Private Life

Description

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He's the most famous man their Missouri town has ever produced: a naval officer and an astronomer-a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret's mother calls the match "a piece of luck." Yet Andrew confounds Margaret's expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in San Francisco, and soon she realizes that his devotion to science leaves little room for anything, or anyone, else. She stands by him through tragedies both personal and those they share with the nation. But as World War II approaches, Andrew's obsessions take a darker turn, forcing Margaret to reconsider the life she'd so carefully constructed.

Jane Smiley is the author of eleven novels, as well as four works of nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. She lives in Northern California.

Jane Smiley has written a persuasive historical paea to the importance of divorce ... Smiley is adept at manipulating reader uncertainty about whether Andrew might possess some briliance ... In her subject matter Smiley invites comparisons with Edith Wharton ... this is able storytelling ... The period details are well chosen and not heavy-handedly stuffed in. As in all good historical novels, history itself perks along in the background, including the two wars, while ther personal - private life - takes centre stage. -- Lionel Shriver Financial Times An austere sweep of a novel that follows the fortunes of a dysfuctional marriage from the 1880s to the 1940s and has more than a hint of George Eliot's Middlemarch ... clever, beautifully written. The Times Fascinating Vogue Smiley's great achievement in a novel characterized by the quiet stillness of its depths is to thicken her narrative and empty it out at the same time ... World events come and go - while Margaret's isolation and her inability to act as participant rather than observer become steadily more pronounced. It is here that we can see the distinctiveness and peculiar refinement of Jane Smiley's brand of realism. she is at all times concerned with exploring how mental attitude can distort reality, but not avert it ... What elevates this tale of a blisteringly unhappy marriage into something far more compelling and tragic is Smiley's willingness to blend acute sympathy with outright absurdity ... This fine portrait of the dangers of wishing away the snake should only enhance Smiley's reputation as one of the most innovative and accomplished writers currently at work. -- Alex Clark TLS A powerful depiction of marriage in an era when divorce was rare and women were expected to count their blessings. Psychologies An enthralling portrait from the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of the difficult marriage between a diffident woman and an overbearing man, with the run up to the Second World War as a backdrop. Marie Claire This powerful, compassionate novel. Woman and Home What Smiley so brilliantly portrays, is a certain type of obsessive, delusional pseudo-scientist that nineteenth-centuy America specialised in producing ... Smiley's handling of this subject is as sensitive and masterly as William Maxwell's ... The novel has patches of intensity, while building tension with gradual delicacy. Literary Review In this expansive and deeply moving novel, Smiley vividly brings to life the every day realities of a marriage. Daily Telegraph If you're looking for a good saga to get stuck into on your holiday, this is it ... Smiley has done a fantastic job of charting the ups and downs of the marriage ... Buy it, read it, pass it on. Image This sense that we are reading the work of a wise old master is strengthened by [Smiley's] latest novel, Private Life, her 14th to date, by the considered tone, the subtlety of the insights, and the judiciously metered prose ... The novel is a portrait of forebearance and stoicism, examining both the merits and demerits of those qualities, and it makes a rich, absorbing and thought-proviking read. Irish Times Here is a brilliant, if merciless, study of a woman whose limited freedoms circumvent the Sufragette movement at the beginning of the 20th century, and predate the second-wave feminism of the 1970s. Independent Jane Smiley's brilliant new book ... Private Life is a powerful, challenging and, ultimately, fierce work of fiction, a masterpiece of a novel that stands with the best of Smiley's work. -- John Burnside Guardian Jane SMiley's accomlished and poignant novel ... this fine novel modestly recognises its own limits and thereby overcomes them. The Sunday Times Smiley skilfully and languorously unfolds the fate of this cripplingly lonely heroine ... Private Life is written on the scale of a saga, but with the intimacy of a personal diary. In its depiction of Margaret's wifely role it is devastatingly painful. And yet, Smiley draws the self-obsessed, misguided Captain Early with compassion too ... it is the first third of the novel that is most brilliant, in every sense, Smiley excelling in a cameo of small-town life and youthful hope so poignantly depicted it feels as if one has lived that life oneself ... this is a most engaging, moving, reflective novel, whose nuances are politically as well as personally revealing. Combining luminous domestic interiors with the distant thunder of encroaching world affairs, Smiley has conjured tragedy from the most commonplace, and thus most potent, of situations. Herald It's Margaret's meticulously evoked domestic perspective that lends the novel its power. As she struggles to stay true to herself, loss and disillusionment stoke a quietly devastating ending that's sure to resonate with anyone who has ever contemplated uttering the words: 'I do'. Daily Mail Smiley recreates in meticulous detail the limited prospects society at this time offered women ... Marriage and family life, and the intricate web of fissures that spreads beneath the surface, are Smiley's territory, most familiar from her 1991 Pulitzer-winner A Thousand Acres, but Private Life treats these familiar subjects with added scope and depth ... With beauty and tenderness Smiley draws together all these threads and weaves them into a moving reflection on the forces, great and small, that coincide to shape a life. Observer This is an ambitious portrait of one woman's outer and inner lives from the 1880s to the Second World War ... Brilliant Saga Jane SMiley's brilliant, relentless novel about the seemingly routine life of a respectable, middle-class American woman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ... Exquisite prose offers all the coolness of tone, the underplayed humour and the stylish restraint of the 19th century novel ... The Ultimate success of Private Life is its nuanced exposition of inner lives ... not only a gripping drama, but a moving and fascinating portrait of a rather unlikely heroine. The Post (Ireland) It's a fine piece of writing. Tribune (Ireland)