When "Some Luck," by Jane Smiley came out earlier this year, I knew it was going to be a trilogy, but I had no idea it was all going to be published the same year. Jame must have written it welll in advance, so, each time a new volume came out, I gobbled it up instantly.
Which is why, somewhere in the middle of the final volume, "Golden Age," I knew that, cumulatively, I had found the Book Of The Year for 21015. Congratulations, Jane!!!!!!!!!!!!
The entire thing has to be read in its totality to grasp what she is doing. Which is giving us a history of America over the last century--and then some, for the novel ends in 2019, where the reader knows what is happening with the Langdons, but not what events surround them, because, past 2015, none of us even know yet.
If this sounds like something E.L. Doctorow might have done, it is, but with Jane there are differences. Where he was clinical to the point of being academic, Jane blends the emotional and the intellectual--characters and events are cared about here, and, yes, in the final volume 9/11 is dealt with.
Doctorow's novel are murals. Jane's are personalized composites of people that you care about, down to the minutiae of the food they eat, people the make love to, the land they live on, as it shifts and changes. I was sorry to see the whole thing end. Jane even references Dickens, and. with a degree of insight, her earlier work, "The Greenlanders," which I highly recommend.
Jane is a chronicler with a humanitarian bent, so the novels are both compelling and insightful. Of course, I am sorry to say goodbye to the Langdons, but, thankfully, readers will not be saying goodbye to Jane, anytime soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cannot wait for her next work. Meanwhile, girls, read the Book Of The Year--all three volumes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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