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ldv's review against another edition
3.0
The author was smart to give you some of the ending of the story at the beginning of the book (hint for all those who sin by reading the last pages or chapter first: the author makes you do so here, so don't bother). The story then goes back (40-50? years) and starts at the "beginning." The names and objects mentioned in the prologue are the only things really that helped pull me through the book. As the items are encountered you almost check them off. Otherwise there is little overt conflict to propel the story. It's simply the account of one woman's life, mostly regarding her dull marriage to a astronomer/physicist who sees conspiracy theories around him. Her character is very interesting, and there a good sense of the history of the time period (late 1800/early 1900), but it's nothing too exciting.
toesinthesand's review against another edition
3.0
Don't read this if boring characters who never do anything bother you... I like her style for some reason and I got into Margaret's life even though she should have left her husband so many times. she does eventually grow some backbone although it's too late and even then it's not enough. But it's a good look at a woman's options in the early 20th century, she didn't have many.
karieh13's review against another edition
3.0
“Private Life” is a rather muted story, set in a time frame that was anything but quiet. The story begins in 1883 and continues through 1942 – through the major wars and events of the United States. The muffled sense comes from the main character, Margaret, who lives through these events but is rarely a part of them.
“Margaret listened and made her own sympathetic sighs, but her memories of her father were dim, and entirely overlaid by the cacophony of subsequent events.”
Most of Margaret’s life is overlaid by the lives of others. She seems to be an observer of her life rather than an active participant. But the story is not lessened by this, because she, in her way, is a keen observer, although not always of that which might have the greatest impact on her.
“She didn’t have too much trouble, either, with Newton’s ideas about gravitation or his three laws of motion, except for the third one. Her life experience seemed to indicate that if you weren’t careful, often the reaction was stronger than the original action, not equal to it. Against Mr. Newton’s ‘equal and opposite reaction’, she suggested ‘sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.’”
Margaret’s reactions - to life, death, war, natural disaster – provide excellent detail but very little emotion. The reader sees very well what is happening around her as she moves from child, to woman, from her family into marriage…as she and the world move into the twentieth century. We see it, but we don’t feel what she feels. Until later in her life, when she starts to look back at all that has changed, and how little she has changed.
All throughout the book, there was a conflict between the passage of time and the reluctance for many of the main characters to acknowledge it. Not in regards to their age or their lives, but as it related to the world. From the late 1880’s to World War II – the world changed in so many ways that it seems impossible to count them all. And yet – the manners, the actions, the lives of Margaret and her husband Andrew, alter very little.
“And this feeling evolved into a more frightening one – she was herself, old, sixty-two, and her mind was so full of everything that she had seen and done and imagined that she didn’t know was to make of any of it, how to think, what to do, how to live.”
Margaret’s story is an interesting one…in the way most “everyman – caught up in the middle of extraordinary events” stories are. Hers are a set of eyes that gave me a fresh view into a fascinating part of our nation’s history. At the end of the book, I felt as if I still didn’t know very much about her, but did know a great deal about the characters around her. Which might have been true for Margaret herself.
“I do, said Margaret, I do remember it now that I’ve dared to think about it. There are so many things that I should have dared before this.”
“Margaret listened and made her own sympathetic sighs, but her memories of her father were dim, and entirely overlaid by the cacophony of subsequent events.”
Most of Margaret’s life is overlaid by the lives of others. She seems to be an observer of her life rather than an active participant. But the story is not lessened by this, because she, in her way, is a keen observer, although not always of that which might have the greatest impact on her.
“She didn’t have too much trouble, either, with Newton’s ideas about gravitation or his three laws of motion, except for the third one. Her life experience seemed to indicate that if you weren’t careful, often the reaction was stronger than the original action, not equal to it. Against Mr. Newton’s ‘equal and opposite reaction’, she suggested ‘sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.’”
Margaret’s reactions - to life, death, war, natural disaster – provide excellent detail but very little emotion. The reader sees very well what is happening around her as she moves from child, to woman, from her family into marriage…as she and the world move into the twentieth century. We see it, but we don’t feel what she feels. Until later in her life, when she starts to look back at all that has changed, and how little she has changed.
All throughout the book, there was a conflict between the passage of time and the reluctance for many of the main characters to acknowledge it. Not in regards to their age or their lives, but as it related to the world. From the late 1880’s to World War II – the world changed in so many ways that it seems impossible to count them all. And yet – the manners, the actions, the lives of Margaret and her husband Andrew, alter very little.
“And this feeling evolved into a more frightening one – she was herself, old, sixty-two, and her mind was so full of everything that she had seen and done and imagined that she didn’t know was to make of any of it, how to think, what to do, how to live.”
Margaret’s story is an interesting one…in the way most “everyman – caught up in the middle of extraordinary events” stories are. Hers are a set of eyes that gave me a fresh view into a fascinating part of our nation’s history. At the end of the book, I felt as if I still didn’t know very much about her, but did know a great deal about the characters around her. Which might have been true for Margaret herself.
“I do, said Margaret, I do remember it now that I’ve dared to think about it. There are so many things that I should have dared before this.”
dcmr's review against another edition
1.0
I loved "A Thousand Acres" and "Good Faith" but just couldn't get through "Private Life" -- and I even tried twice.
kelbi's review against another edition
3.0
A very sombre, rather depressing novel about an arid marriage. A wasted life, not a book to raise the spirits, except it makes me feel even luckier than I did already that I didn't have such a life.
dllh's review against another edition
sad
3.25
I'm not sure what to say about it. The pacing sometimes felt slow, but it also covered 60+ years in a short 300 pages. The tail end was biting and made me think oddly of Shirley Jackson. It held my interest all the way through, but I wouldn't call it a page-turner. Yet I read it fairly quickly. It almost felt incomplete, or at least not long enough. But that's not quite right, because it was clearly framed by its opening and closing sections and Smiley doled out precisely what she wanted the reader to see. There's a sense of limitation or private-ness in the title itself.
minniepauline's review against another edition
4.0
I'm feeling along with Margaret, the protagonist. I like her a lot.
randybo5's review against another edition
3.0
"Margaret knew she would always keep this thought to herself, but it was an oddly satisfying thought, and she had a right to think it-" That sums up the transformation of this character, never voicing her thoughts and for years not even thinking she had anything worthwhile to think.