A thousand wows

Once in a while you have the luxury of reading a book that you just can't put down, and then haunts you for days on end.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley is precisely that kind of book. I bought it because I had enjoyed one of her other novels, and seeing as this is a Pulitzer Prize winner I was curious. Wow! All I can say is wow.

The plot is apparently a modern interpretation of King Lear, and I think she does a fabulous job with this. Many of the reviews on Amazon said that she carried it too far and the plot twists were "over the top," but I disagree. In fact, the fascinating thing about this novel is how a natural progression of events set into movement by one small catalyst can lead to such "over the top" developments and how all of our lives can change not only in an instant, but also in a very slow, methodical way that is so subtle it's hard to detect.

A fabulous read, with deliciously deep and complex characters.