Wednesday, June 9 2010
Janes Smiley’s Excellent Prose and Sly Humor are Here in ‘Private Life’
Smiley never writes a book without placing her characters amidst upheaval; here it's war, along with scientific advances and technologies like the telephone, the 1906 earthquake, and the Spanish Influenza epidemic.
Wednesday, July 23 2008
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
An acid-tongued humor, playing towards a number of stuffy British stereotypes.
Thursday, February 15 2007
Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley
What should you do when war starts? Visit a friend! Talk! Have sex!
Thursday, June 1 2006
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
The historian's customary irony is replaced with the assumed fatalism of the Norse themselves, for whom death was a harsh fact of daily existence. The effect is monumental, and carries the burnished authenticity of a long-lost epic.
