A good read on its own, but a great parallel to a reading or viewing of Shakespeare's King Lear. Plenty here for discussion.

Shakespearean tragedy set in rural America. Enjoyed the book but it left me with the feeling that I had missed something in the story. Many unanswered questions but maybe that's the point. Generated discussion but not as much as I expected. Overall, thumbs up.

I haven't read King Lear, but it's really not necessary to read first as A Thousand Acres stands on its own just as well. After all the events of the story, Ginny reflects on what happened - what went wrong - after her father's fateful decision to give his hugely successful farm to his three daughters. Because we're in a tight first person narrative, there are so many unknowns and unanswerable questions: What made Larry act as he did? Caroline? Can we ever know or understand another person? The first half of the story is a slow setting the stage, the plotting deliberate, and the writing descriptive. The characters are deeply unhappy. We all agreed that the story was sad and the beginning slow, but in the end we had a wonderfully lively discussion.