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A review by karasmichelle
Private Life by Jane Smiley
3.0
This was quite the epic to listen to on CD. To get through the 11 discs, it took several LONG car trips and then a few nights of listening at home. I don't know if I could have stuck with the actual 318 pp. book.
I felt bad for the protagonist, the homely and "saint-like" Margaret Mayfield Early, who marries an educated man who turns out to be a buffoon, and everybody knows it but her, until she has a sort of epiphany while well into her 60s. It seems Margaret, though curious and possessing of many good and wise friends, never truly knows love. In her marriage, she's taken far from her Missouri family - her many sisters and nieces - to the then new frontier town of Vallejo, near San Francisco. She loses the baby that may have given her life richness. She has one (ONE!) seemingly satisfying tryst in her life with a dashing and mysterious longtime friend.
Despite my disappointment that Margaret never gets the happiness she seems to be due her whole life, it's a good story. Smiley is an engaging writer, and weaves a lot of history (the first two world wars, the building, burning and rebuilding of San Francisco) though this novel.
I felt bad for the protagonist, the homely and "saint-like" Margaret Mayfield Early, who marries an educated man who turns out to be a buffoon, and everybody knows it but her, until she has a sort of epiphany while well into her 60s. It seems Margaret, though curious and possessing of many good and wise friends, never truly knows love. In her marriage, she's taken far from her Missouri family - her many sisters and nieces - to the then new frontier town of Vallejo, near San Francisco. She loses the baby that may have given her life richness. She has one (ONE!) seemingly satisfying tryst in her life with a dashing and mysterious longtime friend.
Despite my disappointment that Margaret never gets the happiness she seems to be due her whole life, it's a good story. Smiley is an engaging writer, and weaves a lot of history (the first two world wars, the building, burning and rebuilding of San Francisco) though this novel.