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So Big
Alternative cover edition of ASIN B00DG292UI
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"A masterpiece." — Literary Review • "A novel to read and to remember." —New York Times
Widely regarded as the masterwork of celebrated author and Algonquin Round Table mainstay Edna Ferber—who also penned other classics including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, and Cimarron—So Big is a powerful and stirring portrait of one of the most memorable women in American literature, and still resonates today with its unflinching views of poverty, sexism, and the drive for success.
Set in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, So Big tells the story of Selina Peake, orphaned at nineteen after her father is shot and killed in a gambling house. Alone and resolved to make something of her life, Selina gets a job as a schoolteacher in a farming community outside Chicago and falls in love with a kind but struggling farmer. She soon leaves the schoolhouse for long grueling days in the fields and gives birth to a son, Dirk, nicknamed “So Big.” When she finds herself unexpectedly widowed, she takes the reins of the farm, defying convention and all those around her, determined to give Dirk every opportunity to follow his dreams.
So Big is a must-read for fans of contemporary novelists such Willa Cather (O Pioneers!), Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), and Marjorie Rawlings (The Yearling).
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"A masterpiece." — Literary Review • "A novel to read and to remember." —New York Times
Widely regarded as the masterwork of celebrated author and Algonquin Round Table mainstay Edna Ferber—who also penned other classics including Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, and Cimarron—So Big is a powerful and stirring portrait of one of the most memorable women in American literature, and still resonates today with its unflinching views of poverty, sexism, and the drive for success.
Set in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, So Big tells the story of Selina Peake, orphaned at nineteen after her father is shot and killed in a gambling house. Alone and resolved to make something of her life, Selina gets a job as a schoolteacher in a farming community outside Chicago and falls in love with a kind but struggling farmer. She soon leaves the schoolhouse for long grueling days in the fields and gives birth to a son, Dirk, nicknamed “So Big.” When she finds herself unexpectedly widowed, she takes the reins of the farm, defying convention and all those around her, determined to give Dirk every opportunity to follow his dreams.
So Big is a must-read for fans of contemporary novelists such Willa Cather (O Pioneers!), Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), and Marjorie Rawlings (The Yearling).
221 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1924
1033 people are currently reading
18082 people want to read
About the author
Edna Ferber
277 books286 followersEdna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were popular in her lifetime and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber. At the age of 12, after living in Chicago, Illinois and Ottumwa, Iowa, Ferber and her family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where she graduated from high school and briefly attended Lawrence University. She took newspaper jobs at the Appleton Daily Crescent and the Milwaukee Journal before publishing her first novel. She covered the 1920 Republican National Convention and 1920 Democratic National Convention for the United Press Association.
Ferber's novels generally featured strong female protagonists, along with a rich and diverse collection of supporting characters. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons; through this technique, Ferber demonstrated her belief that people are people and that the not-so-pretty people have the best character.
Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,414 reviews
January 15, 2018
My decision to attempt to read all the Pulitzer Prize winners for fiction has netted me one wonderful, delightful, amazing discovery--this novel, So Big, by Edna Ferber. I cannot imagine I would have ever come upon it otherwise for two very sketchy reasons: one being the name which just has no compelling power for me, and the other being that I have seen the movie adaptation of Giant several times and absolutely hated it. That being my only encounter with Miss Ferber, I drew the absolutely untenable conclusion that I would not like her work.
Well, I did not like her work, I loved it. I find Edna Ferber kept making me think of her contemporary, Edith Wharton. They are nothing alike, in fact, since they have very different styles, come from completely disparate backgrounds, and write about two very different parts of the country; however, they are very alike in that they are a strong voice for women, they understand the classes they write about, and they cut to the quick the hypocrisy that they see all around them in the society they live in. Both of them seem to be saying, happiness can be had, but not if you are looking in the wrong place to ever find it.
Selina Peake DeJong is a character I am not likely to ever forget. She is a free-spirit but a hard worker. She is a person who expects a lot from life, but expects to get back only what she puts in. She is a person who experiences the beauty in everything that is simple and genuine and unique. There is no cookie-cutter that could produce a Selina. She is as individual as a piece of artwork, and a piece of artwork is what she is, in the end.
Very early in the novel we are introduced to Selina’s father, a gambler who lives sometimes at one end and sometimes at the other end of prosperity, giving her some advice about life:
“I want you to see all kinds,” he would say to her. “I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time.”
“What whole thing?”
“Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living.”
The crux of this book is about exactly that. About living. About what it is to get into the muck of life and squeeze the marrow out of the bone. And it is about the things that make a life both worthwhile and valuable...and I believe Edna Ferber would have told you, with complete sincerity, that money would not rank highly on that list.
The novel is built on contrasts. The contrast between the working man and the toff. The contrast between the wealthy and the poor. The contrast between the artist and the financier. The contrast between Selina, who lives close to the earth, and her son, Dirk, who strives not to.
I loved all these fine characters, celebrated and wept with them. I think the Pulitzer Prize committee got this one right. This is a book that is relevant today more than ever, for when has there ever been such a rush to measure life by the dollar value you can attach to it? I am ashamed for having thought of Edna Ferber as irrelevant and I am rushing out to get her other books and see if she weaves this magic more than once. Hey, I might even read Giant and find out that, aside from all that simpering and strutting that Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson and James Dean brought to the screen, there was a novel with a story and a lesson I can appreciate.
Well, I did not like her work, I loved it. I find Edna Ferber kept making me think of her contemporary, Edith Wharton. They are nothing alike, in fact, since they have very different styles, come from completely disparate backgrounds, and write about two very different parts of the country; however, they are very alike in that they are a strong voice for women, they understand the classes they write about, and they cut to the quick the hypocrisy that they see all around them in the society they live in. Both of them seem to be saying, happiness can be had, but not if you are looking in the wrong place to ever find it.
Selina Peake DeJong is a character I am not likely to ever forget. She is a free-spirit but a hard worker. She is a person who expects a lot from life, but expects to get back only what she puts in. She is a person who experiences the beauty in everything that is simple and genuine and unique. There is no cookie-cutter that could produce a Selina. She is as individual as a piece of artwork, and a piece of artwork is what she is, in the end.
Very early in the novel we are introduced to Selina’s father, a gambler who lives sometimes at one end and sometimes at the other end of prosperity, giving her some advice about life:
“I want you to see all kinds,” he would say to her. “I want you to realize that this whole thing is just a grand adventure. A fine show. The trick is to play in it and look at it at the same time.”
“What whole thing?”
“Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living.”
The crux of this book is about exactly that. About living. About what it is to get into the muck of life and squeeze the marrow out of the bone. And it is about the things that make a life both worthwhile and valuable...and I believe Edna Ferber would have told you, with complete sincerity, that money would not rank highly on that list.
The novel is built on contrasts. The contrast between the working man and the toff. The contrast between the wealthy and the poor. The contrast between the artist and the financier. The contrast between Selina, who lives close to the earth, and her son, Dirk, who strives not to.
I loved all these fine characters, celebrated and wept with them. I think the Pulitzer Prize committee got this one right. This is a book that is relevant today more than ever, for when has there ever been such a rush to measure life by the dollar value you can attach to it? I am ashamed for having thought of Edna Ferber as irrelevant and I am rushing out to get her other books and see if she weaves this magic more than once. Hey, I might even read Giant and find out that, aside from all that simpering and strutting that Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson and James Dean brought to the screen, there was a novel with a story and a lesson I can appreciate.
January 26, 2018
"The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they’re not pleasant things. That’s living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it’s just so much — just so much velvet."
Selina Peake’s father was a perceptive man indeed to impart these words of wisdom to his only daughter, words that would stay with her through life and ones that she would practice to the fullest extent possible. This extraordinary novel by Edna Ferber, winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize, is as relevant now as it would have been back in its day. It is a highly accessible classic and a pure joy to read. I began 2018 with this book, and with any luck it’s a sign of a glorious reading year to come!
Selina’s father introduced her to a way of life that likely not many young girls would have had the opportunity to experience. In 1885, at the age of sixteen, Selina moved with her father to the bustling city of Chicago, where she learned to appreciate art, literature, theater and a diversity of people. When tragedy strikes, Selina is forced to make an important choice on her own. "… the choice of earning her own living or of returning to the Vermont village and becoming a withered and sapless dried apple, with black fuzz and mould at her heart, like her aunts, the Misses Sarah and Abbie Peake. She did not hesitate." Life in High Prairie, a farming community to the south of Chicago, would be completely opposite to what she was accustomed, but she was determined to make the best of it.
A vegetable farm may not seem the setting for the grand adventure after which Selina yearned, but the unwavering spirit of this young woman was a rare quality. Selina ranks right up there in my book of literary heroines! Her capacity to recognize the beauty even in what others would consider the most mundane of objects and people made me stop and consider whether or not I take enough time to appreciate the everyday things in my own life. "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." I may never quite look at a cabbage the same again! Like her father before her, Selina also wishes to instill the appreciation for the beauty in all things to her own child. Dirk Dejong, fondly called Sobig by his mother, may be a farmer’s son, but he will be exposed to books and art just the same, despite what little use his own father rates these small luxuries. Selina has plans for Dirk, a wish for him to lead life to the fullest and experience all those things she feels she has missed out on herself. She will toil away at the land in order to provide a future away from the farm for Dirk. "All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People—all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth—growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to—to make something fine come of it."
But can we shape the life of another, even one of our own flesh and blood? What sacrifices should we make, what do we give up, in order to ensure the happiness of our children or another loved one? Can you really stop a person from making mistakes, mistakes that you recognize from your personal trials and errors? Or do these things need to be experienced first-hand for us to truly learn from them ourselves? I am at a point in my own life where I ask myself these exact questions that Edna Ferber so astutely challenges us to consider through her thoughtful writing. As a mother of two teens, one starting to make decisions about college and career, I ask myself everyday if I am doing my best for them. And what exactly is ‘my best’? How much autonomy should they be allowed, and how often should I yet take the reins and exert my own influence? It’s a balance I am certain, and one that needs to be constantly checked!
There is so much more I could say about this pearl of a novel. Better yet, you could just trust me, grab a copy, and learn for yourself that this truly was deserving of the esteemed literary award bestowed upon it. I haven’t delved much into the characters other than Selina, but there are several others that Ferber brilliantly imbues with life through her skillful pen. So Big is simply a lovely novel towards which my review cannot do justice. This book will adorn my favorites shelf for sure.
"About mistakes it’s funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad."
Selina Peake’s father was a perceptive man indeed to impart these words of wisdom to his only daughter, words that would stay with her through life and ones that she would practice to the fullest extent possible. This extraordinary novel by Edna Ferber, winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize, is as relevant now as it would have been back in its day. It is a highly accessible classic and a pure joy to read. I began 2018 with this book, and with any luck it’s a sign of a glorious reading year to come!
Selina’s father introduced her to a way of life that likely not many young girls would have had the opportunity to experience. In 1885, at the age of sixteen, Selina moved with her father to the bustling city of Chicago, where she learned to appreciate art, literature, theater and a diversity of people. When tragedy strikes, Selina is forced to make an important choice on her own. "… the choice of earning her own living or of returning to the Vermont village and becoming a withered and sapless dried apple, with black fuzz and mould at her heart, like her aunts, the Misses Sarah and Abbie Peake. She did not hesitate." Life in High Prairie, a farming community to the south of Chicago, would be completely opposite to what she was accustomed, but she was determined to make the best of it.
A vegetable farm may not seem the setting for the grand adventure after which Selina yearned, but the unwavering spirit of this young woman was a rare quality. Selina ranks right up there in my book of literary heroines! Her capacity to recognize the beauty even in what others would consider the most mundane of objects and people made me stop and consider whether or not I take enough time to appreciate the everyday things in my own life. "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." I may never quite look at a cabbage the same again! Like her father before her, Selina also wishes to instill the appreciation for the beauty in all things to her own child. Dirk Dejong, fondly called Sobig by his mother, may be a farmer’s son, but he will be exposed to books and art just the same, despite what little use his own father rates these small luxuries. Selina has plans for Dirk, a wish for him to lead life to the fullest and experience all those things she feels she has missed out on herself. She will toil away at the land in order to provide a future away from the farm for Dirk. "All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People—all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth—growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to—to make something fine come of it."
But can we shape the life of another, even one of our own flesh and blood? What sacrifices should we make, what do we give up, in order to ensure the happiness of our children or another loved one? Can you really stop a person from making mistakes, mistakes that you recognize from your personal trials and errors? Or do these things need to be experienced first-hand for us to truly learn from them ourselves? I am at a point in my own life where I ask myself these exact questions that Edna Ferber so astutely challenges us to consider through her thoughtful writing. As a mother of two teens, one starting to make decisions about college and career, I ask myself everyday if I am doing my best for them. And what exactly is ‘my best’? How much autonomy should they be allowed, and how often should I yet take the reins and exert my own influence? It’s a balance I am certain, and one that needs to be constantly checked!
There is so much more I could say about this pearl of a novel. Better yet, you could just trust me, grab a copy, and learn for yourself that this truly was deserving of the esteemed literary award bestowed upon it. I haven’t delved much into the characters other than Selina, but there are several others that Ferber brilliantly imbues with life through her skillful pen. So Big is simply a lovely novel towards which my review cannot do justice. This book will adorn my favorites shelf for sure.
"About mistakes it’s funny. You got to make your own; and not only that, if you try to keep people from making theirs they get mad."
February 10, 2017
At first I was curious about the title "So Big"....which we soon learn is the nickname
for a boy named Dirk DeJong. The nickname becomes symbolic for a theme running throughout this story pointing to what's important in life.
Another way this theme is expressed is that there are two types of people in life:
"Emeralds and Wheat"
The biggest treasure in this story, yet there are others, is Dirk's mother, Selena De Jong, who moves to a Dutch-farming community near Chicago.
She becomes a widow after her husband dies. She demonstrates inspiring work ethics
making do with what she has. Setbacks don't set her back. She values education, justice, integrity, beauty, literature, and art. She's not afraid of hard work and rolls up her sleeves. She's strong, independent, optimistic, spunky, and courageous.....a feminist before her time.
Selena encourages her son to follow his heart - be true to his deepest self- but kids are going to make their own choices....which her son does.
As much as we wish our children to take the most inspiring roads in life, it doesn't always look as if they do. As parents we just might have less influence than we think.
Some people seem to need to make mistakes themselves in order to learn a life lesson- others are inspired by observing others and avoid a few more.
What motivates one person - and not another? How much influence do we as parents really have on our children?
Maybe there is still a bigger lesson yet. How much does it really matter if our children take 'the-wrong-road' .....and make big mistakes? Who hurts more, the parent? Or the child? And is that the question to ask? Or is it possible that the challenge is to embrace the big mistakes in life head on- accept them - learn from them - forgive - and through differences love full heartedly during the hardest times?
"So Big" is a timeless novel giving us BIG THINGS to think about! Parts of the story is heartbreaking….But it's always a powerful look at humanity!
This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924.....WELL DESERVED!
The writing is lyrical.....characters come alive in the context of detail descriptive writing.
"He knew cabbage from seed to sauerkraut; he knew and grew varieties from the sturdy Flat Dutch to the early Wakefield. But they were beautiful; that they looked like jewels; that they lay like Persian patches, had never entered his head, and righty. What has the head of a cabbage, or, for that matter, of a robust, soil-stained, toiling Dutch truck farmer to do with nonsense like chrysoprase, with Jade, with Burgundy, with Persian patterns!"
for a boy named Dirk DeJong. The nickname becomes symbolic for a theme running throughout this story pointing to what's important in life.
Another way this theme is expressed is that there are two types of people in life:
"Emeralds and Wheat"
The biggest treasure in this story, yet there are others, is Dirk's mother, Selena De Jong, who moves to a Dutch-farming community near Chicago.
She becomes a widow after her husband dies. She demonstrates inspiring work ethics
making do with what she has. Setbacks don't set her back. She values education, justice, integrity, beauty, literature, and art. She's not afraid of hard work and rolls up her sleeves. She's strong, independent, optimistic, spunky, and courageous.....a feminist before her time.
Selena encourages her son to follow his heart - be true to his deepest self- but kids are going to make their own choices....which her son does.
As much as we wish our children to take the most inspiring roads in life, it doesn't always look as if they do. As parents we just might have less influence than we think.
Some people seem to need to make mistakes themselves in order to learn a life lesson- others are inspired by observing others and avoid a few more.
What motivates one person - and not another? How much influence do we as parents really have on our children?
Maybe there is still a bigger lesson yet. How much does it really matter if our children take 'the-wrong-road' .....and make big mistakes? Who hurts more, the parent? Or the child? And is that the question to ask? Or is it possible that the challenge is to embrace the big mistakes in life head on- accept them - learn from them - forgive - and through differences love full heartedly during the hardest times?
"So Big" is a timeless novel giving us BIG THINGS to think about! Parts of the story is heartbreaking….But it's always a powerful look at humanity!
This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924.....WELL DESERVED!
The writing is lyrical.....characters come alive in the context of detail descriptive writing.
"He knew cabbage from seed to sauerkraut; he knew and grew varieties from the sturdy Flat Dutch to the early Wakefield. But they were beautiful; that they looked like jewels; that they lay like Persian patches, had never entered his head, and righty. What has the head of a cabbage, or, for that matter, of a robust, soil-stained, toiling Dutch truck farmer to do with nonsense like chrysoprase, with Jade, with Burgundy, with Persian patterns!"
January 16, 2012
In the three years I've worked in a bookstore, I've had ZERO customers ask for books by Edna Ferber.
Dude. That is going to change.
I am going to start by recommending it to everyone I know (Andrew's mom is reading it next, then Andrew) and then I am going to recommend it to customers.
It's about Selina DeJong, a gambler's daughter-turned schoolteacher in a dutch village just outside of Chicago. It is definetely interesting to think that there was so much farmland in Selina's day, where now it's all steel and traffic. Selina is an intriguing character, she's smart, young (well...the novel spans a few decades), idealistic and determined. She falls in love and becomes someone she never thought she's be. She has a son who she works very, VERY hard for. Their lives happen and I couldn't pull myself away.
A page turner indeed, this book wasn't thought to be very literary when it was published in 1924 (although it won the Pulitzer Prize)but the language is rich and the story is wholly interesting.
Do read it.
Dude. That is going to change.
I am going to start by recommending it to everyone I know (Andrew's mom is reading it next, then Andrew) and then I am going to recommend it to customers.
It's about Selina DeJong, a gambler's daughter-turned schoolteacher in a dutch village just outside of Chicago. It is definetely interesting to think that there was so much farmland in Selina's day, where now it's all steel and traffic. Selina is an intriguing character, she's smart, young (well...the novel spans a few decades), idealistic and determined. She falls in love and becomes someone she never thought she's be. She has a son who she works very, VERY hard for. Their lives happen and I couldn't pull myself away.
A page turner indeed, this book wasn't thought to be very literary when it was published in 1924 (although it won the Pulitzer Prize)but the language is rich and the story is wholly interesting.
Do read it.
October 25, 2020
I really enjoyed the first half of this novel. I liked the character, Selina Peake De Jong, a lot. She went to a finishing school and was well-educated. She rather surprisingly married “beneath her” — she married a farmer whom she had initially met as his tutor. He had had a very limited education, and so she taught him the 3 R’s. At the time she was also teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in a small town in Illinois, New Prairie (fictional), south of Chicago, consisting of Dutch settlers. After getting married she too worked in the fields… It was a hard-scrabble life —their farm was not prosperous and besides taking in a crop, the crop had to be taken by them to Chicago to be sold (time period was ~1890). The novel is not heavy on a plot line, so to tell you anything more would not be a good idea. But again, I will say that the way Ferber presented Selina to the reader, I liked her and was rooting for her throughout. There were several points in the beginning to middle part of the novel where things could have turned schmaltzy, but Ferber did not take that tack — and that enhanced my appreciation of the writing.
Selina had a young son, Dirk, and she had some sort of joke with him where she called him “so big” and hence the name of the novel. A little more than halfway through the book the focus shifted from Selina to a large extent on him, who was now in his early 20s, and the novel, for me, went from a potential “really liked” 4- or 4.5-star book to a “liked” book and that’s about it. Dirk was a decent guy, but he came nowhere close to be as interesting a character as Selina. We had invested a great deal of time in learning and caring about her, and then boom zoom she pretty much drops off the map and we are forced to follow along the life of an uninspiring and somewhat boring character, Dirk. So, to me, one half of the novel was extremely engaging (a page turner), and the second half was ‘just OK’. At least that is my take on this novel. 🤨
It was written in 1924…there were a few racist sentences and sections that cast negative aspersions to Blacks and the Japanese.
I live in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, and my guess is that the fictional farming town of New Prairie where Selina and her husband lived is South Holland, Illinois, about 20-30 minutes away from where I grew up. I remember vaguely as a little boy my mom and dad taking us on small car trips on a Sunday to different areas around our home and we would occasionally drive to South Holland, and the place was essentially a ghost town. I seemed to remember my parents said the inhabitants were very religious and unlike other towns south of Chicago and close to northwest Indiana, the only thing going on in South Holland on Sunday was churchgoing. Also, in the book, mention is made of a number of different hotels and landmarks of downtown Chicago (the Palmer House, The Drake Hotel, the Wrigley Building, the Art Institute) and street names (Michigan Avenue, State Street, Halsted Street). There is a “Midwest University” with its gothic architecture….and so I figured that was my old stomping grounds, the University of Chicago in Hyde Park (because the Midway Plaisance, which is a stone’s throw away, is mentioned). I enjoyed that element of the book.
Notes:
• OMG, I was right!!! From Wikipedia: The book was inspired by the life of Antje Paarlberg in the Dutch community of South Holland, Illinois, a south Chicago suburb. 😃
• That’s really weird…this book has been around for close to 100 years, and I was aware of the title and the author but nobody in my neck of the woods ever mentioned the book and that it was based on a town very close to home.
• ‘So Big’ won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1925.
• Ferber was known for being outspoken and having a quick wit. On one occasion, she led other Jewish guests in leaving a house party after learning the host was anti-Semitic.[3] Once, after a man joked about how her suit made her resemble a man, she replied, "So does yours." (from Wikipedia)
Reviews
• https://www.lawrentian.com/archives/1...
• From a blog site, very good review but gives everything away regarding the plot so be aware of that: https://followingpulitzer.wordpress.c...
• From a blog site, https://lauragerold.blogspot.com/2017...
Selina had a young son, Dirk, and she had some sort of joke with him where she called him “so big” and hence the name of the novel. A little more than halfway through the book the focus shifted from Selina to a large extent on him, who was now in his early 20s, and the novel, for me, went from a potential “really liked” 4- or 4.5-star book to a “liked” book and that’s about it. Dirk was a decent guy, but he came nowhere close to be as interesting a character as Selina. We had invested a great deal of time in learning and caring about her, and then boom zoom she pretty much drops off the map and we are forced to follow along the life of an uninspiring and somewhat boring character, Dirk. So, to me, one half of the novel was extremely engaging (a page turner), and the second half was ‘just OK’. At least that is my take on this novel. 🤨
It was written in 1924…there were a few racist sentences and sections that cast negative aspersions to Blacks and the Japanese.
I live in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, and my guess is that the fictional farming town of New Prairie where Selina and her husband lived is South Holland, Illinois, about 20-30 minutes away from where I grew up. I remember vaguely as a little boy my mom and dad taking us on small car trips on a Sunday to different areas around our home and we would occasionally drive to South Holland, and the place was essentially a ghost town. I seemed to remember my parents said the inhabitants were very religious and unlike other towns south of Chicago and close to northwest Indiana, the only thing going on in South Holland on Sunday was churchgoing. Also, in the book, mention is made of a number of different hotels and landmarks of downtown Chicago (the Palmer House, The Drake Hotel, the Wrigley Building, the Art Institute) and street names (Michigan Avenue, State Street, Halsted Street). There is a “Midwest University” with its gothic architecture….and so I figured that was my old stomping grounds, the University of Chicago in Hyde Park (because the Midway Plaisance, which is a stone’s throw away, is mentioned). I enjoyed that element of the book.
Notes:
• OMG, I was right!!! From Wikipedia: The book was inspired by the life of Antje Paarlberg in the Dutch community of South Holland, Illinois, a south Chicago suburb. 😃
• That’s really weird…this book has been around for close to 100 years, and I was aware of the title and the author but nobody in my neck of the woods ever mentioned the book and that it was based on a town very close to home.
• ‘So Big’ won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1925.
• Ferber was known for being outspoken and having a quick wit. On one occasion, she led other Jewish guests in leaving a house party after learning the host was anti-Semitic.[3] Once, after a man joked about how her suit made her resemble a man, she replied, "So does yours." (from Wikipedia)
Reviews
• https://www.lawrentian.com/archives/1...
• From a blog site, very good review but gives everything away regarding the plot so be aware of that: https://followingpulitzer.wordpress.c...
• From a blog site, https://lauragerold.blogspot.com/2017...
October 2, 2007
This was a very different, very enjoyable read for me. Thanks for nudging this now forgotten little gem my way, Susan. Your instincts for what I would like were, as always, unerring.
So Big was Edna Ferber’s Pulitzer Prize winning book from 1924. Despite the accolades I didn’t know what to think going into it. For one, I imagined the language would seem a little dainty and old-fashioned. For another, it was mostly set on a vegetable farm – not exactly promising. The first few pages scared me, too, with talk of bustles and complex, compound feminine emotions like exhilarated wariness. Once I let it unfold, though, I discovered what a talented writer Ferber was. The prose was neither flowery nor spare. In fact, if a single word could describe it, I’d probably just call it beautiful. A great author can also make you care about things you never thought you would, farm life in Illinois in the late 19th century being the relevant case in point.
You really get a sense of one remarkable woman’s life with this book. Selina had a spark that the humdrum of her situation couldn’t squelch. Here’s what she told a friend she wanted for her young son: “Beauty. Yes. All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People – all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth – growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to—to make something fine come of it.” There are ironies in the way things play out, and in who may appreciate what, but those are thematic pleasures granted only to those who read this exceptional book.
So Big was Edna Ferber’s Pulitzer Prize winning book from 1924. Despite the accolades I didn’t know what to think going into it. For one, I imagined the language would seem a little dainty and old-fashioned. For another, it was mostly set on a vegetable farm – not exactly promising. The first few pages scared me, too, with talk of bustles and complex, compound feminine emotions like exhilarated wariness. Once I let it unfold, though, I discovered what a talented writer Ferber was. The prose was neither flowery nor spare. In fact, if a single word could describe it, I’d probably just call it beautiful. A great author can also make you care about things you never thought you would, farm life in Illinois in the late 19th century being the relevant case in point.
You really get a sense of one remarkable woman’s life with this book. Selina had a spark that the humdrum of her situation couldn’t squelch. Here’s what she told a friend she wanted for her young son: “Beauty. Yes. All the worth-while things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People – all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth – growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to—to make something fine come of it.” There are ironies in the way things play out, and in who may appreciate what, but those are thematic pleasures granted only to those who read this exceptional book.
November 17, 2021
This is a profound novel about farming, materialism, art. Ferber makes you think about what success is, what happiness is. At its center is Selina Peake, a captivating character who constantly surprises. In fact, the trajectory of the novel surprised me, veering away from easy paths. I would have been happy with many more pages but am thankful for each of the 259 pages I experienced.
February 5, 2024
Re-posting an old review which disappeared from this site. I'm thankful I kept a copy of this 2015 review.
"There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds." – Edna Ferber
“So Big” is one of the most delightful books I have read this year. It won the Putlizer Prize for the Novel in 1925. The story was set in High Prairie, New Holland, ten miles outside Chicago, circa 1885, when bananas apparently were considered "a delicacy of delicacies to the farm palate". It traced the life of Selina Peake DeJong and her beloved son, Dirk DeJong. “SoBig” was Dirk’s nickname, affectionately given because his 2-year-old response (complete with outstretched arms) to Selina’s question, “How big is baby?“ was “So-o-o-o big”.
The appeal of the novel lies in Edna Ferber’s remarkable depth of characterization. Selina, in particular, was portrayed as an intelligent, resourceful, and resilient woman who was extremely likeable and deserving of respect. The daughter of a professional gambler, she led a nomadic childhood, moving from city to city wherever her father’s business took him. At age 16, Selina had to fend for herself and earn her keep as a school teacher when her father died suddenly. While boarding with the Pool truck farming family, Selina developed a strong friendship with Roelf Pool (a boy a few years her junior) to whom she read and encouraged his pursuit of art. Selina soon married Pervus DeJong, a struggling truck farmer but he died unexpectedly when Dirk was still a young boy. For Selina, it was a hardscrabble life to farm and peddle vegetables at a time when the marketplace was solely male territory. Thus, it was immensely gratifying to follow Selina’s travails, to witness her triumph over unimaginable odds, and to observe her devotion to her son’s education and success.
“So Big” is really quite big on some sound philosophy to live by. Selina’s father did not leave her much money. However, he left her wise counsel that stood her in good stead through very hard times. The first is to embrace life in all its complexity: "Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it's just so much... velvet." Selina and Dallas O’Mara (Dirk’s one true love interest) lived out this philosophy as reflected in their unpretentious lives and the pleasure they found in embracing diverse individuals and circumstances.
The second centers on beauty and self-expression, and most importantly, being true to one’s passion. Selina had a "beauty loving eye" and discovered joy in surveying the jade and burgundy in the cabbage fields. Ferber, the omniscient narrator, had this to say in praise of Selina: "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and Burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." Selina wanted Dirk to have "all the worth-while things in life...Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People - all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth - growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it." Unfortunately, this did not materialize for Dirk despite his good looks, social panache, and excellent education.
Reading Selina's unrelenting efforts to secure the best for her son, one cannot help but wonder how far parents should go to pave the way for their children's future. Aug Hempel (a close friend's father who provided financial assistance to Selina) may be right in checking Selina's ambitions: "If you think giving your whole life to making the boy happy is going to make you happy, you ain't so smart as I took you for." How indeed do parents balance love and solicitude for their children's happiness with the need to accord them the freedom to live life as they desire? Arguably, no amount of love will allow anyone to live someone else’s life for him or her.
At the end of the novel, there was a lovely reunion between Selina and Roelf Pool who had become a famous Parisian sculptor. In contrast, the last scene had Dirk, by then a wealthy banker, returning to his apartment, bone weary. There was meager consolation in knowing that Dirk realized that the life he had hankered after was not the life he thought it would be. I like to believe that Dirk had a chance to find his way home to his love of architecture and to things that truly matter.
"There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds." – Edna Ferber
“So Big” is one of the most delightful books I have read this year. It won the Putlizer Prize for the Novel in 1925. The story was set in High Prairie, New Holland, ten miles outside Chicago, circa 1885, when bananas apparently were considered "a delicacy of delicacies to the farm palate". It traced the life of Selina Peake DeJong and her beloved son, Dirk DeJong. “SoBig” was Dirk’s nickname, affectionately given because his 2-year-old response (complete with outstretched arms) to Selina’s question, “How big is baby?“ was “So-o-o-o big”.
The appeal of the novel lies in Edna Ferber’s remarkable depth of characterization. Selina, in particular, was portrayed as an intelligent, resourceful, and resilient woman who was extremely likeable and deserving of respect. The daughter of a professional gambler, she led a nomadic childhood, moving from city to city wherever her father’s business took him. At age 16, Selina had to fend for herself and earn her keep as a school teacher when her father died suddenly. While boarding with the Pool truck farming family, Selina developed a strong friendship with Roelf Pool (a boy a few years her junior) to whom she read and encouraged his pursuit of art. Selina soon married Pervus DeJong, a struggling truck farmer but he died unexpectedly when Dirk was still a young boy. For Selina, it was a hardscrabble life to farm and peddle vegetables at a time when the marketplace was solely male territory. Thus, it was immensely gratifying to follow Selina’s travails, to witness her triumph over unimaginable odds, and to observe her devotion to her son’s education and success.
“So Big” is really quite big on some sound philosophy to live by. Selina’s father did not leave her much money. However, he left her wise counsel that stood her in good stead through very hard times. The first is to embrace life in all its complexity: "Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it's just so much... velvet." Selina and Dallas O’Mara (Dirk’s one true love interest) lived out this philosophy as reflected in their unpretentious lives and the pleasure they found in embracing diverse individuals and circumstances.
The second centers on beauty and self-expression, and most importantly, being true to one’s passion. Selina had a "beauty loving eye" and discovered joy in surveying the jade and burgundy in the cabbage fields. Ferber, the omniscient narrator, had this to say in praise of Selina: "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and Burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." Selina wanted Dirk to have "all the worth-while things in life...Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People - all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth - growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it." Unfortunately, this did not materialize for Dirk despite his good looks, social panache, and excellent education.
Reading Selina's unrelenting efforts to secure the best for her son, one cannot help but wonder how far parents should go to pave the way for their children's future. Aug Hempel (a close friend's father who provided financial assistance to Selina) may be right in checking Selina's ambitions: "If you think giving your whole life to making the boy happy is going to make you happy, you ain't so smart as I took you for." How indeed do parents balance love and solicitude for their children's happiness with the need to accord them the freedom to live life as they desire? Arguably, no amount of love will allow anyone to live someone else’s life for him or her.
At the end of the novel, there was a lovely reunion between Selina and Roelf Pool who had become a famous Parisian sculptor. In contrast, the last scene had Dirk, by then a wealthy banker, returning to his apartment, bone weary. There was meager consolation in knowing that Dirk realized that the life he had hankered after was not the life he thought it would be. I like to believe that Dirk had a chance to find his way home to his love of architecture and to things that truly matter.
August 28, 2020
2020 has has been a fabulous reading year for me so far. One fine read after another and it's only January.
This was yet another fabulous novel with a wonderful story, a marvelous heroine and a powerful ending, which affected me so deeply that I need some time to gather my wits and thoughts in order to write a fuller review.
Highly recommended.
This was yet another fabulous novel with a wonderful story, a marvelous heroine and a powerful ending, which affected me so deeply that I need some time to gather my wits and thoughts in order to write a fuller review.
Highly recommended.
January 6, 2017
Surprise. What a delightful experience to start a reading year with a "gem" if you will. Another formerly unread choice in our book group year of Pultizer Prize Winners, I truthfully did not hold high expectations. I have questioned whether or not the books we have already read have been dated and relevant at their times but truthfully antiquated in language and more historical in importance. While I did find numerous words I didn't know in this novel like the clothing: panniers, plastrons, reveres, etc. I found the writing style to be strong and one of the greatest strengths to be the characterizations. These people: Selina, Dirk, Roelf Pool and Dallas all lived and breathed for me.
There were two philosophies that Selina had been taught to measure and evaluate living. First, she needed to embrace life - all of life: " Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living." Secondly, you had to be true to your passion and center life on beauty and self-expression. Both philosophies are explored in the book with Selina being able to live both, but yet she cannot teach these concepts to her only son.
The characters, their experiences and the timeless relevancy of this novel led to some rich and engaging discussion. There was no need for organization. We just jumped into the discussion asking our own driving questions. "What is the significance and meaning of the title?" "How does a parent balance insights and desires for a child while yet allowing that child freedom?" "What is beauty?" "What would have happened to Selina if she hadn't been required to run the farm?" "Would Dirk find happiness and a rich life?""Let's examine the importance of reading in this novel." "Hands were certainly a strong image. How many times were they referenced?"
What was surprising for me and personally enriching were the humble and honest connections people made to this book. Though we have been together for close to forty years, I learned some things about some of these friend's lives that I didn't know. I love them even more. This book and other's insights provided the basis for a memorable and delightful afternoon.
There were two philosophies that Selina had been taught to measure and evaluate living. First, she needed to embrace life - all of life: " Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living." Secondly, you had to be true to your passion and center life on beauty and self-expression. Both philosophies are explored in the book with Selina being able to live both, but yet she cannot teach these concepts to her only son.
The characters, their experiences and the timeless relevancy of this novel led to some rich and engaging discussion. There was no need for organization. We just jumped into the discussion asking our own driving questions. "What is the significance and meaning of the title?" "How does a parent balance insights and desires for a child while yet allowing that child freedom?" "What is beauty?" "What would have happened to Selina if she hadn't been required to run the farm?" "Would Dirk find happiness and a rich life?""Let's examine the importance of reading in this novel." "Hands were certainly a strong image. How many times were they referenced?"
What was surprising for me and personally enriching were the humble and honest connections people made to this book. Though we have been together for close to forty years, I learned some things about some of these friend's lives that I didn't know. I love them even more. This book and other's insights provided the basis for a memorable and delightful afternoon.
March 10, 2023
I first read So Big by Edna Ferber in 1947. The book won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. I was surprised at how much about the book I remembered. But it seems that in this reading I was more interested in the aspects about farming. Ferber is an excellent storyteller. From the pages, her unique characters jumped.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is ten hours and fourteen minutes. Cassandra Campbell does an excellent job narrating the book.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is ten hours and fourteen minutes. Cassandra Campbell does an excellent job narrating the book.
June 8, 2019
This book quietly and unassumingly seduced me into unadulterated love. I would think anyone from the Midwest could bond with this book and those of us from Illinois especially. I believe it also has a universal quality. Though it takes place between the late 19th to early 20th centuries, I can't imagine anyone not knowing of someone who went through these types of challenges even in our current times. These characters were so deeply personal to me despite all of them having lived before my parents were born.
I thought of my Maternal Grandmother who reminded me of Selina, having worked on an IL farm with no running water as a live-in housekeeper. She did this as a single mother of two daughters for nothing more than room and board and an unwritten promise to inherit the farm when the man died. She also worked two other jobs concurrently to make ends meet trying to give my mom and her sister what she never had. And she did, she sent my mom to college.
I also thought of my Paternal Grandparents whose parents emigrated from Ireland and started a small town IL bank that lasted through the great depression. They didn't want for anything, but had unpretentious small town values like Mr. Hemple.
I thought of my Mom who reminded me a lot of Selina with her love of literature and the arts and who was a special ed teacher who had a loving acceptance of everyone.
I thought of my father, who reminded me of Mr. Hemple. My dad was a small town boy who got his first job in Chicago at the most prestigious accounting firm at the time. He did very well but remained down to earth and unpretentious, to the point where people working for him had much larger homes and fancier things than we did.
I thought of one of my best friends who lived in Chicago and raised her daughter as a single mom. And I thought of myself and how I've loved and admired all of these people. Familiarity and great writing are what made me love this book.
Of course, there were many differences in the characters to the people I thought of, but they are so real that I'm sure everyone will see someone they know or have known. There were some less flattering characters that also made me think of people I've known. Besides the rich characters, there are vivid descriptions of the late 19th and early 20th century Illinois landscape in and around Chicago. The architecture, hi-life, low life, city life, and country life are all described by a great writer who surely must have seen it all herself.
I guess I should be saying more about the story, but I couldn't help wasting time talking about how it made me feel. I do confess that there were times when I was a little bored, but they didn't last long. I was disappointed when the book started being more about Selina's son Dirk than about her, but then it got really good and I love how everything came together. I love, love, love this book. It won't be for everyone, because there's no mystery, no action, no dramatic intrigue, just life, beautiful life and that's enough for me.
I thought of my Maternal Grandmother who reminded me of Selina, having worked on an IL farm with no running water as a live-in housekeeper. She did this as a single mother of two daughters for nothing more than room and board and an unwritten promise to inherit the farm when the man died. She also worked two other jobs concurrently to make ends meet trying to give my mom and her sister what she never had. And she did, she sent my mom to college.
I also thought of my Paternal Grandparents whose parents emigrated from Ireland and started a small town IL bank that lasted through the great depression. They didn't want for anything, but had unpretentious small town values like Mr. Hemple.
I thought of my Mom who reminded me a lot of Selina with her love of literature and the arts and who was a special ed teacher who had a loving acceptance of everyone.
I thought of my father, who reminded me of Mr. Hemple. My dad was a small town boy who got his first job in Chicago at the most prestigious accounting firm at the time. He did very well but remained down to earth and unpretentious, to the point where people working for him had much larger homes and fancier things than we did.
I thought of one of my best friends who lived in Chicago and raised her daughter as a single mom. And I thought of myself and how I've loved and admired all of these people. Familiarity and great writing are what made me love this book.
Of course, there were many differences in the characters to the people I thought of, but they are so real that I'm sure everyone will see someone they know or have known. There were some less flattering characters that also made me think of people I've known. Besides the rich characters, there are vivid descriptions of the late 19th and early 20th century Illinois landscape in and around Chicago. The architecture, hi-life, low life, city life, and country life are all described by a great writer who surely must have seen it all herself.
I guess I should be saying more about the story, but I couldn't help wasting time talking about how it made me feel. I do confess that there were times when I was a little bored, but they didn't last long. I was disappointed when the book started being more about Selina's son Dirk than about her, but then it got really good and I love how everything came together. I love, love, love this book. It won't be for everyone, because there's no mystery, no action, no dramatic intrigue, just life, beautiful life and that's enough for me.
September 6, 2020
“All the worthwhile things in life. All mixed up. Rooms in candle-light. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People--all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth--growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to--to make something fine come of it.”
Yes, this novel is certainly about all the worthwhile things: beauty and work and struggle and satisfaction. It’s warm and true, and I want to say a big thank you to Sue for her enthusiastic recommendation of this wonderful book.
I read an old library copy, and I can’t tell you how comfortable it felt turning the faded pages; bringing back the joy of reading I had as a child; looking forward to every reading session as I did back then; and toward the end, snatching snippets of reading time to finish a page standing up.
“The whole story of the last twelve years of Selina’s life was written in her two hands.”
Selina is a unique heroine. The daughter of a gambler, her childhood isn’t exactly secure, but her father instills something in her that is very special. She becomes a country schoolteacher, which leads her unexpectedly to taking on the farming life. More than anything, she wants her son to have all the things she didn’t have. She has good instincts, and develops a remarkable clear sightedness. She doesn’t seem to get what she wants, but what she gets feels perfect all the same.
This is a Chicago story, an Illinois story, an American story. It made me feel an affection for my country that has been mostly absent lately. Underneath our division and greed and injustice and superficiality, there is still sometimes an admirable pioneering spirit, a willingness to roll up our sleeves and work hard for something that seems impossible but that we believe in.
I was reminded of my grandmother. Like Selina and her So Big, my grandmother put all of her hopes and dreams into her son after my grandfather died. She raised her small children alone with much difficulty and the kind of hard work described in this novel. Many years later, she often sat on the couch in her apartment with my brother and me, sharing her over sized book of museum art prints. I loved that book, and I loved that she’d never traveled or went to college, but had so much love for music and books and art, and she instilled that in all of her family.
I enjoyed the way Ferber gave us glimpses forward in the story, whetting my appetite for what was to come. Her style was smooth and readable, but full of smart surprises. I can envision her holding her own at the Algonquin Round Table, bringing her Midwestern brilliance to the mix.
And she doesn’t give us a storybook ending to So Big. It’s real, but not without hope. Perfect.
“You just go until you come to a closed door. And you say ‘Open Sesame!’ and there you are.”
Yes, this novel is certainly about all the worthwhile things: beauty and work and struggle and satisfaction. It’s warm and true, and I want to say a big thank you to Sue for her enthusiastic recommendation of this wonderful book.
I read an old library copy, and I can’t tell you how comfortable it felt turning the faded pages; bringing back the joy of reading I had as a child; looking forward to every reading session as I did back then; and toward the end, snatching snippets of reading time to finish a page standing up.
“The whole story of the last twelve years of Selina’s life was written in her two hands.”
Selina is a unique heroine. The daughter of a gambler, her childhood isn’t exactly secure, but her father instills something in her that is very special. She becomes a country schoolteacher, which leads her unexpectedly to taking on the farming life. More than anything, she wants her son to have all the things she didn’t have. She has good instincts, and develops a remarkable clear sightedness. She doesn’t seem to get what she wants, but what she gets feels perfect all the same.
This is a Chicago story, an Illinois story, an American story. It made me feel an affection for my country that has been mostly absent lately. Underneath our division and greed and injustice and superficiality, there is still sometimes an admirable pioneering spirit, a willingness to roll up our sleeves and work hard for something that seems impossible but that we believe in.
I was reminded of my grandmother. Like Selina and her So Big, my grandmother put all of her hopes and dreams into her son after my grandfather died. She raised her small children alone with much difficulty and the kind of hard work described in this novel. Many years later, she often sat on the couch in her apartment with my brother and me, sharing her over sized book of museum art prints. I loved that book, and I loved that she’d never traveled or went to college, but had so much love for music and books and art, and she instilled that in all of her family.
I enjoyed the way Ferber gave us glimpses forward in the story, whetting my appetite for what was to come. Her style was smooth and readable, but full of smart surprises. I can envision her holding her own at the Algonquin Round Table, bringing her Midwestern brilliance to the mix.
And she doesn’t give us a storybook ending to So Big. It’s real, but not without hope. Perfect.
“You just go until you come to a closed door. And you say ‘Open Sesame!’ and there you are.”
September 6, 2021
Sobig is a spoiled kid sort of like the protagonist in The Magnificent Ambersons by Tarkington, but far more enjoyable as a character. His adventures in rural (soon to be suburban Chicago) Illinois with his fascinating and exuberant mother were delightful to read if peppered with some period racism (Japs, darkies). This won the Pulitzer in 1925 and looking into it, other than the posthumous publishing of Billy Budd by Melville, it was not a banner year for American literature with no output from heavyweights Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Lewis, or Hemingway. While it is a fun book full of a mother's love and the foibles of youth, it is not necessarily an epic book. I think its interest lies in the complicity of the two protagonists and in the evolution of the countryside near Chicago as the industrial economy overran and demolished the small farmers. I find the theme of a dying rural America is quite common in this early Pulitzers probably cumulating in the epic The Grapes of Wrath, winner in 1940.My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
September 23, 2020
Edna Ferber is one of my favorite writers. I have devoured all of her available work at my favorite 'private' library, Project Gutenberg. That is where I discovered her and fell in love with her style and with the wonderful character Emma McChesney. Nine of the ten Ferber titles in my GR book list were read at Gutenberg.
So in March 2020 when I noticed a new Ferber title at PG, I was thrilled. So Big is a novel Ferber published in 1924; it won her the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. That I did not know at the time; I just knew I wanted to read it. But I have been concentrating more on print books these days and until just a few weeks ago was not reading anything at all from Gutenberg. But still....I just HAD to read So Big.
Well, being a self-indulgent sort of person when books are involved, I took myself to Thriftbooks and found a copy there (also one of Giant, and one of Great Son, other Ferber titles I have not yet read). And that is the story of how I managed to read a print copy of So Big.
One more bit of trivia if you can bear with me a minute. Last week, I happened to have the tv on for a few minutes one afternoon. I didn't have the sound on, wasn't really paying attention, I just wanted something to look at while wallowing in my blue lounge chair waiting for my back muscles to relax after some yard work that made them cranky. Without giving anything away I can tell you that late last night I got to the point in the book that was so close to the scenes I saw in the movie that I got up and went to the computer to do research. Sure enough, this book has been adapted for the screen three times, and the 1953 version is what was playing that day last week. I am so glad I did not really tune in and watch (what a spoiler that would have been!), but now I plan to find it on Youtube and see how closely that version of the movie followed the book.
Yeah, yeah, get to the book, already, right? Right.
We begin by learning why So Big was called So Big when his real name was Dirk. You know how you can ask someone how much they love you and they are supposed to fling their arms wide to their sides and answer This Much? That is how So Big got his nickname. He would help his mother Selina in the garden of their farm, and she would stop and say how big is baby? And he would stretch his arms wide and say 'So Big'.
So now we know the why of the title, but the who builds up slower. Selina had an unusual childhood and youth. Her father was a gambling man whose life was lived on a roller coaster of feast or famine. When her mother died Selina was sent to Vermont to live with two maiden aunts, but the life nearly flattened her and at age twelve she was able to return to her father's side. Her father, whose philosophy was that life was a grand adventure and you must explore and enjoy it all.
He was killed accidentally when Selina was nineteen. What was she to do then? It was 1888 and there were truly not many options for a penniless single woman in Chicago. Her friend from boarding school asked her father to arrange a teaching job for Selina, a job ten miles away in High
Prairie. She is to board with a farm family and the very first day makes everyone laugh because she thought all the fields full of cabbages were beautiful. The farmers just saw cabbages.
And that is Selina's best feature (or her sin, depending on your point of view): she finds Beauty in life and is unafraid to express her delight when she does. Even if that is simply not done. She has a zest for life. She may not be traditionally pretty, but she has a quality about her that makes her memorable. The rest of the book follows her life after she marries, and shares her hopes and dreams for her son Dirk (aka So Big). And the reality that he makes of it himself.
This book is a not so subtle dig at Society and Monetary Wealth. What seems important versus what truly is worthwhile. I adored every moment of it and was SO happy to be back in Edna's world.
So in March 2020 when I noticed a new Ferber title at PG, I was thrilled. So Big is a novel Ferber published in 1924; it won her the 1925 Pulitzer Prize. That I did not know at the time; I just knew I wanted to read it. But I have been concentrating more on print books these days and until just a few weeks ago was not reading anything at all from Gutenberg. But still....I just HAD to read So Big.
Well, being a self-indulgent sort of person when books are involved, I took myself to Thriftbooks and found a copy there (also one of Giant, and one of Great Son, other Ferber titles I have not yet read). And that is the story of how I managed to read a print copy of So Big.
One more bit of trivia if you can bear with me a minute. Last week, I happened to have the tv on for a few minutes one afternoon. I didn't have the sound on, wasn't really paying attention, I just wanted something to look at while wallowing in my blue lounge chair waiting for my back muscles to relax after some yard work that made them cranky. Without giving anything away I can tell you that late last night I got to the point in the book that was so close to the scenes I saw in the movie that I got up and went to the computer to do research. Sure enough, this book has been adapted for the screen three times, and the 1953 version is what was playing that day last week. I am so glad I did not really tune in and watch (what a spoiler that would have been!), but now I plan to find it on Youtube and see how closely that version of the movie followed the book.
Yeah, yeah, get to the book, already, right? Right.
We begin by learning why So Big was called So Big when his real name was Dirk. You know how you can ask someone how much they love you and they are supposed to fling their arms wide to their sides and answer This Much? That is how So Big got his nickname. He would help his mother Selina in the garden of their farm, and she would stop and say how big is baby? And he would stretch his arms wide and say 'So Big'.
So now we know the why of the title, but the who builds up slower. Selina had an unusual childhood and youth. Her father was a gambling man whose life was lived on a roller coaster of feast or famine. When her mother died Selina was sent to Vermont to live with two maiden aunts, but the life nearly flattened her and at age twelve she was able to return to her father's side. Her father, whose philosophy was that life was a grand adventure and you must explore and enjoy it all.
He was killed accidentally when Selina was nineteen. What was she to do then? It was 1888 and there were truly not many options for a penniless single woman in Chicago. Her friend from boarding school asked her father to arrange a teaching job for Selina, a job ten miles away in High
Prairie. She is to board with a farm family and the very first day makes everyone laugh because she thought all the fields full of cabbages were beautiful. The farmers just saw cabbages.
And that is Selina's best feature (or her sin, depending on your point of view): she finds Beauty in life and is unafraid to express her delight when she does. Even if that is simply not done. She has a zest for life. She may not be traditionally pretty, but she has a quality about her that makes her memorable. The rest of the book follows her life after she marries, and shares her hopes and dreams for her son Dirk (aka So Big). And the reality that he makes of it himself.
This book is a not so subtle dig at Society and Monetary Wealth. What seems important versus what truly is worthwhile. I adored every moment of it and was SO happy to be back in Edna's world.
April 18, 2020
This was my second Edna Ferber novel (the first being "Giant"), and it feels like I've discovered a well-kept secret of the literary world.
"So Big" is a great story about a young woman who grows up in various American cities, only to be disillusioned with what life "should be" after getting married to a poor Dutch farmer and toiling in the fields. But it's not just that: It's about believing that life is a grand adventure, "so much velvet." And then going out to find that, to be that person you envisioned yourself as, only to discover years later that you are not at all where you thought you'd be, who you thought you'd be. And how do you reconcile that? But Ferber cunningly shows us that the adventure is within us, that the turns and surprises are what we make of them, and that in the end, it is our spirit that dictates our love -- and interest -- in life. It is our character, Ferber seems to be saying, that makes life an adventure.
What I like best about Ferber is how she writes and the women she writes about. Her female heroines are quietly independent, fiercely strong without being bitchy or nagging. These characters suggest feminism without the blunt edges. They are, simply, women you'd want to meet. And that, along with her sweeping way of painting a portrait of a landscape on which lives thrive and turn, is what will keep you turning the pages.
"So Big" is a great story about a young woman who grows up in various American cities, only to be disillusioned with what life "should be" after getting married to a poor Dutch farmer and toiling in the fields. But it's not just that: It's about believing that life is a grand adventure, "so much velvet." And then going out to find that, to be that person you envisioned yourself as, only to discover years later that you are not at all where you thought you'd be, who you thought you'd be. And how do you reconcile that? But Ferber cunningly shows us that the adventure is within us, that the turns and surprises are what we make of them, and that in the end, it is our spirit that dictates our love -- and interest -- in life. It is our character, Ferber seems to be saying, that makes life an adventure.
What I like best about Ferber is how she writes and the women she writes about. Her female heroines are quietly independent, fiercely strong without being bitchy or nagging. These characters suggest feminism without the blunt edges. They are, simply, women you'd want to meet. And that, along with her sweeping way of painting a portrait of a landscape on which lives thrive and turn, is what will keep you turning the pages.
November 21, 2017
Winner of the Pulitzer prize, this book was a surprise to me. Written in 1924, the themes are timeless and the wisdom and insight as appropriate now as they were then. It is beautifully written and I found myself highlighting many passages.
Highly recommended!
Highly recommended!
April 23, 2015
This style and depth of characterization, what we "know" about the main protagonists, those aspects are presented in a lovely old fashioned way, but not in a dated sense. This book definitely stands the test of time. I have to say that I enjoyed the first 2/3rds far more than the last 1/3rd. Selena's sentimentality in the later parts, and the Dirk progression lost a star for me. Knowing all the Chicago land marks, and how she fictionalized South Holland and U. of Chicago especially, that was intriguing. Almost 60 years before my own people were selling vegetables bought in those downtown markets, early mornings there had not altered all that much re Ferber's description. Minus the horse and wagons, lines of huge trucks and piggy backs by the rail lines! But quite similar.
Seeing Chicago's economy and opportunity during this period and now; there is such an immense contrast. It is so sad. In between were so many decades of boom that I did see. But not for nearly 20 years now. Dirk would never get in U.of C. today. Wrong gender, wrong race, wrong background, wrong prior schooling, etc. But this book brought to mind so eloquently the periods I have seen where you could go from picking fields to manufacturing lines, to office, to sales or ownership, to changing careers- and often within a decade. All you needed to do was work endlessly and have a goal. It truly was empowering to thousands. And I was lucky enough to live that entire progression. The beautiful things were gathered (as Ferber saw the goal of life beyond money) far, far more easily as well. Chicago and Silena DeJong cored the "can do" in So Big.
I enjoyed the last 20 pages in my issue that did an entire review of Edna Ferber's life and her Algonquin Round Table crew. Tons of pictures and asides to her travel and connections. You could see her antsy movement in the photos, and hear the tales that she suffered no fools in the "hear-says". Very, very interesting for a girl from Kalamazoo.
Seeing Chicago's economy and opportunity during this period and now; there is such an immense contrast. It is so sad. In between were so many decades of boom that I did see. But not for nearly 20 years now. Dirk would never get in U.of C. today. Wrong gender, wrong race, wrong background, wrong prior schooling, etc. But this book brought to mind so eloquently the periods I have seen where you could go from picking fields to manufacturing lines, to office, to sales or ownership, to changing careers- and often within a decade. All you needed to do was work endlessly and have a goal. It truly was empowering to thousands. And I was lucky enough to live that entire progression. The beautiful things were gathered (as Ferber saw the goal of life beyond money) far, far more easily as well. Chicago and Silena DeJong cored the "can do" in So Big.
I enjoyed the last 20 pages in my issue that did an entire review of Edna Ferber's life and her Algonquin Round Table crew. Tons of pictures and asides to her travel and connections. You could see her antsy movement in the photos, and hear the tales that she suffered no fools in the "hear-says". Very, very interesting for a girl from Kalamazoo.
March 20, 2022
Free for Audible UK-Plus members. I have been told it is excellent!
Do you ever read a book and keep thinking, I ought to like this more than I do?! This is what's been going through my head from start to finish! There is absolutely nothing wrong with this book, but it does nothing for me. Similar stories have been told before and the characters do not grab my heart, not one of them!
Here is why you might like this book and why it could be worth reading, that is for you, but not really for me.
The book draws a good picture of the Dutch pioneers who settled outside of Chicago in the 1880s. We follow a farming family and the development of Chicago as a city through to the years between the wars. Having myself lived in Chicago, I kept thinking I should have been more interested, but there wasn't much new to me in what I read.
The book looks at success and tries to determine what that is, particularly for one mother and her son. It looks also at mother and son relationships. We love our kids but as they mature our views on life may diverge.
Humor? No, there isn't much.
The audiobook is read b y Gabrielle de Cuir very well. Her intonations vary to fit the person speaking. I ought to be impressed, but again I wasn't. For me it was overdramatized. Three stars for the narration.
I am not going to tell you the book is bad. It accurately draws a picture of a past time and place. It looks at interesting questions, but it is me that is rating it and I found it boring. This is a good solid book but not for me. Three stars is as high as I can go for both the book and the audio narration.
Do you ever read a book and keep thinking, I ought to like this more than I do?! This is what's been going through my head from start to finish! There is absolutely nothing wrong with this book, but it does nothing for me. Similar stories have been told before and the characters do not grab my heart, not one of them!
Here is why you might like this book and why it could be worth reading, that is for you, but not really for me.
The book draws a good picture of the Dutch pioneers who settled outside of Chicago in the 1880s. We follow a farming family and the development of Chicago as a city through to the years between the wars. Having myself lived in Chicago, I kept thinking I should have been more interested, but there wasn't much new to me in what I read.
The book looks at success and tries to determine what that is, particularly for one mother and her son. It looks also at mother and son relationships. We love our kids but as they mature our views on life may diverge.
Humor? No, there isn't much.
The audiobook is read b y Gabrielle de Cuir very well. Her intonations vary to fit the person speaking. I ought to be impressed, but again I wasn't. For me it was overdramatized. Three stars for the narration.
I am not going to tell you the book is bad. It accurately draws a picture of a past time and place. It looks at interesting questions, but it is me that is rating it and I found it boring. This is a good solid book but not for me. Three stars is as high as I can go for both the book and the audio narration.
December 30, 2019
The titular character is Dirk DeJong, a farm boy of Dutch ancestry. His mother calls him So Big after the common childhood question, 'How big is baby?'
But before there is the story of So Big, there is the story of Selina Peake, his mother. Her mother died young and her maiden aunts brought her up. She loved to read. She became a teacher and moved to High Prairie Illinois, southwest of Chicago. The area was farm country. A local farmer, Pervus DeJong, fell for her. The rest is the story of their marriage and the coming of age and life of Dirk.
I read this on Wikipedia:
So Big is a 1924 novel written by Edna Ferber. The book was inspired by the life of Antje Paarlberg in the Dutch community of South Holland, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1925.
I find a lot of Pulitzer Prize winners hard to read. Not so this book. I fell in love with the characters, even though I sometimes did not like them!! The characters were very real for the time period and the culture.
5 stars
But before there is the story of So Big, there is the story of Selina Peake, his mother. Her mother died young and her maiden aunts brought her up. She loved to read. She became a teacher and moved to High Prairie Illinois, southwest of Chicago. The area was farm country. A local farmer, Pervus DeJong, fell for her. The rest is the story of their marriage and the coming of age and life of Dirk.
I read this on Wikipedia:
So Big is a 1924 novel written by Edna Ferber. The book was inspired by the life of Antje Paarlberg in the Dutch community of South Holland, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1925.
I find a lot of Pulitzer Prize winners hard to read. Not so this book. I fell in love with the characters, even though I sometimes did not like them!! The characters were very real for the time period and the culture.
5 stars
May 2, 2024
Satisfying, old-fashioned (indeed, old) and yet fresh. This Pulitzer prizewinner from 1924, which I’d never heard of, fell into my lap and I found myself reading about cabbages, and asparagus, and dreams of art and adventure, and then big money and fine clothes and the emptiness those bring.
January 11, 2025
What an unexpected GEM! So grateful to Susan for nominating this as a buddy read option. This will be showing up on my best reads of 2025 list. 😂
May 6, 2019
After the Annotated podcast schooled me on under-read Edna Ferber, the hugely successful author from 100 years or so ago, I put this book on my TBR and I'm glad I did. Sometimes I do not have the endurance to get through older novels and classics, I read so many books now, I have lost some of the dedication from my younger days. But SO BIG was very very readable, I breezed through it in just a couple of days.
An awful lot happens in this book, but it doesn't have a traditional plot. It just follows Selina Peake, who begins her life as the spunky daughter of a flighty gambler left suddenly on her own. Selina is very much on her own, but she's one of those people who is powered by optimism. At first this made me wary, did I want to read a book about a turn-of-the-century manic pixie dream girl? But life has plenty in store for Selina and it is not at all what you expect. Ferber likes to tip her hand every so often and let you know how the plot is about to turn and every time it's like, "Oh nooooooo."
This book has a lot to say about parenting, about the way people can sacrifice for their children and then find themselves in a very different place than they expected. I like that it doesn't quite canonize Selina, it lets her make real mistakes, even while it finds her passion to be vital and important. As we are told, there are two kinds of people: wheat and emeralds, and it's quite a surprise that Selina ends up being the former. In 9 books out of 10 she would have been the latter, and that zig instead of zag is what makes the book.
An awful lot happens in this book, but it doesn't have a traditional plot. It just follows Selina Peake, who begins her life as the spunky daughter of a flighty gambler left suddenly on her own. Selina is very much on her own, but she's one of those people who is powered by optimism. At first this made me wary, did I want to read a book about a turn-of-the-century manic pixie dream girl? But life has plenty in store for Selina and it is not at all what you expect. Ferber likes to tip her hand every so often and let you know how the plot is about to turn and every time it's like, "Oh nooooooo."
This book has a lot to say about parenting, about the way people can sacrifice for their children and then find themselves in a very different place than they expected. I like that it doesn't quite canonize Selina, it lets her make real mistakes, even while it finds her passion to be vital and important. As we are told, there are two kinds of people: wheat and emeralds, and it's quite a surprise that Selina ends up being the former. In 9 books out of 10 she would have been the latter, and that zig instead of zag is what makes the book.
January 17, 2018
So Big is a novel about the adventure called life. It has serious messages about family, motherhood, hardship, and most importantly, finding beauty. I am very glad to have met Selina, who lived in several homes in several cities during her childhood, than moved to a Dutch farming community. Alhough she faces challenges previously unknown to her, she tries to keep her dignity and view of life amidst physical, financial, and mental hardships.
But this story is not only about her. I agree with a previous reviewer who said that this book was about contrast. We meet smart and dumm, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, visionary and “near-sighted”, and everything in between. All the characters - even the ones who we meet for a short time - are so well described, that we almost feel like knowing them. And maybe, we do. I could relate some of them to people I know, and sometimes, to myself. Ms Ferber knows the nature of people, and shows it in a wonderful way.
This was my first book by Edna Ferber, and I love her work! This one is definitely a must read.
But this story is not only about her. I agree with a previous reviewer who said that this book was about contrast. We meet smart and dumm, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, visionary and “near-sighted”, and everything in between. All the characters - even the ones who we meet for a short time - are so well described, that we almost feel like knowing them. And maybe, we do. I could relate some of them to people I know, and sometimes, to myself. Ms Ferber knows the nature of people, and shows it in a wonderful way.
This was my first book by Edna Ferber, and I love her work! This one is definitely a must read.
September 27, 2018
Selina is a wonderful character!
June 23, 2022
Edna Ferber’s novel So Big is the captivating story of an independent woman and her son in the Chicago area in the late 19th and early 20th century. The book contrasts urban and rural life, celebrates the value of determination and hard work, and calls into question the increasing materialism of American life. Ferber explores these themes and more through the story of Selina Peake DeJong and her son Dirk, whom she fondly nicknamed “So Big.”
Selina grew up primarily in Chicago, living with her gambler father and—when his luck was good—enjoying the finer things in life. Her father encouraged her to think of life as a great adventure, filled with beauty. Unfortunately, Selina’s father died when she was 19, and she was left with a choice of living with two unmarried aunts in Vermont or earning her own living.
Vermont was not really an option. Selina had lived with those aunts for three years when her father’s luck was not so good. She thought the two women “smelled of apples—of withered apples that have rotted at the core.” So Selina didn’t hesitate. She chose independence and took a teaching job in High Prairie, a farming community of Dutch immigrants southwest of Chicago.
The first half of the book describes Selina’s life in this community whose ways were so strange to her at first. Soon she marries. Her husband, Pervus DeJong, is a well-meaning but unsuccessful farmer. It’s not the life she had imagined for herself. “There were days when the feeling of unreality possessed her. She, a truck farmer’s wife, living in High Prairie the rest of her days! Why, no! No! Was this the great adventure that her father had always spoken of? She, who was going to be a happy wayfarer down the path of life—any one of a dozen things. This High Prairie winter was to have been only an episode. Not her life!”
When Dirk is about ten years old, Pervus dies. Flouting the traditional gender roles of the community, Selina takes charge of the farm herself and works hard to make it successful. She is determined that Dirk will go to a good college and live the kind of life that she hasn’t had. When she runs into her childhood friend Julie in Chicago, Selina says matter-of-factly, “‘My life doesn’t count, except as something for Dirk to use. I’m done with anything else.’”
In the second half of the book, the focus switches to Dirk. As he strikes out on his own in Chicago, Selina hopes that his life will be filled with adventures, experiences, and beauty. Will she be able to live that kind of life vicariously through her son? Is that even something she should wish for? Or, in the end, is the life she has ended up with just as happy as the life she thought she wanted? Ferber doesn’t answer these questions, at least explicitly, leaving them for the reader to ponder.
I can see why this book was both a popular success (1924’s best-selling novel in the United States) and a literary success (the winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel). Ferber is an excellent writer, and So Big features strong, memorable characters, a palpable sense of place, and an engaging story.
On a personal note, as a fourth-generation Dutch-American with some memories of earlier generations, I enjoyed reading Ferber’s descriptions of the immigrants and their community. Although my own ancestors immigrated to the industrial urban areas of New Jersey rather than the farmlands of the Midwest, most had been farmers in the Netherlands. For the first couple of generations in America, they tried to preserve much of their Dutch culture. Consequently, the folks of High Prairie were quite recognizable to me.
Selina grew up primarily in Chicago, living with her gambler father and—when his luck was good—enjoying the finer things in life. Her father encouraged her to think of life as a great adventure, filled with beauty. Unfortunately, Selina’s father died when she was 19, and she was left with a choice of living with two unmarried aunts in Vermont or earning her own living.
Vermont was not really an option. Selina had lived with those aunts for three years when her father’s luck was not so good. She thought the two women “smelled of apples—of withered apples that have rotted at the core.” So Selina didn’t hesitate. She chose independence and took a teaching job in High Prairie, a farming community of Dutch immigrants southwest of Chicago.
The first half of the book describes Selina’s life in this community whose ways were so strange to her at first. Soon she marries. Her husband, Pervus DeJong, is a well-meaning but unsuccessful farmer. It’s not the life she had imagined for herself. “There were days when the feeling of unreality possessed her. She, a truck farmer’s wife, living in High Prairie the rest of her days! Why, no! No! Was this the great adventure that her father had always spoken of? She, who was going to be a happy wayfarer down the path of life—any one of a dozen things. This High Prairie winter was to have been only an episode. Not her life!”
When Dirk is about ten years old, Pervus dies. Flouting the traditional gender roles of the community, Selina takes charge of the farm herself and works hard to make it successful. She is determined that Dirk will go to a good college and live the kind of life that she hasn’t had. When she runs into her childhood friend Julie in Chicago, Selina says matter-of-factly, “‘My life doesn’t count, except as something for Dirk to use. I’m done with anything else.’”
In the second half of the book, the focus switches to Dirk. As he strikes out on his own in Chicago, Selina hopes that his life will be filled with adventures, experiences, and beauty. Will she be able to live that kind of life vicariously through her son? Is that even something she should wish for? Or, in the end, is the life she has ended up with just as happy as the life she thought she wanted? Ferber doesn’t answer these questions, at least explicitly, leaving them for the reader to ponder.
I can see why this book was both a popular success (1924’s best-selling novel in the United States) and a literary success (the winner of the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel). Ferber is an excellent writer, and So Big features strong, memorable characters, a palpable sense of place, and an engaging story.
On a personal note, as a fourth-generation Dutch-American with some memories of earlier generations, I enjoyed reading Ferber’s descriptions of the immigrants and their community. Although my own ancestors immigrated to the industrial urban areas of New Jersey rather than the farmlands of the Midwest, most had been farmers in the Netherlands. For the first couple of generations in America, they tried to preserve much of their Dutch culture. Consequently, the folks of High Prairie were quite recognizable to me.
August 17, 2018
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1925, this novel is still well worth reading almost 100 years later. Author Edna Ferber’s prose is a delight to read. There is a good balance between narrative and dialogue; the story moves along at a comfortable pace, never boring, never frantic. The author paints beautiful pictures and lively characters with well-chosen words. There is no flowery language here - just plain good English! This book was, for me, pure entertainment.
If you are looking for a story that will draw you into the suffering and emotional upheaval of the characters, then you ought to look elsewhere. The characters face their own challenges in life but the reader is most definitely a spectator. This quality may be what made the novel so popular in 1924 America. In the aftermath of the Great War and in the midst of the “Roaring 20’s”, did the reading public have an appetite for anything but escape through entertainment? Keeping that in mind, the modern reader can enjoy this glimpse of life as it might have been in the American midwest in the early 20th century.
If you are looking for a story that will draw you into the suffering and emotional upheaval of the characters, then you ought to look elsewhere. The characters face their own challenges in life but the reader is most definitely a spectator. This quality may be what made the novel so popular in 1924 America. In the aftermath of the Great War and in the midst of the “Roaring 20’s”, did the reading public have an appetite for anything but escape through entertainment? Keeping that in mind, the modern reader can enjoy this glimpse of life as it might have been in the American midwest in the early 20th century.
August 21, 2017
Interesting how this book compares with another Pulitzer Prize winner I read recently -- Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. Each is a story of the great love a mother has for her son, and each is set in the 'early' years of a fast-growing, developing American city (Chicago in this instance), yet the stories are very different from each other, as are the mothers. The sons do have quite a bit in common, but in general the characters in So Big are not only more likable but more realistic. Despite one or two sentimental passages that aren't my thing at all, I did enjoy Ferber's writing.
September 5, 2016
I loved this story of a late 19th century woman who maintained a joi de vive and love of beauty despite life’s toils and hardships. The characterizations in this novel was amazing. Ferber made these characters pulse with life. This is my first book by Ferber and I want to read much more.
January 26, 2018
"There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds." – Edna Ferber
“So Big” is one of the most delightful books I have read this year. It won the Putlizer Prize for the Novel in 1925. The story was set in High Prairie, New Holland, ten miles outside Chicago, circa 1885, when bananas apparently were considered "a delicacy of delicacies to the farm palate". It traced the life of Selina Peake DeJong and her beloved son, Dirk DeJong. “SoBig” was Dirk’s nickname, affectionately given because his 2-year-old response (complete with outstretched arms) to Selina’s question, “How big is baby?" was “So-o-o-o big”.
The appeal of the novel lies in Edna Ferber’s remarkable depth of characterization. Selina, in particular, was portrayed as an intelligent, resourceful, and resilient woman who was extremely likeable and deserving of respect. The daughter of a professional gambler, she led a nomadic childhood, moving from city to city wherever her father’s business took him. At age 16, Selina had to fend for herself and earn her keep as a school teacher when her father died suddenly. While boarding with the Pool truck farming family, Selina developed a strong friendship with Roelf Pool (a boy a few years her junior) to whom she read and encouraged his pursuit of art. Selina soon married Pervus DeJong, a struggling truck farmer but he died unexpectedly when Dirk was still a young boy. For Selina, it was a hardscrabble life to farm and peddle vegetables at a time when the marketplace was solely male territory. Thus, it was immensely gratifying to follow Selina’s travails, to witness her triumph over unimaginable odds, and to observe her devotion to her son’s education and success.
“So Big” is really quite big on some sound philosophy to live by. Selina’s father did not leave her much money. However, he left her wise counsel that stood her in good stead through very hard times. The first is to embrace life in all its complexity: "Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it's just so much... velvet." Selina and Dallas O’Mara (Dirk’s one true love interest) lived out this philosophy as reflected in their unpretentious lives and the pleasure they found in embracing diverse individuals and circumstances.
The second centers on beauty and self-expression, and most importantly, being true to one’s passion. Selina had a "beauty loving eye" and discovered joy in surveying the jade and burgundy in the cabbage fields. Ferber, the omniscient narrator, had this to say in praise of Selina: "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and Burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." Selina wanted Dirk to have "all the worth-while things in life...Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People - all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth - growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it." Unfortunately, this did not materialize for Dirk despite his good looks, social panache, and excellent education.
Reading Selina's unrelenting efforts to secure the best for her son, one cannot help but wonder how far parents should go to pave the way for their children's future. Aug Hempel (a close friend's father who provided financial assistance to Selina) may be right in checking Selina's ambitions: "If you think giving your whole life to making the boy happy is going to make you happy, you ain't so smart as I took you for." How indeed do parents balance love and solicitude for their children's happiness with the need to accord them the freedom to live life as they desire? Arguably, no amount of love will allow anyone to live someone else’s life for him or her.
At the end of the novel, there was a lovely reunion between Selina and Roelf Pool who had become a famous Parisian sculptor. In contrast, the last scene had Dirk, by then a wealthy banker, returning to his apartment, bone weary. There was meager consolation in knowing that Dirk realized that the life he had hankered after was not the life he thought it would be. I like to believe that Dirk had a chance to find his way home to his love of architecture and to things that truly matter.
“So Big” is one of the most delightful books I have read this year. It won the Putlizer Prize for the Novel in 1925. The story was set in High Prairie, New Holland, ten miles outside Chicago, circa 1885, when bananas apparently were considered "a delicacy of delicacies to the farm palate". It traced the life of Selina Peake DeJong and her beloved son, Dirk DeJong. “SoBig” was Dirk’s nickname, affectionately given because his 2-year-old response (complete with outstretched arms) to Selina’s question, “How big is baby?" was “So-o-o-o big”.
The appeal of the novel lies in Edna Ferber’s remarkable depth of characterization. Selina, in particular, was portrayed as an intelligent, resourceful, and resilient woman who was extremely likeable and deserving of respect. The daughter of a professional gambler, she led a nomadic childhood, moving from city to city wherever her father’s business took him. At age 16, Selina had to fend for herself and earn her keep as a school teacher when her father died suddenly. While boarding with the Pool truck farming family, Selina developed a strong friendship with Roelf Pool (a boy a few years her junior) to whom she read and encouraged his pursuit of art. Selina soon married Pervus DeJong, a struggling truck farmer but he died unexpectedly when Dirk was still a young boy. For Selina, it was a hardscrabble life to farm and peddle vegetables at a time when the marketplace was solely male territory. Thus, it was immensely gratifying to follow Selina’s travails, to witness her triumph over unimaginable odds, and to observe her devotion to her son’s education and success.
“So Big” is really quite big on some sound philosophy to live by. Selina’s father did not leave her much money. However, he left her wise counsel that stood her in good stead through very hard times. The first is to embrace life in all its complexity: "Living. All mixed up. The more kinds of people you see, and the more things you do, and the more things that happen to you, the richer you are. Even if they're not pleasant things. That's living. Remember, no matter what happens, good or bad, it's just so much... velvet." Selina and Dallas O’Mara (Dirk’s one true love interest) lived out this philosophy as reflected in their unpretentious lives and the pleasure they found in embracing diverse individuals and circumstances.
The second centers on beauty and self-expression, and most importantly, being true to one’s passion. Selina had a "beauty loving eye" and discovered joy in surveying the jade and burgundy in the cabbage fields. Ferber, the omniscient narrator, had this to say in praise of Selina: "But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and Burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that." Selina wanted Dirk to have "all the worth-while things in life...Rooms in candle-light. Leisure. Colour. Travel. Books. Music. Pictures. People - all kinds of people. Work that you love. And growth - growth and watching people grow. Feeling very strongly about things and then developing that feeling to - to make something fine come of it." Unfortunately, this did not materialize for Dirk despite his good looks, social panache, and excellent education.
Reading Selina's unrelenting efforts to secure the best for her son, one cannot help but wonder how far parents should go to pave the way for their children's future. Aug Hempel (a close friend's father who provided financial assistance to Selina) may be right in checking Selina's ambitions: "If you think giving your whole life to making the boy happy is going to make you happy, you ain't so smart as I took you for." How indeed do parents balance love and solicitude for their children's happiness with the need to accord them the freedom to live life as they desire? Arguably, no amount of love will allow anyone to live someone else’s life for him or her.
At the end of the novel, there was a lovely reunion between Selina and Roelf Pool who had become a famous Parisian sculptor. In contrast, the last scene had Dirk, by then a wealthy banker, returning to his apartment, bone weary. There was meager consolation in knowing that Dirk realized that the life he had hankered after was not the life he thought it would be. I like to believe that Dirk had a chance to find his way home to his love of architecture and to things that truly matter.
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