I first read Jane
Smiley when I read her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres. This novel
was a retelling of Shakespeare’s great tragedy, King Lear. Smiley set her
tale in the mid west, when a patriarch of the family decides to retire and
divides his land among his three children.
Caroline, the youngest and a lawyer, argues against her father’s plan,
and suffers the wrath of her father and her sisters. Lear
is my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, and I thoroughly enjoyed Smiley’s
version. In her latest novel, Some Luck, Smiley weaves a sweeping tale
of four generations of Iowa farmers.
Each chapter covers one year from 1920 to 1953.
According to the
dust jacket, Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels as well as five works
of non-fiction and a series of YA books.
In 2001, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
and in 2006 she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for
Literature. She now lives in Northern
California.
Normally, I pick a
passage or two from the beginning of a novel for a sample of the writer’s
style. However, this time, I picked a
long paragraph close to the end, which sums up the story, revealing only minor
details of the plot. Rosanna and Walter,
the second generation farmers in the family, are hosting Thanksgiving in
1948. Smiley writes, Rosanna could not
have said that she enjoyed making Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-three people
(a turkey, a standing rib roast, and a duck that Granny Mary brought; ten
pounds of mashed potatoes, and that not enough; five pies; sweet potatoes; more
stuffing than could be stuffed; all the Brussels sprouts from the garden though
they were good after the frost). She
could not say Lillian had control of those children, who were underfoot every
time you took a step, though they were good natured to be sure. Henry scrutinized the dishes of food as
though he were being asked to partake of roadkill, at least until the pies were
served, and Claire burst into tears for no reason at all, but when they all had
their plates in front of them, and a few deep breaths were taken, and first
Andrea, and then Granny Elizabeth, and then Eloise said, ‘This looks
delicious,’ she began to have a strange feeling. She should have sat down – Joe, who was
sitting beside her, moved his chair in a bit – but she didn’t want to sit down,
or eat, at all (what with tasting everything she wasn’t hungry); she just
wanted to stand there and look at them as they passed the two gravy boats and
began to cut their food. It couldn’t
have happened she thought. They couldn’t
have survived so many strange events.
Take your pick – the birth of Henry in that room over there, with the
wind howling and the dirt blowing in and her barely able to find a rag to wipe
the baby’s mouth and nose. Take your
pick – all of them nearly dying of the heat that summer of ’36. Take your pick – Joey falling out of the
hayloft, Frankie driving the car to Usherton, Frankie disappearing into the
Italian Campaign, Frankie, for Heaven’s sake, living in a tent all through
college. Take your pick – Walter falling
into the well (yes, she had gotten that one out of him one day during the war,
when he said, ‘Remember when I fell into the well’ and she said, ‘What in the
world are you talking about’ and he blushed like a girl)” (331-2).
Those “strange
events” are the meat, the muscle, and the blood of this wonderfully appealing
story. The various characters – each and
every one finely drawn, interesting -- and now scattered all around the
country. Jane Smiley’s latest novel, Some Luck is a first-rate read, perfect
for these last days of winter. 5 stars
--Chiron, 1/30/16
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