Nothing in Smiley's other work obviously resembles The Greenlanders, a work of historical fiction. However, The Greenlanders does have thematic similarities to her works placed in contemporary settings. Many of her modern characters are Midwesterners of Norwegian ancestry who share qualities in common — a hunger for land or wealth, a patriarchal social structure, a disciplined work ethic, an inhibited sexuality, and a tendency to explosive violence. These qualities appear in early novels such as Barn Blind (1980), At Paradise Gate (1981), and Duplicate Keys (1984) as well as in the later novel A Thousand Acres (1991).

Structurally many of her works tend to have a single point-of-view character who experiences events over a short period. Except for Barn Blind, which uses multiple points of view, only MOO (1995) attempts as complex a structure or as large a cast of characters as The Greenlanders. However, MOO differs radically in its satirical...