A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World ...
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Jan 18, 2011
Brenda C
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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.)
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Apr 22, 2011
Dagny
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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 h More...
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 h More...
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Oct 07, 2011
Meegan
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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 suitabl More...
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 suitabl More...
Aug 09, 2011
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 wo
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Jul 22, 2011
C.J.
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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
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Apr 23, 2011
Liu Zhen
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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 chi More...
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 chi More...
Feb 22, 2011
Wanda
rated it: 
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 int More...
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 int More...
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Jan 02, 2011
Ann
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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
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Dec 17, 2010
Susan
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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 mis
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Aug 25, 2010
Michelle
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Aug 21, 2010
Veronica
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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
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Aug 09, 2010
K2
rated it:
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 More...
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 More...
Jul 14, 2010
Laurie
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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
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Jun 29, 2010
Janice
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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 th
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May 25, 2010
Shifra
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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
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Jun 09, 2010
Eileen
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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 More...
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 More...
Jun 23, 2010
Dan
rated it:
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 qu
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Aug 11, 2011
Bea
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Feb 04, 2011
Diane C.
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Like many books where the pay off comes later on, this book took a while to set things up, still all the while with wonderfully drawn characters and engrossing plot. Set against more than half a century of world events, the book follows the courtship and marriage between Margaret, a pleasant, smart and passive woman, and Andrew, a brilliant, paranoid genius whose savvy mom bargains for a marriage in cahoots with Margaret's mother. The rest of the story takes place in early 20th century S More...
Nov 03, 2010
Morgan
rated it:
Didn't think this would be my kind of book, but I couldn't put it down. Love stuff that doesn't think out the answer/ending for you. Also, love the idea in the book that crazy doesn't mean wrong. A person could be totally off their rocker, but right about some things. You can't dismiss everything a person says/feels just because you can't identify/understand them.
Main character's personal history fascinating. Moves from late 1800's to WWII. Moves from St. Louis to San Francisc More...
Main character's personal history fascinating. Moves from late 1800's to WWII. Moves from St. Louis to San Francisc More...
Sep 04, 2010
April
rated it:
To me, this is Jane Smiley's answer to A Reliable Wife, which is so popular and which I did not like at all. The author explores how a "third sister" (not the pretty one, not the smart one) could have been manipulated into a tragic marriage in the 1900s but makes it all the more poignant by taking out the melodrama. I especially liked the portrayal of the husband, who was not a brute, but a genius who never quite lived up to his potential and who could simply not accept that. How the m
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Aug 30, 2011
It has been said that Jane Smiley can write about anything and make it fascinating and universal. Private Life bears that out, taking us deep into the life of one woman, Margaret Mayfield, married to cosmologist Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. The story moves from the end of the US Civil War in 1883 with Margaret as a girl, through to 1942, just past Pearl Harbour and the US's entry into World War Two. As always with Smiley, the work is meticulously researched and richly detailed with much of
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Jun 13, 2011
Lynn
rated it:
This is a lovely novel and one of the best I've read in a long time. Margaret is a woman who lives a pretty satisfying life as an old maid in Missouri in the 1880s. She meets and marries a professor of Astronomy and Physics who visits her town occasionally. She is 27, he is older. He seems cold and very involved by the thoughts in his head and never quite attaches himself to her though she makes every attempt to make him a good wife, which is really what she is. Her life is completely circu
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Sep 29, 2010
Debbie
rated it:
This book spans the years 1883-1945 in the USA. Margaret Mayfield lives in Missouri with her mother and two sisters. Both her brothers died as children and Margaret's father committed suicide. Margaret is the plain sister and feels as if life is a play that she watches from the sidelines. As both her sisters marry and start having children, Margaret is still an unmarried maid of 27.
Enter Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, brilliant scientist and the most famous person ever produ More...
Enter Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, brilliant scientist and the most famous person ever produ More...
May 18, 2010
Peggy
rated it:
This was a good story with draggy writing. The wordiness of the book cut down on my enjoyment. the book was well researched but there were just too many details. I would not have finished it if it were not for the characters, especially Margaret and the Kimura Family.
Margaret Mayfield Early's life from post civil war through pre World War II is told in the book. Margaret was raised to be a wife. When she finally marries at age 27, which is considered "Old Maid" terri More...
Margaret Mayfield Early's life from post civil war through pre World War II is told in the book. Margaret was raised to be a wife. When she finally marries at age 27, which is considered "Old Maid" terri More...
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Dec 22, 2011
Sandy
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I am an admitted mystery-lover, so this book my friend pressed into my hands had a slow start. Actually it progressed slowly with no cliff hangers or suspicious clues to greedily continue reading for. At first I actually was re-reading the whole book, though I probably had finished it at least once before.. but maybe not entirely. It grew on me... the many messages people keep and never share.
So situations look one way on the surface and really are very different than they seem at other More...
So situations look one way on the surface and really are very different than they seem at other More...
Oct 27, 2011
I enjoyed my book group's discussion of Private Life. I found the character development of Margaret interesting. The use of letters from mother in law and husband revealed that she was perceived by them as being of limited intelligence, while I find her quite intelligent. She always seemed intelligent to me, as when she discovered that her mother in law and her friends were counting cards at the friendly ladies card game. I truly enjoyed her description of her husband to an FBI agent. It see
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Jan 06, 2012
Gudrun
rated it:
Opens with a dramatic scene, then skips back in time to the beginning of the story. From there, it’s a slow, somewhat tedious slog – I almost ditched the book – but the narrative builds up a head of steam as the novel builds to its core concerns. It is the story of a marriage, from Margaret’s near-fate as a post-Civil War old-maid, to her “rescue” via marriage to an eccentric scientist named Andrew, to the final act of their marriage during the second world war. It’s a bleak portrait: marriage a
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Sep 05, 2010
Jane Smiley's latest novel is a captivating story of a woman's journey from a young girl in St. Louis in the 1880's to a mature woman in San Francisco in the 1940's as the events of World War II are unfolding. Her marriage to an egocentric and delusional astronomer is a source of constant unhappiness, especially as she learns more about him and the circumstances surrounding their marriage. Her world expands through her friendship with a variety of people, including a Japanese family who are vict
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Aug 11, 2010
Theresa
rated it:
Again, this is probably one I would've given a 3.5 stars. I'm getting a little tired of these measly three...
Anyway, this book was...sort of odd. Very slow paced, character-driven novel about one women in the late 19th century and the bigger-than-life man she married. My biggest beef with the story was that I never really got a feel for the woman until the last quarter of the book. Granted, that was probably the point. The story was really about Margaret and Andrew's marriage, a More...
Anyway, this book was...sort of odd. Very slow paced, character-driven novel about one women in the late 19th century and the bigger-than-life man she married. My biggest beef with the story was that I never really got a feel for the woman until the last quarter of the book. Granted, that was probably the point. The story was really about Margaret and Andrew's marriage, a More...
