Smiley, Jane "Golden Age"

Smiley, Jane "Golden Age" (Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #3) - 2015

I have read several books by Jane Smiley, really liked "A Thousand Acres" and "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton" and thought that also her "13 Ways of Looking at a Novel" was brilliant.

However, this trilogy has not met my expectations. The first book, Some Luck, was alright, Jane Smiley does have a good style that makes you overlook some minor glitches. The second one, Early Warning, really was not captivating but I wanted to give her one last chance and hoped, the story would pick up and get more interesting again. It didn't.

As I already mentioned in the second book, I would have liked a short introduction, a short retelling of the first book, at least a re-introduction of the characters. But that's not the only complaint I would have had. There were quite a few new ones, I found it hard to connect them to the stories I already knew, they were too far removed from them. I usually love these kinds of stories, family sagas over a long time but you have to be able to know the families. I didn't have the feeling I did in this case.

I think all in all, Jane Smiley should have stopped after the first book, just call it a book about the first half of the century. Might have been a great story.

From the back cover:

"The third novel in the dazzling Last Hundred Years Trilogy from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize Jane Smiley.

1987. A visit from a long-lost relative brings the Langdons together again on the family farm; a place almost unrecognizable from the remote Iowan farmland Walter and Rosanna once owned. Whilst a few have stayed, most have spread wide across the US, but all are facing social, economic and political challenges unlike anything their ancestors encountered.

Richie Langdon, finally out from under his twin brother's shadow, finds himself running for congress almost unintentionally, and completely underprepared for the world-changing decisions he will have to make. Charlie, the charmer, recently found, struggles to find his way. Jesse's son, Guthrie, set to take over the family farm, is deployed to Iraq, leaving it in the hands of his younger sister, Felicity, who must defend the land from more than just the extremes of climate change.

Moving through the 1990s, to our own moment and beyond, this last instalment sees the final repercussions of time on the Langdon family. After a hundred years of personal change and US history, filled with words unsaid and moments lost, Golden Age brings to a magnificent conclusion the century-long portrait of one unforgettable family."

Smiley, Jane "Early Warning"

Smiley, Jane "Early Warning" (Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #2) - 2015

I like Jane Smiley. I have read quite a few of her books (which you can see here) and was really excited when I noticed that she'd written a trilogy about the last century.

After having read "Some Luck", I already knew that this was more or less a book about the last century in the United States of America, not as much into international politics as Ken Follett's "Century Trilogy", so don't start comparing.

I'd call this more a family saga, and I like them, as well. It is good that they included a family tree but I also would have liked a short introduction, a short retelling of the first book, especially since I couldn't read it right away. I hope she will introduce this in the third part "Golden Age" since there are so many more characters now than there were after the first novel.

I still like this book, mainly because of Jane Smiley's style which I think is always a good read. However, as I said above, I expected something else, more outside of the family, more history and politics. The previous book was announced "The first novel in a dazzling, epic new trilogy from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize; a literary adventure that will span a century in America". It didn't say it would only spin a century of ONE family in America. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it had been announced as a family saga and nothing else.

From the back cover:

"1953. When a funeral brings the Langdon family together once more, they little realize how much, over the coming years, each of their worlds will shift and change. For now Walter and Rosanna's sons and daughters are grown up and have children of their own. Frank, the eldest - restless, unhappy - ignores his troubled wife and instead finds himself distracted by a face from the past.

Lillian must watch as her brilliant, eccentric husband Arthur is destroyed by the guilt arising from his secretive government work. Claire, too, finds that marriage is not quite what she expected it to be.

In Iowa where the Langdons began, Joe sees that some aspects of life on the farm never change, while others are unrecognizable. And though a few members of the family remain mired in the past, others will attempt to move beyond the lives they have always known; and some will push forward as never before. The dark shadow of the Vietnam War hangs over every one . . .

In sickness and health, through their best and darkest times, the Langdon family will live and love and suffer against the broad, merciless sweep of American history. Moving from the 1950s to the 1980s, Early Warning is epic storytelling at its most wise and compelling from a writer at the height of her powers."

Smiley, Jane "Some Luck"

Smiley, Jane "Some Luck" (Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #1) - 2014

I have liked Jane Smiley from the first time I read one of her books ("The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton") and I still love her several books later. Of course, she deservedly received the Pulitzer Prize for "A Thousand Acres".

This is the beginning of a trilogy, a family saga that spans over a hundred years. It starts in 1920 on a farm in Iowa, shortly after the end of World War I. The Langdon family is a family like every other one, working their land and trying to survive during depression and war. We get to love some of them and dislike some of the others. Jane Smiley manages to describe them as if they were our own family, as if we read the stories of our ancestors and just want to know what happens with the next generation.

The author has chosen an interesting way of describing this family, describing each year in a chapter, so we can follow the life and death of our characters.

I have grown up in a village, our house was surrounded by farms, so I could relate to a lot of the subjects in the story, even though that is not my generation. Yet.

We have to leave the family in 1953 as this is the end of the book, the end of an era. But I am looking forward to reading more about the Langdons in the next book, "Early Warning" and the final one "Golden Age".

I will put more of her books on my wishlist in the meantime.

From the back cover:

"From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize: a powerful, engrossing new novel - the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America.  On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different children: from Frank, the handsome, willful first born, and Joe, whose love of animals and the land sustains him, to Claire, who earns a special place in her father’s heart.

Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and going up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change. As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts of America, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis; later still, a girl you’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own, and you discover that your laughter and your admiration for all these lives are mixing with tears.

Some Luck delivers on everything we look for in a work of fiction. Taking us through cycles of births and deaths, passions and betrayals, among characters we come to know inside and out, it is a tour de force that stands wholly on its own. But it is also the first part of a dazzling epic trilogy - a literary adventure that will span a century in America: an astonishing feat of storytelling by a beloved writer at the height of her powers."

Smiley, Jane "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel"

Smiley, Jane "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" – 2005

After reading "A Thousand Acres" and "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton", I knew I really loved Jane Smiley's novels.

Therefore, when I saw her non-fiction work about books, I was more than interested. I didn't read this in a couple of days or even a couple of weeks, I read it in bits and pieces. I learned a lot about novels, reading novels and writing novels, the history of a novel, all sorts of interesting facts, quite fantastic. To show you how much she goes into the different aspects of a novel, here is her list of contents:

1.    Introduction
2.    What Is a Novel?
3.    Who Is a Novelist?
4.    The Origins of the Novel
5.    The Psychology of the Novel
6.    Morality and the Novel
7.    The Art of the Novel
8.    The Novel and History
9.    The Circle of the Novel
10.    A Novel of Your Own (I)
11.    A Novel of Your Own (II)
12.    Good Faith: A Case History
13.    Reading a Hundred Novels

In addition to her clarification about the different elements of the novel, she gives a very good introduction for people who would like to write one, two chapters that are also highly interesting for readers.

On page 280 of the 570 pages (of my edition), she starts describing 100 novels she read for this books, beginning with the oldest novel of them all, "The Tale of Genji" by Shikibu Murasaki, written in the early 11th century.

I don't think I infringe on her copyright, when I list the books she describes, you can find that list and a lot more about this highly interesting piece of work on this link at Randomhouse.

If you are even remotely interested in a little bit more than just reading a good novel, if you want to know about what's behind it all, this is the book for you.

So, here is the list of books that I will draw from for the next decade or so ... all of them described very well by an author who knows what she is talking about, all of them seem so interesting and worth reading, I don't think I would need another list of good books for a while (not that it will keep me from looking at any of them). As you can see, I have read a small part of the books on the list already (42 so far), will add links as I'll go through it trying to read more of them:

Murasaki, Lady Shikibu "The Tale of Genji" (Japanese: 源氏物語 Genji Monogatari)- early 11th century
Author unknown, "The Saga of the People of Laxardal" (Icelandic: Laxdæla saga) - 13th century
Sturluson, Snorri "Egil's Saga" (Icelandic) - 1240
Boccaccio, Giovanni "The Decameron" (Italian: Il Decameron, cognominato Prencipe Galeotto) - 1350
Navarre, Marguerite de "The Heptameron" (French: Heptaméron) - 1578
Anonymous "Lazarillo de Tormes" (Spanish: La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades) - 1554
Cervantes, Miguel de "Don Quixote, vols. 1 and 2" (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha) - 1605/1615
Lafayette, Madame de "The Princess of Cleves" (French: La Princesse de Clèves) - 1678
Behn, Aphra "Oroonoko" - 1688
Defoe, Daniel "Robinson Crusoe" - 1719, "Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress" - 1724
Richardson, Samuel "Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded" - 1740
Fielding, Henry "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" - 1749
Lennox, Charlotte "The Female Quixote" - 1752
Sterne, Laurence "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - 1759-67
Voltaire "Candide, or Optimism" (French: Candide, ou l'Optimisme) - 1759
Smollett, Tobias "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker" - 1771
Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre "Dangerous Liaisons" (French: Les Liaisons Dangereuses) - 1782
Marquis de Sade, Donatien Alphonse François "Justine" (French: Les Infortunes de la Vertu) - 1791
Scott, Sir Walter "Tales of My Landlord: Old Mortality and The Black Dwarf" - 1816, "The Bride of the Lammermoor" - 1819
Shelley, Mary "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" - 1818
Austen, Jane "Persuasion" - 1817
Hogg, James "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" - 1824
Stendhal "The Red and the Black" (French: Le Rouge et le Noir) - 1830
Gogol, Nikolai "Taras Bulba" (Ukrainian: Тара́с Бу́льба) - 1835
Lermontov, Mikhail "A Hero of Our Time" (Russian: Герой нашего времени, Geroy nashevo vremeni) - 1840
Balzac, Honoré de "Cousin Pons and Cousin Bette" (French: Le Cousin Pons) - 1847
Brontë, Charlotte "Jane Eyre" - 1847
Brontë, Emily "Wuthering Heights" - 1847
Makepeace Thackeray, William "Vanity Fair. A Novel Without a Hero" - 1848
Beecher Stowe, Harriet "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - 1852
Melville, Hermann "Moby-Dick, or the Whale" - 1851
Hawthorne, Nathaniel "The House of the Seven Gables" - 1841
Flaubert, Gustave "Madame Bovary" (French: Madame Bovary) - 1857
Dickens, Charles "A Tale of Two Cities" - 1859
Collins, Wilkie "The Woman in White" - 1559, "The Moonstone" - 1868
Turgenev, Ivan "Fathers and Sons" (Russian: Отцы и дети, Otcy i Deti)
Zola, Emilie "Thérèse Raquin"  (French: Thérèse Raquin) - 1867
Trollope, Anthony "The Last Chronicle of Barset" - 1867, "The Eustace Diamonds" - 1871
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "The Idiot" (Russian: Идиот, Idiot) - 1869
Alcott, Louisa May "Little Women" - 1868
Eliot, George "Middlemarch" - 1871-72
Tolstoy, Leo "Anna Karenina" (Russian: Анна Каренина/Anna Karenina) – 1877
James, Henry "The Portrait of a Lady" - 1880-81, "The Awkward Age" - 1899
Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890
Stoker, Bram "Dracula" - 1897
Chopin, Kate "The Awakening" - 1899
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur "The Hound of the Baskervilles" - 1901-02
Conrad, Joseph "Heart of Darkness" - 1902
Wharton, Edith "The House of Mirth" - 1905
Beerbohm, Max "The Illustrated Zuleika Dobson, or an Oxford Love Story" - 1911
Madox Ford, Ford "The Good Soldier" - 1915
Lewis, Sinclair "Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott" - 1920 Nobel Prize
Undset, Sigrid "Kristin Lavransdatter" (Norwegian: Kristin Lavransdatter) - 1920 Nobel Prize
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Svevo, Italo" Zeno's Conscience" (Italian: La Coscienza di Zeno) - 1923
Forster, E.M. "A Passage to India" - 1924
Scott Fitzgerald, F. "The Great Gatsby" - 1925
Kafka, Franz "The Trial" (German: Der Prozeß) - 1914-15 (written)
Broch, Hermann "The Sleepwalkers" (German: Die Schlafwandler) - 1930-32
Proust, Marcel "In Search of Lost Time" (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) - 1913-27
Lawrence, D.H. " Lady Chatterley's Lover" - 1928
Woolf, Virginia "Orlando" - 1928
Faulkner, William "As I Lay Dying" - 1930 Nobel Prize
Musil, Robert "The Man without Qualities, volume 1" (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) - 1930
Sholokhov, Mikahil "And Quiet flows the Don" (Russian: Тихий Дон, Tikhiy Don) - 1934 Nobel Prize
Neale Hurston, Zora "Their Eyes Were Watching God" - 1937
Bowen, Elizabeth "The Death of the Heart" - 1938
Wodehouse, P. G. "Ring for Jeeves" (US Title: The Return of Jeeves) - 1953,"Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit" (US Title: Bertie Wooster Sees it Through) - 1954, "Spring Fever" - 1948, "Something Fishy" (US Title: The Butler Did It) - 1957
White, T.H. "The Once and Future King" - 1958
Stead, Christina "The Man Who Loved Children" - 1940
Tanizaki, Jun'ichiro "The Makioka Sisters" (Japanese: 細雪, Sasameyuki) - 1943-48
Nabokov, Vladimir "Lolita" - 1955
West, Rebecca "The Fountain Overflows" - 1957
Mitford, Nancy "The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and Don't Tell Alfred" - 1945
Lee, Harper "To Kill a Mockingbird" - 1960
Carleton, Jetta "The Moonflower Vine" - 1962
Mishima, Yukio "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea" (Japanese: 午後の曳航, Gogo no Eikō) - 1963
Rhys, Jean "Wide Sargasso Sea" - 1966
Gardner, John "Grendel" - 1971
Munro, Alice "Lives of Girls and Women" - 1971
Mahfouz, Naguib "The Harafish" (Arabic: الحرافيش‎) (in orig. Arabic Malhamat al-harafish) - 1977
Murdoch, Iris "The Sea, the Sea" - 1978
Lodge, David "How Far Can You Go?" (US title: Souls and Bodies) - 1980
Spark, Muriel "Loitering With Intent" - 1981
Tyler, Anne "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" - 1982
Kundera, Milan "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (Czech: Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) - 1984
Kincaid, Jamaica "Annie John" - 1985
Coetzee, J.M. "Foe" - 1986 Nobel Prize
Morrison, Toni "Beloved" - 1987
Byatt, A.S. " Possession" - 1990
Baker, Nicholson "Vox" - 1992
Keillor, Garrison "WLT: A Radio Romance" - 1991
Atkinson, Kate "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" - 1995
Mistry, Rohinton "A Fine Balance" - 2002
Prose, Francine "Guided Tours of Hell" - 197
Lee, Chang-rae "A Gesture Life" - 1999
Lustig, Arnošt "Lovely Green Eyes" (Czech: Krásné zelené oči) - 2004
Smith, Zadie "White Teeth" - 1999
Updike, John "The Complete Henry Bech" - 2001
McEwan, Ian "Atonement" - 2001
Egan, Jennifer "Look at Me" - 2001

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

Jane Smiley received the Pulitzer Prize for "A Thousand Acres" in 1992.

From the back cover:

"Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling novelist Jane Smiley celebrates the novel - and takes us on an exhilarating tour through one hundred of them - in this seductive and immensely rewarding literary tribute.

In her inimitable style - exuberant, candid, opinionated - Smiley explores the power of the novel, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its magic. She invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft. And she offers priceless advice to aspiring authors. As she works her way through one hundred novels - from classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to recent fiction by Zadie Smith and Alice Munro - she infects us anew with the passion for reading that is the governing spirit of this gift to book lovers everywhere."

Smiley, Jane "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton"

Smiley, Jane "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton" - 1998

"Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of  'A Thousand Acres', returns with a novel that explores one of the crucial moments in American history and culture, the conflict between abolitionists and proslavery settlers over the future of the Kansas Territory in 1855-'56. Smiley's narrative goes far beyond any simple historical novelization or any didactic examination of the slavery question; 'The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton' presents a multifaceted picture of the developing American character, as shaped not only by such explosive issues as slavery but also by the difficulties of the frontier and the day-to-day relationships between men and women."

After having read "A Thousand Acres", I just had to read another of her novels. This one is about a completely different subject and was just as good as her prize-winning one. I loved the main character, everything she goes through is told so explicitly, with so much feeling. If you like American history, you'll be intrigued. If you haven't been interested until now, this book might start you. Give it a try!

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

Smiley, Jane "A Thousand Acres"

Smiley, Jane "A Thousand Acres" - 1991

"A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare's 'King Lear' cast upon a typical American community in the late twentieth century, 'A Thousand Acres' takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity."

King Lear in Iowa. A very interesting novel about a family and their troubles. Even though we don't all live on a huge farm, we can picture this family and their problems. This book covers almost every subject and is gripping from the first to the last page. Amazing writing style. One of my all-time favourites.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

I also read "The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton" which I really loved, as well.

Jane Smiley received the Pulitzer Prize for "A Thousand Acres" in 1992.