Books by Jane Smiley and Complete Book Reviews

Jane Smiley, Author . Knopf $22 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4058-2
In a wide-ranging and detailed, yet somewhat flat memoir, Smiley (A Thousand Acres ; Moo ; etc.) examines the nuances of horses' lives and of the people who build their lives around them. She does not aim "to evoke horseness, but to evoke...
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $26.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-307-70034-6
A lot can happen over a hundred years, as Smiley shows in her chronicle of the Langdon family. The first two volumes, Some Luck and Early Warning, took the family from 1919 to 1986; Golden Age completes the trilogy by bringing them to the present,...
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $26.95 (496p) ISBN 978-0-307-70032-2
Smiley has a big cast to wrangle in the second volume of the Last Hundred Years trilogy, which began with 2014’s Some Luck, and she starts this entry at the funeral of Walter, the Iowa farmer and paterfamilias of volume one. While the Langdons,...
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $26.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-307-70031-5
In the first volume of a planned trilogy, Smiley returns to the Iowa of her Pulitzer Prize–winning A Thousand Acres, but in a very different vein. The warring sisters and abusive father of that book have given way to the Langdons, a loving family...
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Jane Smiley, Author Alfred A. Knopf $26 (452p) ISBN 978-0-679-45074-0
An immensely appealing heroine, a historical setting conveyed with impressive fidelity and a charming and poignant love story make Smiley's (A Thousand Acres) new novel a sure candidate for bestseller longevity. Lidie Harkness, a spinster at 20, is...
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Jane Smiley, Author Alfred A. Knopf $24 (414p) ISBN 978-0-679-42023-1
Effortlessly switching gears after the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, Smiley delivers a surprising tour de force, a satire of university life that leaves no aspect of contemporary academia unscathed. The setting is a large midwestern...
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Jane Smiley, Author Knopf Publishing Group $19.95 (558p) ISBN 978-0-394-55120-3
In this vast, intricately patterned novel, Smiley accurately captures the voice of the medieval sagas. Understated, scattered with dreams and warnings, darkened by the brooding sense of unavoidable disasters to come, it is the tale of a Scandinavian
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Jane Smiley, Author Crown Publishers $19.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-517-56700-5
In her first nonfiction work, the author of Barn Blind fashions what she calls a ""friendship quilt'' from interviews with artisans who see their choice to live in the the New York Catskill Mountains region as being significantly entwined with their
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Jane Smiley, Author Alfred A. Knopf $15.95 (213p) ISBN 978-0-394-55848-6
With authenticity, insight, sensitivity and an unobstrusive yet absorbing prose style, Smiley (Duplicate Keys portrays pained individuals who yearn for idyllic companionship, plus the contentment and security that they imagine it entails. In ""The...
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Jane Smiley, Author Ballantine Books $14.95 (400p) ISBN 978-0-449-90748-1
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the NBCC Award for fiction, a BOMC dual main selection and a five-week PW bestseller in cloth, Smiley's novel of family life on an insular Iowa farm raises profound questions about human conduct and moral...
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Jane Smiley, Author Ivy Books $5.99 (224p) ISBN 978-0-8041-0714-3
Two novellas demonstrate the price children often pay for their parents' mistakes: in Ordinary Love , a father divides his family after his wife announces her extramarital affair, while in Good Will a boy is the victim of his father's obsession to...
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Jane Smiley, Author Alfred A. Knopf $17.95 (197p) ISBN 978-0-394-57772-2
After her long novel The Greenlanders , Smiley returns to the novella form of the masterly The Age of Grief , and this double bill exhibits her finely honed talent in impeccable form. In both stories Smiley movingly illustrates the price children...
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Jane Smiley, Author Viking Books $22.95 (212p) ISBN 978-0-670-03077-4
Two men who towered over the 19th century are the subjects of new Penguin Lives biographies coming in May. Novelist Jane Smiley's Charles Dickens aims to give a new perspective on the Victorian author, who, she says, was perhaps ""the first true
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Jane Smiley, illus. by Elaine Clayton, Knopf, $16.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-375-86229-8
Smiley returns to the territory and characters of her 2009 novel, The Georges and the Jewels, in this moving sequel. Opening on Abby's 13th birthday, the story centers on her relationship with her beloved eight-month-old colt, Jack (introduced in...
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Jane Smiley, Doubleday, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-52713-2
Novelist Smiley explores the story of the now mostly forgotten Atanasoff, a brilliant and engaged physicist and engineer who first dreamed of and built a computational machine that was the prototype for the computer. With her dazzling storytelling,...
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Jane Smiley, Author Knopf/Everyman's Library $26 (576p) ISBN 978-0-375-40600-3
The Chinese calendar aside, 2000 may be the Year of the Horse. Almost neck and neck with Alyson Hagy's Keeneland, this novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans is...
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Jane Smiley, Author . Knopf $26.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4060-5
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Thousand Acres delivers a slow-moving historical antiromance in her bleak 13th novel. In the early 1880s, Margaret Mayfield is rescued from old maid status by Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, an...
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Jane Smiley, Author , illus. by Elaine Clayton. Knopf $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-375-86227-4
Pulitzer Prize–winner Smiley's first novel for young readers is a lyrical meditation on horses, families and the vicissitudes of peer relationships among girls. Twelve-year-old Abby lives on a California horse farm with her evangelical...
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Jane Smiley, Author . Knopf $26 (464p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4061-2
Smiley (A Thousand Acres ) goes Hollywood in this scintillating tale of an extended Decameron -esque L.A. house party. Gathering at the home of washed-up director Max the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards are his Iraq-obsessed girlfriend, Elena;
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Jane Smiley, Author . Knopf $26.95 (591p) ISBN 978-1-4000-4059-9
Plagued by a sense of despair while writing her last novel, Good Faith, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Smiley (A Thousand Acres , etc.) decided to return to the enterprise that got her started as a writer: reading. The result is a book that...
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Jane Smiley, Author . Knopf $26 (432p) ISBN 978-0-375-41217-2
Smiley's range as a writer is always surprising. Eschewing both the tragic dimension of A Thousand Acres and the satiric glee of Moo, her 12th book is a clever and entertaining cautionary tale about America's greedy decade of the 1980s....
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Jane Smiley, read by Kate Reading, Random Audio, unabridged, 11 CDs, 13.5 hrs., $40 ISBN 978-0-3077-1591-9
Raised in post–Civil War Missouri, Margaret Mayfield Early has witnessed vast changes in the U.S. and around the world in her 60 years, and her observations and recollections make for a captivating listen. Kate Reading is well cast; her rich voice...
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Jane Smiley, illus. by Lauren Castillo. Amazon/Two Lions, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-4778-2635-5
In her first outing as picture book author, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Smiley (A Thousand Acres) explores the spookiness of being awake when everyone else has fallen asleep. After a long day at the beach, Lucy and her parents are out of steam....
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Jane Smiley, Author, Barbara Bristol, Editor Alfred A Knopf Inc $25 (371p) ISBN 978-0-394-57773-9
If Smiley ( Ordinary Love & Good Will ) has previously been hailed for her insight into human nature, the moral complexity of her themes and her lucid and resonant prose, her new novel is her best yet, bringing together her extraordinary talents in...
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Edited by Don George and Samantha Forge. Lonely Planet, $15.99 trade paper (318p) ISBN 978-1-74360-360-4
From Cold War Yugoslavia to modern-day Yemen, Lonely Planet’s latest collection of nonfiction travel stories doesn’t leave a stone or continent unturned. Readers will relish Simon Winchester’s boyhood tale of a near-death experience in the Arctic...
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Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley. Library of America, $21.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-59853-628-7
In this thoughtful essay collection, four contemporary authors explore their relationships to the title characters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Each focuses on the sister who holds particular significance for them, considering how their...
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $26.95 (288) ISBN 978-0-525-52035-1
Fans of Pulitzer winner Smiley (A Thousand Acres) won’t be surprised to find a horse in her fanciful latest; this time out it’s a talking racehorse named Perestroika. Paras, as the horse is known, wanders out of her stable and finds herself in Paris’
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $28 (224p) ISBN 978-0-525-52033-7
Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley (Perestroika in Paris) spins a remarkable story of the California gold rush and a pair of sex worker sleuths who track down the culprit behind a series of disappearances. After 21-year-old Eliza Cargill Ripple’s husband...
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Jane Smiley. Heyday, $30 (256p) ISBN 978-1-59714-605-0
In this sharp compendium, Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley (A Dangerous Business) brings together her literary criticism, which brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. The selections contemplate canonical works...
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Jane Smiley. Knopf, $29 (384p) ISBN 978-0-593-53501-1
Smiley (A Dangerous Business) follows the life of a budding folk rock singer in her tender if uneven latest. While Jodie Rattler is studying at Penn State in the 1960s, one of her songs becomes a surprise hit, leading to gigs in Los Angeles and New...
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ARTICLES
  • Q & A with Jane Smiley
  • 5 Writing Tips: Jane Smiley
  • Horsin' Around in Jane Smiley's New Novel
  • Horsin' Around in Jane Smiley's New Novel
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