Jane Smiley Books

So many books. So little time.

Jane Smiley's "Thirteen ways of Looking at the Novel" won't help you to deal with the sheer volume of new books that are published nowadays. In fact, weighing in at close to 600 pages, it may actually slow progress towards whatever numerical goal you may have set for 2008. Nonetheless, I urge you, I implore you, to get this book and to take the time to read it. Why? Because if you do, you will never read a novel the same way again. I have read no other book that comes close to this one in terms of enriching my overall reading experience.

The structure of the book is straightforward. The first twelve chapters, spanning 270 pages, or just under half the book, have titles like The Origins of the Novel, The Psychology of the Novel, Morality and the Novel, The Art of the Novel, The Novel and History. Each reads like a terrific tutorial by the professor of literature you wish you had had in college. Though these chapters are never less than fascinating, for my money it's the next four chapters which make this book so brilliant. They are titled The Circle of the Novel, A Novel of Your Own (I), A Novel of Your Own (II), `Good Faith: A Case History . Basically, Smiley uses the 100 pages or so spanned by these chapters to given an inspired tutorial, of unsurpassed brilliance, on how to write a novel. If I had my way, it would be required reading for all of the Rick Moodys, the Heidi Julavits, the Dave Eggers, the Deborah Eisenbergs, any of those too-smart-for-their-own good writers at work today who continue to foist off their whip-smart, empty-hearted, look-at-me-how-smart-am-I, metafictional experiments on the unsuspecting reader, passing it off as `literary fiction'.

In the last half of the book, Smiley analyzes 101 of her favorite novels, ranging from `The Tale of Genji' and `The Decameron' to `White Teeth' and `Atonement', bringing to bear the ideas laid out in the first half of the book. This is done with such wit, intelligence, and sympathy that the effect is to make you want to re-read those books you were already familiar with, and to rush out and get the books she discusses that you haven't already read.

In short, this is one of those rare books that is genuinely uplifting, and will rekindle your enthusiasm for reading. I can give it no higher recommendation.

This compendium falls into three parts, more or less. The first section offers Smiley's survey of how the novel evolved. Here, she emphasizes the importance of Bocaccio's Decameron and Marguerite de Naverre's Heptameron, two collections of stories grouped around a tale-telling symposium, more or less. The first stresses the humanism and the joy of human relationships; the second cautions humans about the danger of such relationships. Here, Smiley finds the tension that characterizes the subsequent four centuries of what becomes, with the rise of literacy and the spread of affordable books, the novel as we know it.

Her 22 years spent teaching university in Iowa show in her analysis. Some readers may be lulled off to sleep by her rather academic considerations; as a literature lecturer myself for about the same amount of time that she taught, I found these introductory chapters a bit too longwinded--she continues as the pages pile up to elaborate points already made, and at times I felt like she had to stretch her material to fit, well, 13 chapters no matter what. Still, it taught me a lot that I had not learned in the classroom myself, and it's useful for any reader as an overview or summation. Despite the rather too-professorial pace, she does come up with a few memorable remarks in these first 200 pages.

For instance, that Don Quixote, shown to conveniently nod off whenever the talk turned to amours, began a tendency for the novel (for much of its evolution) to avoid explicit depictions of sex. That the English novel tends to lead up to marriage, while the French equivalent starts off with marriage--or its stagnation after the honeymoon's faded. How drama inflates its protagonist while novels deflate their main character's pretensions or aspirations. Or, in her opinion with which I disagree, why Ulysses and what she critiques as too-mannered a fictional rendering distances fatally the novel from its natural milieu where the reader--and the writer--belong.

I never have read a Smiley novel, so that puts me in either an uninformed or fresh reception for her next section. She takes the making of her novel "Good Faith," and shows how she took an anecdote told her from real life and worked it into a novel. I admit that while I have no interest in reading GF after encountering her account of its construction, the process described was told--being from the inside rather than via a critic after the fact--in an informative and insightful manner. But it's still a bit clumsy; if you have not read GF, then the coyness with which she gives some details and withholds others (so as not to spoil the plot) does prove awkward, as this novel's not exactly as familiar for most of us as many of the others she peruses in the 101 listed in the final section. I did find her reactions to reviews, her book tour experiences, and her struggles with knowing when to stop writing informative, however. This led into a chapter in which she addresses the reader as if he/she seeks advice on how to write a novel, too. This chapter felt as if imported from a previous article; it aroused for me absolutely no interest in writing one, and its place in this otherwise reader-oriented collection seemed precarious. But others will no doubt be invigorated by it.

For the final section, the second half roughly in length of the book, the 101 novels she lists and summarizes rather briskly--as she points out, often overlapping with the previous chapters that were written after she had drafted the notes on the 101 novels as she read them, offers far less enticement than I'd have expected. I thought I'd find many novels that I'd never heard of, or always had wondered if I should read but hadn't known enough about to sample. She did get me to search out Gogol's novella "Taras Bulba," one I'd never encountered. But many of her titles are already familiar, standard-issue for reading groups, English majors, or the "common reader" that Virginia Woolf could once expect to find out in the educated public. This is not meant as a put-down, but there were fewer rare and previously hidden or neglected finds in her list than I'd have liked.

Contrast this to the increasingly middlebrow types of novels that populate her list as it moves into the latter 20c. This on the one hand is unsurprising; this is the same category that Smiley herself writes for--the respectable popular "trade paperback" by the classier imprints from usually mass-market publishers. But I found really no new books in the more recent decades to seek out after reading her reviews. She too often does not show the faults of what she reads--such as Ian McEwan's "Atonement" being a refreshing and too rare inclusion of why she did not think a novel "worked"--and her generally sunny acceptance of the stack she plowed through does speak for her optimism and good-natured encouragement of her fellow writers. Again, I tend towards the more difficult novel than most of the people reading this book would, so I admit my snobbish prejudice!

Smiley does enjoy the benefits of much more leisure than most of us, riding horses in Carmel Valley, reading to her heart's delight, and taking the Course in Miracles--a paragraph early on praising this for her own recent transformation still seems baffling to me, alas. For we busier folk, her own foray through a few years of reading her way through the big bedside stack we bibliophiles all dream of having does show her commonsense and accessible approach to explicating how novels are made, why they work, and which ones worked best for her. While each of our stacks would differ from hers, she does provide in this hefty volume (a good value for the price) enough for any reader to learn and debate with her from the comfort of our own armchair or pillow.

I guess it is well known that Smiley is a witty, intelligent, and congenial writer but this book nevertheless surprised me. I didn't want it to end! I found myself hoarding the pages of the penultimate essay the same way I do with the closing chapters of a novel I am enjoying. I will now have to re-read to figure out how she accomplished this (can it be simply a matter of voice?), but in the meantime want to recommend it to all comers. Just delightful.

This book is excellent and will repay close reading, but I am of two minds. On one hand, Smiley has examined the development and significance of the novel as only a practicing novelist of depth and talent could. On the strength of her treatment I've resolved to try her novels. Any description I might give of her discussion would not do it justice.

On the other hand, she clearly has a political axe to grind and this comes out most one-sidedly in her descriptions of novels. First, her history of the novel begins with Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji," leaps to Bocaccio's "Decameron" as a precursor to the novel in its western form, and then holds a steady course through Cervantes, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, and James into the twentieth century. Perhaps because she has identified as a major concern of the novel the question of "what a woman is for" (her words), Smiley ignores Twain, Hemingway, and modern novelists whose work is not animated by that question. She does not claim completeness for her 100 novels and writes more than once that she is not trying to compile a `Best 100' list, but she does claim a certain disinterestedness that is belied by her choices. She (usually) likes European novelists (nothing wrong with that) and woman novelists (ditto) who pursue her favorite question. Novelists who have nothing to say on the question either leave her cold or don't make the list at all. Hence, she claims not to be able to remember her experience of "Moby Dick" and Joyce's "Ulysses" strikes her as a lot of art devoted to a not very interesting premise. About her contemporaries Pynchon, Delillo, and Wolfe she has nothing to say at all.

Second, the idea that failure to read novels caused the badness of our politicians is nonsense. Lincoln wasn't a great reader of novels, nor was Washington. I don't deny that people well-read in good novels might as a result develop empathy but Smiley seems not to believe there are other routes to the same destination. Furthermore, plenty of very good leaders, not to mention good people in general, claim that daily contact with the Bible helps them to love their neighbors as themselves. GWB's treatment of Iraq doesn't strike Smiley as loving enough (one might say "Christian enough"): fine, but this is not grounds for blaming the Bible and Bush's poor education. Where should we believe Mother Theresa or Dietrich Boenhoeffer learned their love of humanity?

Third, J.S.'s history of the novel, though accurate as far as it goes, doesn't make sense given her concerns. She includes "The Tale of Genji," which had zero influence on the novel's early development in the West, but excludes medieval saints' lives, which I expect influenced the "Decameron" and are sources for the reader's experience of interior truth she believes is a defining characteristic of the novel. She will claim she had to start somewhere but why not consider the source of the novel's interiority, since she places so much emphasis on that quality? The primary source of western interiority is the idea that the soul has to answer to God in conscience. This fearful relationship between self and deity was illustrated in hundreds of saints lives. A frequent element in the stories of female saints is the refusal to do the socially expected thing--marry a man--in favor of maintaining chastity. Tales like this dramatize the sense of self against other that grew as Christianity spread. This crisis deepened during the Protestant Reformation and it should not surprise us that the novel's development began as Luther and Calvin were claiming that the soul's isolation was even more absolute than Christians had previously believed.

Finally, had she looked she would have found several long, plotted, prose works that predate "The Tale of Genji" by several centuries: the novel has perfectly fine ancient roots in the Greek romance and other long prose works of antiquity, such as Apuleius' "Metamorphosis" and Petronius' "Satyricon."

So, brilliant and idiosyncratic, just as I believe Smiley wanted it. Buy the book.

I read the first few chapters and thought this was not a bad book. The author often has to stretch to tie her point to her examples but was keeping my interest. And then it happened! What so many of today's "accomplished" writers can't avoid.
A completely useless and bombastic attack on the Bush administration stuck in the middle of the book. Whatever your political views, these pages are confused and embarassing. A nice 3-4 star book of criticism and advice destroyed because our author could not contain her hatred and bile. My reading group (2 conservatives, 2 moderates and 3 liberals) voted 7-0 to stop discussing this book after hitting this passage. Leave political commentary to the hundreds of hacks across the spectrum.

It's hard to explain. This book is a masterpiece. I have nothing more to add. It's a master work. Highly recommended!!!

I think Jane Smiley is similar to Anne Tyler in her ability to understand ordinary people and the significance of home and family. Her characters have exceptional (sometime unbelievable) abilities of introspection and self-examination. They also seem to live somewhat muffled lives. Emotion is there, but it is observed rather than felt.

These stories move slowly, building up layers of character and atmosphere through observations and spare dialogue. The last story, "The Age of Grief", made me think of Henry James novels like "Portrait of a Lady." Here we are looking very closely at daily behavior, signals and symbols that pass between people, the subdued drama of everyday life.

With all that has come after, I hope no one forgets the quality of Smiley's early work. If you start out with her later books, returning to this one will have its rewards.

I recommend this volume for the title novella, which has recently been made into a movie titled "The Secret Life of Dentists." Told from the point of view of a suspicious husband, it's a warm, very believable story which manages to carry some suspense until its resolution (no spoiler here). The narrator manages to be very interesting despite the humdrum surroundings. Highly recommended.

The short stories that precede the novella are good but not particularly noteworthy. Unlike the most recent reviewer, I actually liked Dynamite the most. Smiley is a gifted craftsman and an interesting writer. I've managed to overcome my first reading of her -- the dreadful Duplicate Keys -- and her idiotarian op-ed current affairs writing to have real respect for her as an artist. On a side note, "Moo" has to be one of the best comic novels I have ever read. "The Age of Grief" isn't quite up to that level of quality and imagination but it's a very accomplished and affecting novella. Go read it!

I picked this up after the end of a relationship in the same spirit that I listen to sad songs-- to amplify my own emotions, remember that others have been there too, and gain some release. "The Age of Grief" was good therapy!

The most wonderful story, in my opinion, was a heartbreaker called "Long Distance," in which a man released from a visit from a girl he no longer loves by circumstances realizes how her grief will be something he never gets over. This story is short and clean and unforgettable.

The title novella is powerful on so many levels-- told from the pov of a man who realizes his wife has fallen for someone else and is desperate not to let her tell him about it, it is such a convincing portrait of a marriage, of family, of the layers of fear and forgiveness that intimacy brings. One of the children gets a dangerously high fever and the terror and the bonds of love remind us that infidelity is sometimes part of a relationship, not its definition.

The only reason I didn't give this five stars is because while all of the stories are quick reads, well-written-- as is all of Smiley's work-- and occasionally even very funny, not all of them seem as grounded in the poignancy of emotional turning points. I was rather bored with "Dynamite," in which an aging underground movement protester from the sixties decides to reconnect with her family. That is to say, I didn't really think we needed that bit of plot-- I was far more interested in the family dynamics than the dynamite.

"Jeffrey, Believe Me" is a bit lightweight, doesn't seem to be a part of this volume really, though perhaps it provides some comic relief. "The Pleasure of Her Company" though is right up there with "Long Distance"-- friendship has its own jealousies and betrayals, and no happy couple can ever really be known except by themselves, as the lonely nurse who falls in love with her neighbors discovers.
"Lily" also lays out the issues of friendship and marriage-- friendship within marriage-- and how marriage is both more and less than romance.

Ultimately, read the book just for "Long Distance" alone. It's a masterpiece-- and it will haunt me.

Smiley's lively biographical coverage of Charles Dickens paints a portrait of a convivial, astute and energetic writer who led an action-packed life as a prolific writer and family man. Blending with this highly recommended portrait of the man is a survey of his major works and narrative style, providing a fresh look at the man and his achievements.

For those who want to spend two weeks leaning about Dickens, Peter Ackroyd's book is really excellent. However if you do not have that kind of time, this work by Jane Smiley is excellent. Whoever marries the authors to the subjects should be commended. Jane Smiley is a best-selling author. Who better to write on the foremost novelist during the high noon of the novel as a medium?

This book provided an excellent overview not only of the life of Dickens, which can be summed up as "poor boy makes good," but also the novels themselves. I do not agree with some of Jane Smiley's criticism ("Pickwick Papers" is a good read, despite what she says), but by and large she is on target with a great deal of what she has to say.

I've read about half the books in the Penguin series and I'd rate this at the top (other favorites are the bios of Leonardo da Vinci and James Joyce). It's only 207 pages long but there is no sense that anything important was left out. I hadn't realized that Dickens was such an astounding character--Ms. Smiley brings him to life with precise detail, through knowledge, and insights that DESERVE to be called insights. She's obviously an excellent writer herself and every page radiates her professionalism.

This lively book provides an overview of the literary achievements and personal life of Charles Dickens. For those Amazon.com customers who, like me, don't know how to approach this writer's vast achievements, I provide this advice from Smiley, who is an intelligent, charming, and enthusiastic biographer: "But a newcomer to Dickens can do no better than to begin with a novel-my suggestions are David Copperfield, to be followed by Great Expectations, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, and Our Mutual Friend, in that order, light, dark, light, dark, light, a wonderful chiaroscuro of Dickens's most characteristic and accessible work." Bravo for Jane and her fun and concise treatment of an enormous subject!

Jane Smiley is a leading contemporary novelist whose insight into the difficult arcane world of writing for profit is helpful in reviewing our greatest English novelist. As self-described Charles Dickens was the "inimitable." Dickens draws a broad stoke as his thousands of characters lie, cheat,[borrow], love, live and [end life] on the canvas of humanity.
As one who has read all the standard biographies of the 19th behemoth of literature that was Dickens I can highly recommend this excellent book.
Smiley provides a sketch of Dickens life including warts and all. Her dissection of the affair the middle aged author engaged in with actress Ellen Ternan was well done in looking at what may have motivated Dickens to break with his wife Catherine and thumb his nose at Victorian respectability.
Dickens is a mixture of good and bad with the humanity and essential goodness of the man on display.
This little book in the excellent Penguin Viking Biography series could be well used in an introductory course on Dickens, the nineteenth century English novel or on the art of literary biography.
Smiley made me smile and laugh as I explored the mind of a genius with this gifted biographer. It is the best biography I have so far read in this series.

This is one of those few books that I enjoyed and thought about so much that I bought six copies from Amazon to hand out to friends who I believed would also appreciate Hanson's efforts. It really is that exceptional! The thing most notable about "The Land Is Everything" is how much response it will provoke out of you if are a "thinking type". That doesn't mean you will love or hate it all...you will, however, THINK! Despite the definite order the book is arranged in, you will get a sense that much of it was almost written in streams of thought. Hanson seems to meander on tangents at times and in other places even rants but, this stream is still flowing briskly! He focusses in on "Man versus Nature", "Man versus Man", and "Man versus Self" in the realm of small-scale farming.

Hanson is uniquely qualified to write about the subject of farming and it's effects on character. He is a fifth generation grape farmer in California while also a Professor of Classics at CSU Fresno. The clincher is that he can convey his beliefs to paper with a VENGEANCE! The crux of this book is showing how the decline of self-reliant family farms in America is sapping the core character of what an "American" was in our first 200 years. He passionately describes the life, both good and bad, of the American farmer and gives numerous examples of issues that influence his/her character and culture. The fact that America, up until fairly recently, was predominantly a land of farmers is elaborated on at length. Hanson admires and respects the ways the brutal realities of farming the land force farmers to stay literally rooted in hard work, ethics, and honesty even if it sometimes makes them crazy! He then launches into his assessments of the effects on the gradual loss of this culture on the United States today as it becomes more and more "urban" and "cosmopolitan".

One thing I can almost promise: you WILL have an opinion on this book once you've read it. There will be points that you will agree or disagree with strongly and many others that will fall somewhere in between. The bottom line is that you will definitely feel better for having read it.

Finally, if you have found yourself drawn to understand the heroism and motivation of the New York City fireman who fought and died at the World Trade Center attack on 9/11, I doubly recommend this book.

As a graduate student in the university (stumbling along the first steps of academia) while at the same time dragging my small farm roots along, I find Victor Hanson's appraisal and insightful commentary frighteningly real to much of my own experience and upbringing. The Land Was Everything is exceptional and comprehensive in outlining a picture of rural life and ideology that most urbanites and farmers alike are not consciously aware of. He writes about the loss of the small farm agrarian but mostly he mourns the loss of characteristics and qualities that come from the farmer, his work, his life, and his toil. To most readers (the growing sea of concrete city folk) his words and stories feel alien and distant and sadly this further proves the author's point. Hanson's unique and diminishing perspective reads as a bitingly honest commentary about where we (as a nation) have come from, where we owe our success, the price of our success, and where we're going in this new millenium. Grounded in the fields and orchards of farming and agrarian life, Hanson demonstrates his intellect and skills of observation in the manner of a scholarly writer and though agrarian and intellectual often antagonize one another within the writing, he is successful at utilizing them to expose and comment on the other. If understanding and consciousness about any of this is the reward for the loss of the small American Farmer, then it's all I could ask for as a reader who wishes that others would pick up The Land Was Everything, listen to its pages, remember the voices of their past, and try to understand the tragedy that has already occurred.

I find the book interesting for about a chapter. Too much 'showing off' Hansen's professororial interests on Crevecouer and the Greeks and Romans. Yes both historical references are fascinating but Hansen needs help with his tone and the very miring way he has about going to prove a point. You can start to predict the next sentence and the way it will end up satisfying the author's conscience. No, the book is not at all eloquent, but it doesn't make up for it with anything genuinely new and insightful either, for instance: on the agricultural dilemmas of our country and how they affect farmers personally. It is a book that blows off steam basically; finds a way to boast about the rough-hewn character of farmers (Not to be taken so literally, but nevertheless he manages to stereotype the farmer though he despises everyone else for doing it.)Wishy washy on his opinions, Hansen can't really whitewash what he thinks: that we are a bunch of suburban immoralists who just learned that the farm meant more than bucolic. Anyone who reads or watches the news or buys food at all knows more than Hansen thinks we do. As an ex-farm child, I find the book a fair tribute, but the personality of it is almost repulsive. We farmers are not superior keepers of wisdom, we are far more humble than Hansen's ilk. The farmers I know, past and present, have more important things to do than debate every issue, write books and books on our sorrows and fawn over our own demise.

Agrarianism goes down to a hard and dusty death. The realities of growing commodities as a family in California are tough. Hanson does know what he's talking about, contra reader S.M. Stirling, below (I wonder if this fellow even read the book, his comments are so off, not to mention being practically a personal attack on Hanson); he lives the reality of this difficult life while also being a classical scholar. He seems uniquely qualified to illuminate the Greek and Latin roots of agrarianism as the foundation of democracy, and with a lifelong interest in the classics, I found this very interesting; I learned a lot. I highly recommend this book, which I found compelling...

This is certainly a wonderfully written book. I cannot agree with all of the author's opinions, nor his historical data, but he does make some good points and the book is well worth the read. It gives a point of view from the farmer's side, always a good thing, but that being said, it must also be noted that the author needs to face reality. I do recommend this one though and will probably read it again myself. A good one to add to your collection. Thank you Mr Hanson.

Reviewed by Alex McGilvery

Ordinary Love and Good Will is a reprint of two novellas by Jane Smiley. The book is done in a very comfortable cover and paper. I don't normally mention the cover of a book, but the first thing I noticed was the tactile enjoyment of holding this book. The inside of the book lives up to its binding.

Jane Smiley has crafted two delightful novellas about family. The first takes place over the first few days of Michael's arrival home from India (one of the narrator's twin sons). It is a gentle exploration of family and the consequences of choices, both good and bad.

The second story is about the effect on his son of a man's choice to live an alternative lifestyle. Somehow as his son goes to school in town, things start to spin out of control. Issues of racism arise, and the authorities have a different view of the narrator's life style than he does. The threads of a life that were under complete control come unraveled.

Jane Smiley writes in an easy, quiet-paced style that allows an event to sneak up and surprise you. The characters drive the action of the story, and they are well rounded and interesting. They learn things in the course of the stories that challenge your assumptions about who this person is, and thus challenges some assumptions that you may have about yourself.

I enjoyed Jane Smiley's style of storytelling. I liked that she shows that even the best intentions have consequences that are beyond our control. I liked too that she shows her characters surviving those consequences, and looking on toward the next steps of their lives.

Armchair Interviews says: Two well-done novellas for your enjoyment.

This book, as you could probably tell, is made up of two stories: Ordinary Love and Good Will, just as the title says. Although they're entirely different stories they have similar themes as well as aspects that contrast and compliment one another. That makes this "package deal" necessary to allow the author to communicate what she envisioned.

Both stories are similar in that the protagonists are content with the simple things in life. This seems to be an attempt to evoke an appreciation of the everyday things we take for granted.

Both stories also share a strong emphasis on family values. Throughout both stories the results that their family values render allows the reader to contrast the lives of the characters with that of their own. This is also a source of how the stories differ.

Ordinary Love has a protagonist that is very laid back and allows her children to become whatever they aspire to be. This often makes her seem uncaring. Ordinary Love shows the family dynamics of such values.

Good Will focuses more on the other extreme of family values. The father imposes his ways of a simple life free of money. Though he has good intent, in a modern world it's understandably met with resistance. This story tells of a family that lives such a lifestyle and the results.

Both stories are a sort of commentary on the two extremes of family values: complacence and imposition. The author's intent seemed to be to provoke readers to choose a set of family values somewhere between those extremes.

Overall both stories were quite good. I had a preference for Good Will but without Ordinary Love much of the message would be lost. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who found what I outlined above intriguing.

Smiley gives us an intimate view into two very different families and the ways in which their different parenting styles affected their children's lives irrevocably. Smiley is a master of character development. When each story begins, you have a certain view of the protagonist and other characters. As the stories unfold, your feelings about each character change. This is a book to be read more than once.

Good Will is by far one of the best novels I've ever read. Ordinary Love was good too. There is nothing ordinary about Jane Smiley's characterizations in Good Will. Those characters could not have been more real if they were real people in the room with me. The psychological, emotional, and moral complexities and motivations they display, the remarkable way in which it was all written and put together..2 years after reading this book, I'm still in awe of it.

An interesting conjoining of two very different stories. I read them in order, starting with "Ordinary Love" and then moving on to "Good Will." At the end, I found myself wondering what links the two stories?

In both, there is a father who directs his family to such an extent that he could be called controlling or even an egomaniac. In "Ordinary Love" the father is not present; he is the "fifth man", invisible, but the scars left by his words and actions have sunk deep. In "Good Will", the father is the protagonist, and through his own eyes we see the results of his actions.

Unlike the other reviewers here, I preferred "Ordinary Love." I enjoyed the character of the mother, who narrates the story. She strives to be objective and offer a balanced viewpoint. She has a depth of self-knowledge. Also, she watches her children with great love, and that lends the story real warmth, which I thought was missing from "Good Will."

I plan to read both stories again. There's a depth of character and thought here that can't be fully taken in with one reading.

Jane Smiley is unnique as an author because she writes each book only once--never ever trotting out a plotline in new colors. While I have enjoyed all of her work, HORSE HEAVEN is by far my favorite. I find myself replacing copy aftr copy that I have given to others, all of whom say the same thing, "What a great book!" even if they aren't "horse people.

JUSTA BOB is the most touching character I've encountered in the past few years. Horse Heaven is a delightful read which plants the reader firmly in the Thoroughbred world of racing. Jane Smiley is an eclectic wonder.

I expected to love the book. I love horse racing. I ride horses. I'm not troubled by slow, dense, books. So I'm very disappointed to find that this book did not engage me, and I have to throw in the towel and put it back in the stack.

I've read quite a few horse books including Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life, but Michael Korda, and some by Rita Mae Brown - the Virginia Fox hunting series, and of course, Seabiscuit.

This is a character driven, rather than a plot driven book. Nevertheless, I didn't find that I enjoyed any of the characters, particularly Al and Rosalind - whose marriage did not float my boat. As I forced my way deeper and deeper into it, I found myself saying - I don't Care about these People!

The setting didn't grab me. I didn't feel the 'feel' of the racetrack, the feel of the saddle under my seat, the smell of leather, the rumble of distant hoofbeats. Even the environment of the working class/hired people didn't provide a compelling 'atmosphere' for the story.

I did like that the horses and animals were given page time. The animals were more enjoyable than the people.

I'm sure its just me. Maybe if I wait a year then I'll pick up the book in the right mood to have it take hold of me. But for now, I can't read it, and I'm passing my thoughts along in case there is any body else out there like me.

Jane Smiley never ceases to amaze. This book I somehow overlooked, and found by surprise. It is a divine thing: warm, funny, and horses, too.

I once had a vet who used to work at the track. He said it was like going to work at the circus every day. This book was like going to the circus. It had everything going on all at once and it was all so interesting, and wacky, and fun, and real, especially the horse part.

When I started reading The Mill on the Floss I thought I was not going to like it, but now that I only have thirty pages left I am totally in love with the story and the characters. Especially Maggie, Lucy and Bob. I have to admit I cannot stand Tom, though. He behaves as if he never made mistakes himself, he's too strict and unforgiving. The funny thing is that he turns out to be the real love of his sister's life, over any kind of romantic love. This is probably a reflection of the writer's frustrated relationship with her own brother.
A delightful book all in all.

In THE MILL ON THE FLOSS, George Eliot writes of her heroine Maggie Tulliver in such a way that autobiography seems inevitable. Even had Eliot not made a secret of the nearly one to one relationship between her and Maggie, the connection is too obvious to ignore. In George Eliot's personal life, she had an ongoing dispute with her brother that so distressed her that the only way to resolve it was in her fiction. So Maggie spends nearly the entire novel trying to prove her unselfish love to her brother Tom who refuses to see the good in Maggie until the highly controversial ending in which Maggie nobly risks her life to convince Tom that her love for him is unsullied. However much one sees of Eliot in Maggie, Maggie is still a fully-rounded individual whom Eliot has chosen to flesh out in a manner that was unheard of for her time. In presenting the character of Maggie, as well as the others, Eliot presents the unfolding of their distinct personalities against the backdrop of their respective social milieus. Eliot suggests that society has a definite impact on the way each character develops. For Eliot, character is formed partly by his or her environment and exhibited heavily in the ways that she chooses to allow each character to act in their homes, their fields, and their workplaces.

Eliot traces a gradual connection between theme and character. Since environment is one of the two primary factors that impact on the push-pull connection between theme and character, she is careful to delineate early on that the same environment that houses Maggie and Tom nevertheless pushes each to a sociological fork in the road from which each takes a divergent turn. This divergence leads to the book's primary theme: the evolving nature between brother and sister is both cause and effect of the ultimate maritime tragedy that concludes the book. Maggie, even as a young child, is seen as perpetually in conflict, the causes of which are beyond her control. Maggie has an internal conflict in that she is often called to make a choice between that which her heart calls for (say, her love for Stephen Guest) and that which her duty forbids (the vast class gap between the two that forbids a relation). Maggie also has a direct conflict with Tom, whose brutishness and inexplicable meanness toward her impel both toward the book's tragic close. Finally, she has an ongoing conflict with society at large, symbolized by a collective mass of family, friends, lovers, and a cobwebbery of implicit rules that Maggie breaks unwittingly and to tragic effect.

The ending of THE MILL OF THE FLOSS has created a controversy that has lingered from Eliot's day to ours. When Maggie chooses to literally die with Tom than to live without him, the reader is faced with passing judgment on its credibility. Has Eliot taken the cheap way out and sought the conventionally tragic ending of the sentimental Victorian novel? Or is Maggie's final act of unselfishness to be viewed through the lens of autobiography in which the author is vicariously healing the rift between her and her real life brother with the sacrifice of Maggie for her fictional one? The question was raised then and is often raised now with no resolution. What remains is a novel whose ongoing charm lies in its depiction of a style of life that was seen as far removed even in Eliot's day and for which retains a nostalgic charm that the passing of the centuries cannot lessen.

The most obvious thing about "The Mill on the Floss" is the quality of writing. You can't argue with that. It's vivid, with wonderful descriptions, and many lovely parts. George Eliot writes of an incredible place, describing everything and making everything easy to visualize. She writes of characters that are so human and real, and then she describes situations with these real characters and everything works so well. Her writing is undeniably good, so now we need to move onto the plot itself.

Here we have the Tullivers. Maggie is our heroine, starting out as a very young girl. She adores and idolizes her brother, loves her father, and rather disdains everything society wants her to be. She's independent, different, and bold. She'll do anything for Tom, her brother, and at the same time she wants to be herself. As she grows up, she finds that these two parts of her will fight against each other: her independence, or her beloved older brother.

Tom is also an interesting character. Our first view of him is from Maggie's adoring eyes, so we find him to be strong, intelligent, and all-knowing. It becomes clear, though, that Tom also enjoys having a certain level of command over his sister, and he very often gives her ultimatums for their friendship. In situations like these, Maggie, trying so hard to please him, gets very hurt, and then Tom would act superior and ignore her. Tom lives strictly in the "black or the white" - for him there is no gray.

Much of the book is simply about their relationship as they are growing up, but many parts revolve around other, slightly more minor characters. For example, Philip Wakem. Philip, a schoolmate of Tom's and a friend of Maggie's enters and leaves and reenters the story many times. At first he seems like a minor but solid character, but he then becomes very fixed in the plot as Maggie's secret, forbidden friend. He demonstrates a case of Tom's orders to Maggie. Stephen Guest is another example. He fell in love with Maggie and tried to elope with her. Maggie refused, though by the time she was able to return home, Tom had deduced the worst, once again demonstrating his "black or white" policy. Tom rejects Maggie, and Maggie has to leave.

The main character is without a doubt Maggie, Maggie who feels such love for the people around her, wants to please them and receive love in return, and wants to be independent. Maggie struggles against so many things throughout this book (I won't reveal them all) and all sort of lead up to the grand finale, which may possibly be the best part of this wonderful book. Everything is written wonderfully, the characters are so rich and interesting, and the plot is never stale. It's an excellent book that I couldn't put down once I started.

I recommend this whole-heartedly, and urge you to go buy it or borrow it from the library. It's a wonderful piece of writing that is so easy to love.

Oh, my, this book was wonderful. I devoured all 600 pages in a week. Read it during the winter, curled up in a warm sweater, and drink a cup of hot chocolate while you turn pages. The writing is just beautiful-- the characters fully drawn and interesting. I fully identified with Maggie (the protagonist) as she moved through her very moral, principled life. She has many complicated relationships with people that are just a joy to read about. If you like Victorian novels, do not miss this one. I've heard Middlemarch is even better and I can't wait.

From a technical point of view, I think that the writing is superb: the description are vivid (I particularly loved the description of Maggie as a little Medusa with her snakes shorn.) The book is a mixture of the earnest and the farcical, and at points is extremely funny. The structure is carefully built, with the different metaphors of the river reflecting the state of mind of the characters. I found the end very unsatisfying, I was close to the end of the book before I found Maggie sympathetic, and I thought it failed the chief standard of a novel: to be an involving narrative.

I don't mind that the author speaks to the reader per se, but every time I got caught up in the narrative, it wasn't long before the story ground to a halt while Eliot delivered herself of a short essay. The nearly three pages asking the reader to think of villages on the Rhone and castles on the Rhine (neither of which I have ever seen), wore out my patience--it almost seemed like a joke. Both the critics that I read thought that modern readers were put off by the length of the book, but I can think of a lot of long modern novels. It's not so much the number of pages as the way they are filled.

Maggie Tulliver is apparently a seriously disturbed child, surrounded by insensitive adults who certainly can't help her. I feel sorry for her, but I don't like her. Wanting to be loved isn't the same as being lovable. For most of the book, Maggie is pretty self-absorbed. I pity her for her unpleasant relatives, but that doesn't mean that I find her sympathetic by contrast.

Maggie is destructively impulsive, probably hurting herself more than anyone else, but Eliot lost a great deal of my sympathy early on when Maggie allows her brother's rabbits to die of neglect. It is hard to understand how someone who is supposed to be devoted to him could have so completely forgotten his request to take care of them. The critics that I read pointed out that Maggie is always very sorry for what she does, but she is only sorry for how other people's annoyance will affect her. She never, until the end of the book, is remorseful at causing someone else pain. If she were, she would understand that her brother is reasonably angry, and not complain that he is cruel for not instantly forgiving her. Not to mention what the rabbits went through!

Eliot's view of Maggie and her father is that they are as they are, they cannot help themselves, but everyone else is responsible for their own conduct and for accomodating the Tullivers. I find it hard to be sympathetic to them when Eliot was so scathing about everyone else. I am probably projecting 21st century standards back on a 19th century book, but Tulliver acts against the advice of his wife and goes bankrupt in a law suit, which is rather self-centered and bullying. Maggie (and I suppose Eliot) feel that he should not be blamed for this. Certainly there is no point at railing at a person who is nearly comatose with distress, but he is in fact seriously at fault. [added later: I am reminded a bit of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Both wives are presented in a very unflattering light as weak and trivial, but in fact they may be said to have a better grasp of reality than their more sympathetically portrayed but somewhat irresponsible spouses. One has to wonder what the authors were thinking in describing these women.]

I found Maggie much more sympathetic in Book 6 and after, but it and her romantic problems seemed a little contrived. The change in her from Book 5 is only partially accounted for; a lot of it is obviously just a set up for the Dramatic Ending.

I would like the book better if Eliot featured some intelligent resolution to Maggie's problems: she could have learned not to be so emotionally dependent upon her brother, she could have made another life for herself. The problems of her love life are indeed a dilemma and not easily solved, but the ending really seems like a cheat. I hope Eliot didn't mean this as encouragement for woman who found themselves at odds with social expectations. Even the reconciliation between Maggie and her brother makes me scoff. They had a big reconciliation scene earlier in the book and it didn't last, so this one doesn't seem meaningful. It is like the end of a television drama where decades of misunderstanding are permanently resolved in the last 60 seconds.

This is certainly a piece of literary history, and there are some great examples of writing in it, but I don't think it has held up as a novel.

There is something mysterious about this book. I don't know if it is the old english nature of the book or what but I really like this book.

John

An English friend involved in archeology introduced me to the concept of the essential importance of the provenance of an artifact in determining its significance. The artifact must be viewed within the context in which it was found, otherwise it is meaningless. The provenance of an idol, involving a sad practical joke, and deeper Oedipal emotions is the heart of Wilson's novel. This one joke reverberated throughout the English medievalist academic world for 50 years, and one reflects on the old aphorism that the quarrels in academia are so bitter because the stakes are often so trivial. Was it of any significance to anyone that a famous 7th Century bishop might have backslide into apostasy?

Perhaps the provenance of the idol is a useful metaphor for examining English society in the mid-50's. The significant cast of characters, drawn from a broad swath of that society, act out their fates based on their own location within the society. Yet there will always be some upward mobility, as well as some backsliding for the schemers. The relationships between men and women are universally sad, with a dominant driving force being "accommodation."

Wilson is an excellent writer, and it was a delight to read his historical slice of England, wry humor and all. I thought of the early days of the Internet, slow modem connections, the downloading of pictures, pixels at a time, first one rough pass, then another, finally the entire picture comes into sharper focus. Wilson writes in that fashion, a rough pass, a hint of something deeper, and then he returns over the events, and the picture deepens and intensifies.

Such novels are vital for the perspective they bring to the present, how some things truly are new, but mainly, much is repetition of the same human drama, with all its aspirations and flaws.

Early on in in "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes," a character is described as having an /affaire/. One wonders if this (1956) is the last time when an English author writing in English would have treated this discreet reference to indiscretion as a foreign word. Is it the concept that the English regarded as alien? Or is it merely a pathetic effort to bury it under a veil of respectability? Or a tacit acknowledgment that the French have more fun?

Whatever the answer, the italics are a delicate way of identifying this entertaining novel as a creature of its times. Indeed the action is dated (and the novel feels) a bit earlier-dating back the Atlee administration, when Britain was still reeling with exhaustion from World War II; when the socialists were busy trying to nationalize British industry, while the the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was busy trying to privatize Iranian oil.

Wilson makes it pretty clear that he intends to write a period piece from the very beginning: there is a cast list, and it runs to nearly two pages. For a novel of just 336 pages (in Penguin), this seems a bit much, and indeed quite a few of them are little more than sketches.

No, more than a period piece: Wilson wants to write a panorama of his time. This is an ambitious undertaking, and would be perilously easy for him to have fallen on his face. He has not quite achieved all he strove for, but perhaps remarkably, he hasn't really fallen on his face either. There isn't a lot of action, but there are some excellent character studies and a few good set pieces. There is some good comedy, but perhaps not quite as much as the author intended. Also of note: this must be about the first mainstream British novel to include explicitly gay characters (and not very nice ones, at that).

For comedy, Wilson is not Evelyn Waugh; for compulsive readability, he isn't quite Graham Greene. On the other hand, he isn't really striving to be either. He's himself: entertaining and rewarding, with nothing (much) for which to apologize.

There's not a lot of raison d'etre for this very amusing comedy of British class life, centered upon a decades-long academic controversy, other than to show the consequences of conscience upon an elderly wealthy history professor. This book, which has been out of print for a few years in the US, is still quite enjoyable, and the cadre of curious characters that populate it are as memorable in their own way as those out of Dickens (to whom Wilson is often compared). There is a kind of creepiness in the latent homophobia of the comic ending (everyone receives his or her just desserts, which means in this case the major gay characters are killed or maimed), but the novel is of a different and earlier time.The description of Ingeborg Middleton's hideously frolicsome Nordic Christmas party alone makes the novel worth reading.

There seems to me to be a very good reason why this book was out of print before the New York Review resussitated it: to wit, it's very, very dated. Mr. Burgess must have made his remark about its being "one of the top five novels of the century" back when it was first published. Yes, the plot, such as it is, involves a sort of archeological hoax. But the novel is primarily a farcical comedy regarding the English classes and their uses of language in post WWII England-I think that this must be why Burgess, that linguistic connoiseur took a fancy to it.

It reads like an Austen novel with a bit of Wodehouse thrown in. But, these nuances that this book captures so well no longer exist, even for most of the English. And for Americans, the book must be a rather boring schlep of a novel indeed. How many of them know that when one "drawls" in England, one is taking a supercilious upper-class accent such as the "Oxford drawl"?-It is these minutiae that are so essential in "getting" the book that will leave many readers on either side of the pond in the year 2005 scratching their heads rather than chuckling, I fear.

3 stars for capturing the minutiae. But, essentially, this is a boook of ephemera, focusing on the inflections and manners of a bygone era.

I just read this for an American Lit course and I just LOVED it! This would make a great gift for a teenage girl as the main character, Charlotte is a young girl who has to deal with issues that they many girls still face today. This is a short book and would be a great to read over the weekend or when traveling.

Warning: this book will most likely make you cry!

The other reviews have already covered the synopsis, so I'll just give my opinion. I'm an avid reader of non-fiction, rarely venture into the fray of fiction novels. But this is one
that I was certainly glad to have read. The story was impassioned and emotional - the character of Charlotte Temple was quickly developed, giving me a real sense of empathy to her plight. With every downfall, I felt her pain and remorse.

The asides from Rowson to the reader were charming. While the values she extols are not the same as a modern Western reader's, one must appreciate the context in which it was written, and appreciate it further for its uniquenesss.

In sum, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an easy, passionate tale of tragedy. Great book.

Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple" is not the first novel and certainly not the last to deal with the topic of the morally fallen woman. Poor, pitiful Charlotte finds herself in the midst of an immoral and unforgiving world where one transgression sends her on the road to permanent ruin. Rowson encases her heroine Charlotte Temple within a world of virtue and vengeance. Charlotte has no possible means of escaping her inevitable fate because the author/narrator makes it clear from the onset that she has written this story as a lesson to young woman. She has no real interest in Charlotte as a dimensional character. Charlotte simply serves as a symbol of lost virtue and symbols do not have real emotions or feelings. "Charlotte Temple" was written in 1794 and became one of the first best sellers of the newly formed America. A morally abhorrent woman who pays for her sins almost always guaranteed a best seller in the eighteenth century and now "Charlotte Temple" has been rediscovered and published in a Scholarly Press edition. Was this reclamation of Charlotte really necessary? In the past twenty years, feminist scholars have rediscovered authors and texts that have gone out of print or been totally ignored by the literati. Authors such as Anne Plumptre, Frances Burney, Aphra Behn, Sarah Fielding and Charlotte Lennox have been dusted off and given new literary lives. Feminist scholar Cathy Davidson has taken Charlotte Temple in hand and aims to join Rowson to the above list of rediscoveries. Unfortunately, Rowson does not warrant such treatment. Rowson has a flat, humorless approach to the fallen woman story. Unlike Burney's "Evelina" or "Camilla," Rowson does not imbue her narrative with needed levity. Her pedantic iron-fisted preaching smothers the modern reader in a moral morass that confounds rather than illuminates. In many of the fallen women stories, authors would use the genre as a subversive technique to criticize the patriarchal structures. Rowson does engage in such subversion within the novel. She seeks to preach to the young women who may fall victim to the unscrupulous man -- in England and America, it was not considered altogether lady-like to read a novel, so Rowson would be preaching to young women who had already transgressed. Rowson does not criticize men within the novel. She does not censure Montraville for taking Charlotte as his mistress, impregnating her and abandoning her for a wealthier woman. When he believes that Charlotte has becomes his best friend's mistress, he does not believe that she would soil her reputation even though she has ruined her life by engaging in an illicit affair with him. He aims to enact revenge upon the friend for acting "dishonorable" against her. Yet if he had not acted dishonorably towards her, she would not have been reduced to a penniless, pregnant ex-mistress scrounging the streets for food and shelter. He never takes responsibility for his role in Charlotte's downfall. Rowson had the perfect opportunity for savage criticism of the patriarchy with Montraville but she fails to take it. Instead, Rowson places the blame for Charlotte's ruin on the women within the novel. When Charlotte leaves the safe bosom of her morally upstanding family, she enters into the deviant world of the female who fail to protect her from licentious men. Madame Du Pont errs in judgment by hiring the morally loose Miss La Rue. Madame Du Pont sets Charlotte's downfall in action. Rowson does not punish the ignorant Madame Du Pont by killing her, she ends up an hysterical mess after the Montraville/Charlotte "elopement." Miss La Rue, the woman who pushes Charlotte into the arms of Montraville, must be punished for being a promiscuous woman. She ends up poor and begs for her last scrap of food. She ends up dying painfully as Rowson takes the opportunity to lecture her readers on the improper behavior of loose women. Why would modern readers want to read this? I do not think any intelligent would reader would want to subject themselves to the depressing experience of reading this novel. At 125 pages, it seemed to progress at such an excruciating pace. No character has any shadings. There are no subplots to divert the attention from the static Charlotte. Rowson does nothing to keep our interest. Unfortunately Rowson has become a heroine to feminist scholars for her feat as the first American woman to have a best-selling novel. That accomplishment is noteworthy as literary trivia, but it does not make for engaging reading.

"Charlotte Temple" is about a young British girl who runs away from her family and country because of a lieutenant named Montraville and her promiscuous French teacher, Miss La Rue. When Charlotte is fifteen, La Rue convinces her to run away to America with Montraville, La Rue and La Rue's temporary companion, Belcour. Once in America, La Rue marries a wealthy colonel and moves to the city. Montraville purchases a house for Charlotte outside the city and she becomes pregnant. She is left alone day and night with only her worries to give her company. Soon, Montraville abandons Charlotte for another woman and leaves for the Revolutionary War. He plans to send her rent money but his evil friend, Belcour, deceives him, keeps the money and leaves Charlotte to ruin. Charlotte is desperately poor and far along in her pregnancy and wishes to return home to her loving parents. She sends them a letter but must wait a long time for their reply. When Charlotte is eventually evicted for failing to pay rent, she goes out in a terrible storm to the city in search of La Rue, only to find that La Rue has disowned her. She is alone but La Rue's servant takes her in as she is going into labor. Although the novel was written in the late 1700s, the theme is applicable today. Charlotte suffers an illigitimate teenage pregnancy, her boyfriend abandons her, she is unable to contact her parents and feels they no longer care about her, and she falls into poverty and ultimate destruction. Rowson's novel is a must read for all young women, because it functions as a guide of what not to do with one's life.

"Charlotte Temple" is a sentimental, moralistic 18th century novel by Susanna Rowson, an English-born author who lived much of her life in the United States. According to Cathy N. Davidson (who wrote the introduction to the Oxford edition), "Charlotte" was "America's first best-selling novel in the early years of the Republic." According to the book's bibliographic notes, it was first published in 1791, with the first American edition appearing in 1794.

The book tells the story of an innocent young English schoolgirl who becomes involved in romantic intrigue. She eventually winds up in the vicinity of New York City; thus, the novel has an interesting theme of a foreigner coming to America. The book's plot reminds me of a contemporary soap opera, but with a much more judgmental and religious tone. The characters are, on the whole, cardboard stereotypes. The book is full of female hysterics, male villainy, cruelty, dangerous passion, and heartbreak.

Rowson fills her book with asides to the reader, and, ironically, I found this ongoing conversation to be more interesting than the melodramatic plot. Many of the asides are preachy, such as this example: "Oh my dear girls [...] listen not to the voice of love, unless sanctioned by parental approbriation" (chapter VI). But as the book goes on, Rowson begins to anticipate objections from possible readers, and some of her asides are witty and quite entertaining.

Ultimately, "Charlotte" is not a great piece of literature as a novel, but as a sort of metafictional exercise, it's quite intriguing. It's especially interesting when read in comparison with such self-referent 20th century novels as Ernest Hemingway's "The Torrents of Spring" or Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions." Also, the book's presentation of 18th century femininity and sexuality is an interesting precursor to 19th century books like Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Charlotte" may try the patience of contemporary readers on certain levels, but I believe it to be a literary milestone that is still oddly relevant.

"13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" by Jane Smiley was very informative to me as an avid reader. It provided in-depth information on how to read a novel more closely, in addition to bringing my attention to various literary items in books that I had read but missed.

The first half of the book opens your eyes to the development of a novel; including plot, point of view, and character development. However, sometimes Ms. Smiley when a little overboard in her analysis of a novel's structure. One of the main reasons I give this book four-stars instead of five-stars is that Ms. Smiley tended to repeat various items regarding certain novels, which you can ascertain are some of her favorites.

The second half of the book, which is a comprehensive summary of 101 novels she read, is exceptional and is worth the price of the book. This section has prompted me to read or re-read some of the books, even though she tends to tell you want the book's plot in her summary. Moreover, her extensive vocabulary has provided an impetus for me to add these lively words to my vocabulary. Ms. Smiley's descriptions make you want to grab the book and read it any way.

If you have ever wanted to write a book and need some guidance on the process, this is the book. In addition, if you are a reader and want to know more about how a book is written and the characteristics and symmetry of books, this is the book. I hope that Ms. Smiley does another book of this type in the future.

Very interesting. Smiley has refreshing opinions on how novels are written and how they achieve their effects -- such as the relative entertainment value of the first-person narrator vs. the omniscient narrator, etc. It's a very user-friendly, unpretentious analysis. She also offers two chapters on how to write a novel, which is pretty generous.

I read mostly non-fiction and view novels as overly descriptive pieces for people who believe in storytelling as an Art with a capital A. After reading over 100 pages of this book I realize I've been sitting on a high horse of my own. My opinion of the novel was narrow and simplistic. Smiley makes a place for every sort of novel and author at her table, without negative judgment, and it makes for interesting talk. Her ideas are lively and interesting. She really opened my eyes and could have easily titled the book "Infinite Ways of Looking At the Novel". This book is going to get me back to reading more novels. I never expected to have that reaction to this book. Indeed, I probably started it looking to bolster my low opinion of novelists.

Contrary to the opinion expressed by the previous reviewer, I found the first section of the book, a detailed and personable analysis of the structure and development of the novel as a literary form over time, to be informative, provocative and amusing, while the second section, a compilation of far too brief and schematic reviews of 101 novels, seemed trite and unhelpful (in fact, the comments and quotations about those novels that Ms. Smiley intersperses in the first section to illustrate her arguments are often more stimulating and insightful than the specific reviews). As a result, I would recommend this book highly to anyone keen on becoming a writer or learning more about the inner workings of the novel, but not to those who are looking simply for reading lists or book-club suggestions.

Ps. The title refers to the beautiful poem by Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird."

The first half of the book is a philosophical/intellectual discussion of different aspects of a novel (point of view, plot, story type, etc) along with some historical consideration of how the "novel" format has developed over time. Smiley seems to get off-track in parts of this section, and I found myself getting bored from time to time as she expounded too much on a chapter's thesis.

The second half of the book is really awesome. A compendium of 101 novels, with a 1-3 page synopsis of why the novel is important. It's a nice reference for choosing a "great" book to read without resorting to a high school curriculum list. Beware, Smiley goes into detail about plot, so there are spoilers in her descriptions of the novels.