Superbe nouvelle plutôt que roman vu la longueur du texte, mais il m'a passionnée de bout en bout. Histoire descriptive et sensible à la fois, le personnage central, Sarah, est très attachante. On a envie de l'aider, de la soutenir, et on est soulagé par la décision qu'elle prend à la fin. ( )

Ces trois nouvelles – La Fille du fermier, Chien Brun, le retour et Les Jeux de la nuit – présentent trois destins solitaires dans le décor rude de l'Amérique profonde: Sarah, la jeune fille qui veut se venger d'avoir été violée, l'Indien Chien Brun qui cherche une compagne, et Samuel, mi-homme mi-bête en proie à des accès de violence les nuits de pleine lune.

Moi qui considère Jim Harrison comme l'un des plus grands écrivains américains actuels (Légendes d'automne et De Marquette à Vera Cruz m'ont laissé d'excellents souvenirs), je n'ai pu m'empêcher d'être déçue par ces nouvelles, qui datent de 2009. Cela ne me dérange pas d'y retrouver le thème – cher à Harrison – de la recherche de l'identité à travers l'errance, qui ici se double de la recherche de l'âme sœur. Mais le style m'en semble d'une brutalité caricaturalement américaine: tout se résout à coups de fusil ou de tequila, les personnages masculins consomment des quantités de viande invraisemblables, et leur désir sexuel est aussi grossier qu'inextinguible. Bref, tout cela est beaucoup trop cowboy pour mon goût. En même temps, le récit si (inutilement) détaillé empêche l'intrigue d'avancer vraiment, en particulier dans Chien Brun, le retour. Des trois, je retiendrais cependant La Fille du fermier, plus émouvante et bien vue. Par contre la traduction peine souvent à éviter les américanismes. ( )

Classic Harrison. Well written and casually insightful. Three stories including one of Brown Dog. The last story which I thought would be the silliest of things turned out to be more enlightening then the other two. Farmers daughter was also solid. If Harrison's not preaching about taking life in stride and acting the play out to the end than that's what I'm reading into it. It will be a sad day when Harrison stops writing. ( )

Well, this book has just left me at kind of a loss for words. I've been reading Harrison for 40 years now, and I know he's had his highs and lows, but this may be a new low. Maybe I should first admit that I only read the first novella, the title piece. And I had to force myself to finish it, because it just seemed a bit too far-fetched, if not a bit moronic, in the way the story was presented as kinda from the viewpoint of a 15-16 year-old girl, transplanted from Ohio to Montana. But the girl herself was simply not very believable - either too sexually precocious or too innocent, mostly the latter, I'd say. Waaay too intellectual for a kid that age, supposedly reading stuff like Tristram Shandy and The Red and the Black. Maybe, but not very likely. Attracted to much older men. I mean, for me, this Sarah was simply the fictitious invention of a dirty old man. And the ending? Blecch! I just don't think so. This was basically a hundred-page adult comic book sans pictures - sans 'art' for that matter. By the time I'd finished, I simply didn't want to read any more of the book, especially that last story about a "retired vampire." Geeze, Jim. What were you thinking? This book is such an embarrassment. I wonder if you were curious just what you could get away with and still get critical acclaim. Well, just about anything, it seems, as Publisher's Weekly's starred review said "Harrison shows he is still at the top of his game ..." I wonder what book they were reading. Maybe I'll just re-read one of Harrison's all-time best books, FARMER. No daughter in that one, although the teacher-farmer protagonist did have a fling with a very precocious teenager. Hmmm ... Maybe Jim's still writing the same story and it's just me that's changed. ( )

In The Farmer's Daughter, Jim Harrison returns to his signature three-novella format. In addition to the title story, this volume includes Brown Dog Redux, the fourth Harrison novella featuring his iconoclastic hero, and The Games of the Night, a gothic werewolf tale.

The Farmer’s Daughter is the weakest of the three, which is too bad because, creatively, it is the most courageous. . . .

Full review posted on Rose City Reader. ( )