for his daughter make him (marginally!) more sympathetic. Of course, he wouldn't get much money for the Little Fool. I'll try not to think about that!

O-Lan's life will also seem wretched to many. Wang Lung is giddy on page 1 when he wakes up and realises that he will no longer need to bring his fragile father his morning tea. Now he has a slave wife to do it for him! The graphic novel doesn't explain how Wang Lung was able to barter a wife from a wealthy household who had kept her as a slave since childhood. It can be assumed that that family viewed her no more fondly than a piece of furniture (and far less fondly than a bag of gold). I found it poignant that O-Lan should work so hard for her new family and still count herself lucky. She has always slaved, but now she is slaving for her legal husband, and that is considered something of a step up (for a start, she is no longer made to prostitute herself to "honourable" guests) She is both endlessly practical and unwavering dutiful- I found myself wondering if she would even considered telling Wang Lung to keep away from her, so she would not fall pregnant with another unwanted child. How can her willingness to please her husband supersede her horror at having to smother  a newborn baby? Perhaps the hierarchical society in which O-Lan lives allows her (and others) to make these horrific decisions without hesitation or guilt: if the new child would take resources away from O-Lan's husband, her father in law and her sons, then it must die. The book does not go to lengths to explain the concept of filial piety to its Western audience; as they are applied consistently to every aspect of Wang Lung's family's life, we pick up an understanding as we go along. This is why the ending retains the power to shock. Wang Lung's children will clearly disobey their father’s dying wish and sell the land that was his life's work. A modern reader's sympathy should lie with the sons, who have been forced to bend to their father's will again and again. But the same rules that have governed their unhappy lives also kept them alive throughout famine and poverty- both sons were fed when their sister was not, after all. And importantly, Wang Lung governed his own life by the same strictures- he isn’t asking anything of his own sons that his father balked at asking him. But the world that Wang Lung’s sons will inhabit is changing rapidly- they are the generation responsible for writing new rules to replace the outdated ones. If the two sequels to The Good Earth are released as graphic novels, I will certainly check in to find out how they manage!

The plot was fairly decent but it was supposed to be a graphic novel and so the art played an equal role which absolutely failed to impress, was bland, lacked creativity and made everything in the story seem worse than it actually was.

I'm enjoying the classics as graphic novels. It makes it easier to book talk to an young adult.

3.5 Stars
A graphic novel interpretation of the classic novel, The Good Earth.
4 Stars - the narrative 
The writing reflects the original storyline and its themes well. The text was easy to follow and comprehend.
3 Stars - the artwork
The illustrations did give off the overall feeling of the characters and plot, but for such a long graphic novel, I would have liked more variety or perhaps some color to offset the tone of the art. In short, the artwork was appropriate for the story, just not my cup of tea.
I like that the story is now in a new medium for this classic story. For adaptation fans.

Net Galley Feedback

Had to DNF this one. 
The art was not for me and I found the story plodded along very slowly and wasn't as engaging as I had hoped,

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and adapted by Nick Bertozzi is a free NetGalley e-comicbook that I read in mid-June.

Please notes that I use the term 'e-comicbook' very loosely, in that this book more resembles a Great Illustrated Classics novel (extremely familiar from my youth as appearing in a grocery store's magazine display with a colorful, glossy cover and black & white pulp pages as an adaptation of a classic novel, pared-down considerably for kiddie minds). With Buck's novel being around 400-410 pages long, Bertozzi's intermingling ink drawings and narration clocks in at an attention-friendly, nearly Cliff's Notes length of 135. However, the somewhat more deep tale of Wang Lung and O-Lan (marrying late in life, working hard and rationing what little they have in the countryside while raising their children alongside the temptation and progress of a large city) is narrowed considerably to fit onto a page and its sentiment conveyed through 3-4 figure drawings.

The Good Earth was beautiful and mesmerising. The illustrations have an almost dreamlike quality, and I'm glad to have this book available for reading.

I am a big fan of graphic novels in general and while some stories can be adapted well to this format, I am not sure that every story adapts to it well. Having read the original, I was excited to see how The Good Earth would be adapted into the graphic novel format. I was disappointed when I discovered that the pictures didn’t really add to the narrative and the format distracted from the flow. My favorite graphic novels are those where the details in the pictures relate a depth of emotion and mood that the words can’t relay. The story is told through the dialogue and the pictures, making the narration unnecessary which cleans up the busyness of the page. A good premise, with a less than stellar execution.


Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth was published in 1931.  Not only was it a best seller, it won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes.  Clearly her message about a poor farming family in China whose bad fortunes forced them to move to another part of the country resonated with Americans suffering during the Great Depresson.

Nick Bertozzi has made The Good Earth more accessible with his graphic novel adaptation.  The art is black and white and sketchy looking.  It reminded me of the storyboards I've seen for a movie in progress.  The text seems to be a faithful retelling of the story (although I admit it has been many years since I read The Good Earth).  As you would expect, it has a feeling of abridgement that will leave devoted fans of the novel disappointed.

This isn't a great graphic novel, but it can certainly serve the purpose of introducing the story to people who might not have the patience or inclination to read the original.  It may even inspire readers to pick up or return to Buck's masterpiece.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

I picked the book at first because of the enticing cover and synopsis until I found out that the book is part one of the trilogies. 

Sad to say that I have to drop this book. 

I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience.