It’s often said that the twentieth century is the place where tragedy is replaced by trauma, but this novel seemed to me to narrate their convergence, the moment when one creates the other.
The tightness of its plotline, the concentration of its ideas, and the beauty of Smiley’s prose forged together into an arrow’s flight into meltdown. The experience of A Thousand Acres suggests I should go back and reread, but then again what gripped me in this narrative was its terrible, claustrophobic trajectory into disaster. It passed in a whirlwind of episodic scenes and characters that left little impression on my sleep-deprived mind. I had read Jane Smiley before, but the novel on that occasion was Moo and, at that time, my son was still very young and demanding. No sooner do I lay down one extraordinary novel than another comes along. I must say that this American reading challenge has completely transformed my summer holiday reading.
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