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Private Life

3.14 of 5 stars 3.14 · rating details · 1,639 ratings · 457 reviews

A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman's life, from the 1880s to World War II.

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post–Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published May 4th 2010 by Knopf (first published January 1st 2010)

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Jan 18, 2011 Brenda C Kayne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Only until the last paragraph is read does one come to the realization that this is a cautionary tale on both domestic and worldly levels. In this story, choices are made regarding marriage, social convention, and what to do when one is confronted with a mixture of genius, insanity, and power. The atmosphere is set in the mid-west (oh, how Jane Smiley knows the mid-west)and in San Francisco during the early part of this century. (Yes, it could be a very good movie.)

This book has a graduating in...more

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May 30, 2010 Dagny rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm well into it-and liking it very much.

Finished. In the meantime I read the NYT Michiko Kakutani's review, or shall I say trashing, of the book. I totally disagree with her, as I liked this book very much and found it unique and deep in a way that Kakutani's superficial reading seems not to access.

The time/setting is the early part of the 20th century, in Missouri and California. A timid girl is married to a local standout, an educated and promising fellow, who feels he has understood the uni...more I'm well into it-and liking it very much.

Finished. In the meantime I read the NYT Michiko Kakutani's review, or shall I say trashing, of the book. I totally disagree with her, as I liked this book very much and found it unique and deep in a way that Kakutani's superficial reading seems not to access.

The time/setting is the early part of the 20th century, in Missouri and California. A timid girl is married to a local standout, an educated and promising fellow, who feels he has understood the universe (he picks a quarrel with Einstein) but whose carrier is increasingly derailed because of how eccentric he is. The novel spans their lives until late middle age, through the World Wars.

What I particularly loved about this novel is the underlaying meditation on people's varying natures. Smiley's female protagonist feels people as life-forces. Concurrently one senses how arrangements, live paths and relationships can be, often are, beyond people's control as these "life-forces converge.
Here is where the irritation of some reviewers (esp. Kakutani) come in; as if they think that consciousness alone, awareness of ones' situation, is enough to brake moulds, set free, oppose, etc. Most people of all times and places have had to come to grips with their reality, their natures, and cope the best they can. It is as if the Kakutanis of the world insist on something totally different: how a feisty heroine lived her live in a rebellious romp.

I enjoyed the details of all the astronomical/physics speculation the husband engaged in. The weirdness is partly humorous, partly sad, sometimes oddly beautiful, such as when the wife observes her husbands reaction to the moonrise outside their living-room windows. I was intrigued by the references to Japanese printmaking as well, it will make me look closer at them although in the novel they reflect on the happenings or the reasons the characters are drawn to them. Perhaps Jane Smiley (whose talent is extremely varied; she has even written a book whose style-points are taken from the Icelandic Sagas) sought a stylistic inspiration/parallel from how these prints capture the mundane and the universal in few exquisite strokes?

Private Lives opens a way of seeing a live and afterwards I can see better the many ways of lives. No 3D needed, just a special book. (less)

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Apr 29, 2013 Nancy Hamilton rated it 3 of 5 stars

I listened to this book on my iPod, and it seems to me that this is a book best enjoyed in listening to it. The gentle, straight-forward narrative mirrors the internal life of Margaret, the protagonist, an ordinary, submissive, rather passive housewife, married to a scientist. The book follows her through her girlhood in 19th century Missouri through her marriage to Andrew Early, the most successful man ever to emerge from their little town, to their lives together in California, up through WWII...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Raima Larter rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book--in fact, I bought it in hardcover, since everything else I've read by Jane Smiley has been superb, so why would this be any different? My two-star review is a reflection of the fact that I gave up partway in, unable to force myself to read any further.

The book opens with a riveting sequence that takes place in post-WWII San Francisco. I was immediately pulled in and wanted to know more about what had led to this situation involving Japanese citizens (or, possibly, no...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Monica rated it 3 of 5 stars

Smiley relates the events of the years 1883 through 1942 through the prism of the life of Margaret Mayfield Early, a Missouri woman transplanted to California after her marriage.

In her early years, the aftereffects of the Civil War were still evident in Missouri - the political divides, the social strictures. Margaret is one of three daughters of a widowed mother and the last to marry. She is "saved" from a life of spinsterhood by the connivance of her mother (who doesn't want a spinster daughte...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Lorin Cary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jane Smiley, Private Life,

The trajectory of Margaret Mayfield’s life is Jane Smiley’s subject in this novel. Margaret’s widowed mother (her husband committed suicide after a son is killed and a daughter died of measles) moves Margaret and her two sisters to St. Louis in the late nineteeth century. Margaret loves to read and is a good girl in this vibrant city, one which its inhabitants consider to be on the verge of greatness. The 1904 World’s Fair epitomizes all that is great there. Mom prepare...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Laurie Gray rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Private Life” by Jane Smiley tracks the life of Margaret Mayfield from her youth in Post-Civil War Missouri through her life as Mrs. Andrew Early in California during WWII. Smiley begins with the Rose Wilder Lane quote “In those days all stories ended with the wedding.” Rather than a fairytale “happily-ever-after,” though, Smiley delves into the life of a “good woman” who submits to convention and allows her marriage to define her. Margaret describes herself as the third sister, even though she...more “Private Life” by Jane Smiley tracks the life of Margaret Mayfield from her youth in Post-Civil War Missouri through her life as Mrs. Andrew Early in California during WWII. Smiley begins with the Rose Wilder Lane quote “In those days all stories ended with the wedding.” Rather than a fairytale “happily-ever-after,” though, Smiley delves into the life of a “good woman” who submits to convention and allows her marriage to define her. Margaret describes herself as the third sister, even though she’s the oldest: “There’s always a beautiful sister and a smart sister, and then there’s a sister that’s not beautiful or smart.” At 27, Margaret is on the verge of becoming a spinster when she consents to marry the odd, but brilliant, Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early.

There is no romance between them, which may be a blessing in itself. Margaret’s mother Livinia maintains what Margaret considered to be a practical view of marriage: Romance is always the first act of a tragedy. When Margaret is eight years old, her physician father commits suicide after a freak accident kills Margaret’s thirteen-year old brother and her fifteen-year-old brother dies of the measles. Livinia tells Margaret that death is the most essential part of life.

The novel has no chapters, just a prologue and an epilogue, both set in 1942, and five parts beginning in 1883, 1905, 1911, 1928, 1937, respectively. Those hoping for a fast-paced read or compelling action will be disappointed, but those who appreciate well-crafted prose, exquisite character development, and insightful reflections upon human nature are in for a treat. In addition to describing Margaret’s inner self, “private” seems to be a subtle reference to Margaret’s station in life beneath that of her naval husband, Captain Early. She is but a spectator in that relationship, and over the years she watches her husband decline from something that approaches genius into what seems to be near madness. There’s no telling what Margaret might know, understand and remember if she finds the courage to let herself think before it’s too late.
(less)

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Jul 08, 2012 Elizabeth Sulzby rated it 3 of 5 stars

I do not agree with the publisher's blurb that this is a riveting tale. It is a story that shows how the young woman retains her privacy and doubts about her supposedly so spectacular scholar of a husband. The story is carried in part by the young man's mother and letters that she had written to her son over the decades, urging him to take his great mind and to be humble with it. The wife learns that the accusation of misuse of data against her husband when he was young is not the end of his pre...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Meegan McCorkle rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a fascinating, if slower-paced, novel. And ultimately, it was a very sad novel, with Margaret realizing at the end of her life that she should have lived it more consciously, not letting it slide by, with key decisions made for her. Not regret you want to feel: a sense of life unfulfilled.

As a girl, Margaret has such promise: the spark of life that has her running up and down her town's main street, with a mind advanced and shaped by a passion for reading. But then no suitable man appe...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Lianne added it

There are a handful of living women writers whose new works are required reading. For me, Jane Smiley is one of them, all the more so because she lives in Carmel and I like to follow how her world view and attitude continue to evolve. Although many of Jane Smiley's novels are set in contemporary life, she sets this one in the late Victorian period,and finishes in 1943, after Pearl Harbor.She explores the mysteries of married life from the point of view of Margaret,a compliant protected young wom...more

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Jul 22, 2011 C.J. Noonan rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was hoping this novel would hold my attention like 1000 Acres did. After all, it's set in California (my favorite historical fiction genre) but it didn't. The main character, Margaret, was a distant relative of Jane Smiley's married to the eccentric genius. The scenes reflect what Smiley learned about these two people. Although it is fiction,the plot covers the time of important events in California history through WWII. I liked learning more about Mare Island. Other events of the first half o...more

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Apr 23, 2011 Liu Zhen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 11th

Title: Private Life
Author: Jane Smiley
Pages: 320
Publisher: May 4th 2010 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (first published 2010)
Isbn: 1400040604 (ISBN13: 9781400040605)

Private Life, a novel by Jane Smiley is rather redundant than prevailing. The novel is written from a third person’s point of view of Margaret Mayfield’s life from 1904 to 1942. Each chapter of the book depicts a different stage of Margaret's life, from being a young girl to marriage to have children then to death. The Private L...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Wanda rated it 1 of 5 stars

Ok, that’s it. No more Jane Smiley for me. Hubby and I have tried 1000 Acres and wound up giving up on that finding Smiley's focus on the mundane details of EVERYTHING to be incredibly tedious, characters unappealing, and totally in need of a good editor to cut it down by 75%..
Now comes Private Life, which from the publisher’s blurb sounded like an intriguing story. Not. It is a character study straight out of DSM – see Dependent Personality Disorder. And, while this could be fairly interesting...more Ok, that’s it. No more Jane Smiley for me. Hubby and I have tried 1000 Acres and wound up giving up on that finding Smiley's focus on the mundane details of EVERYTHING to be incredibly tedious, characters unappealing, and totally in need of a good editor to cut it down by 75%..
Now comes Private Life, which from the publisher’s blurb sounded like an intriguing story. Not. It is a character study straight out of DSM – see Dependent Personality Disorder. And, while this could be fairly interesting, given Smiley’s penchant on describing EVERYTHING in minute detail, it is simply unutterably mind numbing.
The book is about Margaret, a disengaged 27 year old woman who at the turn of the century (19th) is considered a spinster. Her father committed suicide when she was just a child – you might ask who cares about this detail because it is not salient to the character or her development. Wait! There is no development.
So, Margaret marries Alexander Early, a repressed, rigid and obsessive scientist and enters into a joyless marriage.

Ok, so what, big deal. Does anything happen in this book? Not really. Smiley divides it into sections that begin with Margaret visiting some Japanese friends and then jumps through time examining the role of women from the late 1800s to mid 1900. Never once did I have a good idea of Margaret as a person in spite of this. What were her motivations? Did she actually have a personality apart from her husband and what was expected of her? Maybe her personality was indeed that of a Casper Milquetoast, in that each time a situation presents itself where Margaret actually could come to another’s aid or step outside her autistic like existence, she makes a half hearted attempt and then withdraws. She does not learn anything from experience and she has little insight into how she has been manipulated by others and how devastatingly their actions have impacted her life. When she does muster up such a glimmer, what does she do? Nothing.

She simply lives a totally and completely repressed and bland life with everything subordinated to others- and to her own fears. She is disengaged and lives a bland existence that in the end leaves no mark upon the world nor any important contribution. She seems afraid of everything – including facing the truth, turning away from anything that might upset her bland world.

She sort of reminded me of an emotionally abused wife – which I guess she really was. She was completely subjugated to the needs, wants, and desires of her husband and everyone else. Truth had no place in her life, nor introspection, nor taking any risk to learn anything new about anything. Perhaps it was Smiley’s intent to paint this picture – and I do admit there are women like this. But I don’t really want to read an entire novel about them unless it is a novel of growth and gumption to break out of this emotional prison in which they find themselves.

One might say that this is an unfair assessment. Women did not have much in the way of options at the turn of the century. To this I say balderdash. There are many ways to make one’s mark in the world and always have been. Mousehood and withdrawal from reality (unless one is psychotic and can’t help it) is not one of those.

So, I didn't like the character and I really don't like Smiley's writing style. What's up with the Pulitzer committee? Who does she know?(less)

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Jan 02, 2011 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes, when I finish a book, I like to read what others have written, just to see if I agree. This time, I couldn't disagree more. Several people commented that this is the story of a loveless, arranged marriage. Andrew proposed to Margaret and she accepted, so it was not arranged. She traveled across country with him, leaving behind family, friends and her the comfort of the known. Although both mother's plotted to get the two of them together, they did not force the marriage. In an arrange...more

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Dec 17, 2010 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

As i was reading Jane Smiley's most recent novel, my husband commented that world events did not enter Jane Austen's Emma. What a contrast from Private Life, in which the protagonist Margaret Mayfield Early bears witness to the aftermath of the American Civil War, the San Francisco earthquake, the First World War, anarchy, Pearl Harbor and the national paranoia that came afterwards, as well as the most important scientific advances. Margaret is more forward-looking than her domineering and misgu...more

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Aug 25, 2010 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 21, 2010 Veronica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is what might have happened to Dorothea in Middlemarch if she hadn't had the good fortune of Mr Casaubon dying and setting her free. This book is no Middlemarch, but it is an excruciating portrait of a sterile marriage in the first half of the 20th century, between a too-timid woman with no other options, and a brilliant but increasingly deranged astronomer. It's slow at first, but the last third of the book, as Margaret slowly begins to see her husband as others see him, and finally realis...more

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Aug 09, 2010 K2 ----- rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not Smiley's best but a good read.

The book takes place between 1880 and the second world war with Margaret as the central character. I thought it was fairly uneven, and perhaps needed a more heavy handed editor.

Smiley tells a tale of Margaret, who was raised in the Midwest, and remains unmarried beyond what was an acceptable age in those times. She is finally paired up with a well educated fellow who is an astronomer, a Captain in the Navy, who has a some screws loose and a few skeletons in hi...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Moving from the late-nineteenth century through World War II, and crossing North America from Missouri to California, this novel is the story of the unhappy and increasingly distant marriage of Margaret and Andrew Early. Always an unlikely couple, the Earlys' marriage grows more troubled over time. By her late twenties Margaret was in danger of living her life as a perpetual spinster. Andrew, a troubled and headstrong scientist, dismissed in shame from his faculty position in Chicago, charms Mar...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Janice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not my favorite Jane Smiley, but still very readable and absorbing. Makes me glad I'm not a 19th century woman with few choices but to get married to the only crackpot blowhard who would have me. Time period is really interesting. The main character, the likeable Margaret, is only a little girl in the early 1880s and in her early 60s in the 1940s. The incredible technological changes that take place in the span of her life (no electricity or telephones in her childhood but the creation of the at...more

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May 25, 2010 Shifra rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a great fan of Jane Smiley. And because I am I kept waiting patiently for the story to pick up. the story takes place between 1883 and 1942. The main characters Margaret a sweet but not particularly dynamic woman who at 27 marries Dr. Andrew Jefferson Early a Navy Captain and scientist. I found it disturbing witnessing 30 years plus of marriage with Andrew never stopping to be selfish and even worse creating insane scientific hypothesis. The period of time covered was a dramatic exciting ti...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Eileen Granfors rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: families, historical-fiction, women

In "Private Lives" by Jane Smiley, we meet Margaret Mayfield, the not beautiful, not smart (so she thinks), but good sister. She lives in Missouri, outside of St. Louis and seems to be destined to old-maid status. Then the odd but engaging Andrew Early steps into the path of her bicycle.

Margaret's high-spirited joy rides on the bicycle give way to a married life of trying to please Andrew, an astronomer, physicist, and writer, whom the world does not understand and who is not exactly a model hus...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Anna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction, historical-fiction

The events of the years 1883 through 1942 through the prism of the life of Margaret Mayfield Early, a Missouri woman transplanted to California after her marriage.

Early is an astronomer turned physicist who has decided that he alone understands the nature of the universe. He is bright enough and driven enough to carry this off for a time, but it becomes clear that he is as delusional as he is driven. He becomes obsessed with discrediting Einstein, with defending his own theory of an imploding un...more

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Apr 16, 2013 Erika rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-reading-challenge, fiction, historical-fiction, women, absolute-favourites

This is one of those books that you don't merely read, but rather fall into. Jane Smiley is the queen of details for me, and this is no exception. Very little in this story is told to the reader, everything is shown, in extravagant little details that I concede, some might find excessive, but so appeal to me. The story chronicles the life of Margaret, a quiet, obedient young woman, from 1883 to 1942. Initially not all that interested in marriage, she follows convention when marriage is proposed...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Jen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: america

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May 28, 2012 Karyl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, bookstore-finds

I really do love books that travel throughout time and show the progression of one person's life. This one appealed even more to me, considering it opens in 1883 and finishes up during WWII -- a period of huge change and upheaval in all aspects of life. Other reviewers weren't fond of the slowness of this novel, but I think that very thing really brings home Margaret's isolation and the way in which her life passed her by without her even realizing it had happened. Already an old maid at the age...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I shelved this book a couple of times, so it took me a while to finish it. The story takes place from the late 1800s through the early days of the US entering World War 2. Margaret Early narrates, she's a woman trapped in a stifling marriage with Navy Captain Andrew Early. As I got into the book I realized Andrew Early was a supremely confident fool and once I put aside my dislike of him, I was able to take in the well drawn historical references and some of the interesting characters who come i...more

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Jun 23, 2010 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

The best new novel I've read since Gilead. Starting in 1880s Missouri and ending in the Bay Area in 1942, the book traces the life and feelings of Margaret Early, who escapes "spinsterhood" only to land in an oppressive marriage with an unbalanced husband, whose growing paranoia and increasingly bizarre theories of the universe dominate Margaret's days. The title's "private life" refers to her tumultuous private feelings amidst banal daily events, but Smiley doesn't dive quite deep enough. The b...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Marie desJardins rated it 3 of 5 stars

There were parts of this book I truly loved. The character of Andrew Early is so well drawn -- an intense, megalomaniac, possibly schizophrenic man who teeters on the border between genius and lunacy -- I was fascinated by him and by his wife Margaret's reaction to gradually realizing that her marriage to him would not be what she thought it was. I returned repeatedly to reread this passage, one of the most poignant and true descriptions of instinctual parental love I've read:

Her love for Alexan

...more There were parts of this book I truly loved. The character of Andrew Early is so well drawn -- an intense, megalomaniac, possibly schizophrenic man who teeters on the border between genius and lunacy -- I was fascinated by him and by his wife Margaret's reaction to gradually realizing that her marriage to him would not be what she thought it was. I returned repeatedly to reread this passage, one of the most poignant and true descriptions of instinctual parental love I've read:

Her love for Alexander developed right there, an almost physical sensation. Margaret was not a fanciful person, but she felt it as a kind of invisible swelling, infusing all her tissues, that she had never felt before.... if she said she loved Alexander, what she was talking about was a bodily transformation. It was as if he were a dye and she was white wool. Looking at him and holding him dyed her through and through.

There are beautiful moments and insights like this throughout the book.

But. But. (view spoiler)

The parts I loved would easily have given the book five stars. The parts I hated would easily have been one star (since you can't really give zero stars; that just looks like an unrated book). So... three stars. My advice is to skim the parts that seem to be irrelevant and not fitting with the rest of the book. You will enjoy it more.(less)

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Aug 11, 2011 Bea rated it 2 of 5 stars

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About Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar...more

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