Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Some Luck by Jane Smiley
Published October 2014 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Source: purchased this one for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
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.

My Thoughts:
This word came up the other night when my book club was talking about this book, "minutiae." Well, that pretty much sums it up. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just a warning.

This is mostly a very quiet book, full of the details that make up a life and reveal it in depth. Which is unusual to find in a book that spans thirty years. If you're a person that gives up on a book after 50 pages, there's the very real chance that this one isn't for you. It's all about connecting with the Langdon family and given that a good chunk of the first part of the book is told from the point of view of infants with not much happening, it's hard to get into.

In fact, if I hadn't been committed to reading it for book club, I'm not sure I would have stuck with it. In the end, I'm not sure how much I liked it. Smiley does do a wonderful job of taking her readers deeply into life on a Midwest farm in the first half of the last century. Seriously, I'm not sure what made women marry farmers then. Except that, of course, all of their family lived on farms nearby, as did both Rosanna's and Walter's families and that made for an interesting three-generation dynamic.

Two things that threw me: from the beginning, it seemed that the story was about the entire Langdon family and yet, very often, it felt like it was a book about Frank and the people around him. Which brought me to the second issue - when Frank went off to World War II, we went with him to Africa and then Italy where he served as a sniper. It seemed to me it would have been more in keeping with the rest of the book to have stayed with the family, to have seen how the war affected those left at home.

This is the first book of a planned trilogy. I'm not sure where Smiley will be going with the next book, if she'll be following Frank or one of his siblings or picking up with one of the other characters. I don't very much, though, that I'll read it even though I'd give this one a three star rating assuming I rated books here.

8 comments:

  1. My old book group (which I have been thinking of returning to) is reading this one for November, I think. I'm considering it. I know that the second book is out and I've seen notices about the third. Hmmm...what to do....

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    1. Just know going in that it is largely a book about the day to day life of a family. No major plot line; although there are some big moments in their lives.

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  2. I read Smiley in the 90s. Not sure why but I have a hard time reader her now and when I heard this book was part of a trilogy I backed off. Just not my thing I guess.

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    1. I tried to get the book club to back off of when I heard it was a trilogy but it turns out to be not one that requires you to read the next book. But so slow. And I'm kind of in a place right now where I need books where things are happening.

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  3. I like quiet books now and then, especially when I need to slow down myself. I probably should read them more then, shouldn't I? I don't know about this one. It sounds like it has a lot going for it, but I can't say it calls to me the way some books do. I haven't tried anything by Jane Smiley before, although I know she's well liked.

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    1. One of my all-time favorite books is Gilead and you can hardly get more quiet than that. But Marilyn Robinson was trying to tell a small story not a big saga. Maybe that was the difference for me.

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  4. Your review is perfect, and I wish I'd read it before I read the book. It took me at least halfway into the book to realize that was the core of this book -- the day to day minutiae that make up lives. I kept waiting for the major plot to kick in, and if I'd known this sooner, it would have helped! With that said, I read the entire book and enjoyed the details. I also liked that the author brings you into a situation but leaves before the resolution...which you only resolve as a separate scenario plays out later in the book. Worthwhile, I thought. Not sure I'd read book 2, though. You?

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    1. I think the whole thing would have worked better for me if there had been less focus on Frankie and if she would have kept the book set in the U.S. throughout. I did become quite fond of many of the family members.

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