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Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga #2
Early Warning
From the Pulitzer Prize winner: a journey through mid-century America, as lived by the extraordinary Langdon family we first met in Some Luck, a national best seller published to rave reviews from coast to coast.
Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdons at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch Walter, who with his wife had sustained their Iowa farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children looking to the future. Only one will remain to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, DC, California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of postwar optimism through the Cold War, the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early '80s, the Langdon children will have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shockwaves through the Langdon family into the next generation. Capturing an indelible period in America through the lens of richly drawn characters we come to know and love, Early Warning is an engrossing, beautifully told story of the challenges—and rich rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times.
Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdons at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch Walter, who with his wife had sustained their Iowa farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children looking to the future. Only one will remain to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, DC, California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of postwar optimism through the Cold War, the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth—for some—of the early '80s, the Langdon children will have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam—leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shockwaves through the Langdon family into the next generation. Capturing an indelible period in America through the lens of richly drawn characters we come to know and love, Early Warning is an engrossing, beautifully told story of the challenges—and rich rewards—of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times.
486 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 23, 2015
584 people are currently reading
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About the author
Jane Smiley
133 books2,711 followersJane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 992 reviews
April 8, 2015
The problem with writing a series that tracks a family over successive generations is that your characters tend to multiply, and it gets harder and harder to make each new person as persuasive and realized a human. But the necessity of giving everyone screen time means that many of the characters that readers of the first book know and love are crowded out or pushed into the background.
The episodic structure continues to work well, and there are lots of things to like about this book, but it also felt like a bit of a slog at times, and was overall much less compelling than the first one. Won't stop me from reading the third one though...
The episodic structure continues to work well, and there are lots of things to like about this book, but it also felt like a bit of a slog at times, and was overall much less compelling than the first one. Won't stop me from reading the third one though...
May 10, 2015
My “early warning” came in the first chapter of Jane Smiley’s second volume of the Last Hundred Years trilogy when I could scarcely keep track of the characters. Everyone had gathered for the funeral of Walter Langdon, who died abruptly at the end of “Some Luck,” a ripe opportunity to re-introduce the family members we knew and to meet the first of the third generation. Once the group dispersed, it was a bit easier to keep the who’s who straight, but then the family kept multiplying.
“Early Warning” is identical in style and structure to its predecessor: another 33 years, each chapter one year, brief segments featuring the experiences and thoughts of different individuals, references to and sometimes depictions of the major events that marked the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, plotless, time just flying along.
But, as warned, reading was significantly complicated by the ever-growing cast of characters, including 11 Langdon grandchildren. I’m the sort of (anal) reader who likes to keep track of character details, so I was constantly refreshing my memory as to parentage, residence, job, siblings, age, blah, blah, blah, as we moved from person to person and back again. But you know what? I finally had to concede that details were never the point. It is the evolution of a family over the course of a century that Smiley aims to convey, its connections, its differences, and its ever-expanding nature.
These novels are unlike anything I’ve ever read, and their appeal was not immediately obvious. They’re easy to read, but soon I began to wonder where they were headed, until I realized the answer was nowhere. I think of the Langdons in many ways as representative of all families and realize what a rare glimpse Smiley gives us in her ambitious effort, a glimpse most of us will never have of our own families over such a long period of time.
Now I wait to see if volume 3 brings even greater appreciation of Smiley’s immense talent -- or Langdon overload.
“Early Warning” is identical in style and structure to its predecessor: another 33 years, each chapter one year, brief segments featuring the experiences and thoughts of different individuals, references to and sometimes depictions of the major events that marked the early 1950s through the mid-1980s, plotless, time just flying along.
But, as warned, reading was significantly complicated by the ever-growing cast of characters, including 11 Langdon grandchildren. I’m the sort of (anal) reader who likes to keep track of character details, so I was constantly refreshing my memory as to parentage, residence, job, siblings, age, blah, blah, blah, as we moved from person to person and back again. But you know what? I finally had to concede that details were never the point. It is the evolution of a family over the course of a century that Smiley aims to convey, its connections, its differences, and its ever-expanding nature.
These novels are unlike anything I’ve ever read, and their appeal was not immediately obvious. They’re easy to read, but soon I began to wonder where they were headed, until I realized the answer was nowhere. I think of the Langdons in many ways as representative of all families and realize what a rare glimpse Smiley gives us in her ambitious effort, a glimpse most of us will never have of our own families over such a long period of time.
Now I wait to see if volume 3 brings even greater appreciation of Smiley’s immense talent -- or Langdon overload.
May 27, 2015
After Some Luck, I chafed to wait for the further installment of what I hoped would be a family story of depth and heart. Instead, I got an episodic death march through the decades, with no character development, and historic events exploding along the periphery like a trailer for Forrest Gump. The musings about farmland, the cycle of nature, the growth of hedgerows and babies that enlivened and made human the events in the first book are missing here, as the second generation has moved off the farm and seemingly, out of their sentience. This was a brittle read that I abandoned after about 300 pages, when I found myself riffling through the last few hundred with a growing sense of boredom. With so many books to her credit, Smiley should be more wary of the sophomore slump. You know what they say: you have your entire life to write your first book, and only a year to write the second. Probably I should reconcile myself to finding trilogies amidst science fiction; lit fic authors seem like they are scraping butter over too much bread (to paraphrase Bilbo).
March 17, 2015
"Early Warning", is just as enjoyable and well written as Jane Smiley's first book in the Last Hundred Years Trilogy, "Some Luck". As with the first, I appreciated the one-year-per-chapter pace of this story of the Langdon family from 1953 to 1986. In the first book, the Langdon farm was the centerpiece of both setting and action, but the post-WWII time frame of "Early Warning" follows the progression of the US from the farms into the cities as the returning soldiers start families and enter businesses and manufacturing. "Early Warning" follows a family now spread across the US in many different occupations. Through these books I've come to love the Langdon family and I devoured this latest look into the lives (and deaths) of this multifaceted family.
The 1953 to 1986 decades were particularly interesting to me, since I was alive for most of that time. Like the Langdon progeny, I was what is now called a "free-range" kid who practiced getting under my desk in case of an atomic bomb (it's funny now - it wasn't then) and who lived in a house where the living room was reserved for "company" and thus off-limits to the children except on Christmas morning. I very much enjoyed reading about the quotidian aspects of the various Langdon families, and also the glimpses into history with which "Early Warning" is rich.
1950s - big families, free-range children, Cold War worries, "Mad Men" - style infidelities
1960s - The Beatles, assassinations, LSD, Vietnam
1970s - More Vietnam: Kent State, My Lai Massacre, Watergate, Jim Jones, Disco
1980s - Reagan, AIDS
I especially love when Smiley writes from a small child's point of view; it's both fascinating and entertaining. The books in this trilogy could be though of as 33 interwoven short stories, and it's a testament to Smiley's skill as a writer that we come to care about all these characters with just snippets of insight into their lives. Smiley has taken on an ambitious project with this trilogy and I am enjoying it immensely. I eagerly await the final novel, even though I'll be sad to close the book on this quintessential American family.
The 1953 to 1986 decades were particularly interesting to me, since I was alive for most of that time. Like the Langdon progeny, I was what is now called a "free-range" kid who practiced getting under my desk in case of an atomic bomb (it's funny now - it wasn't then) and who lived in a house where the living room was reserved for "company" and thus off-limits to the children except on Christmas morning. I very much enjoyed reading about the quotidian aspects of the various Langdon families, and also the glimpses into history with which "Early Warning" is rich.
1950s - big families, free-range children, Cold War worries, "Mad Men" - style infidelities
1960s - The Beatles, assassinations, LSD, Vietnam
1970s - More Vietnam: Kent State, My Lai Massacre, Watergate, Jim Jones, Disco
1980s - Reagan, AIDS
I especially love when Smiley writes from a small child's point of view; it's both fascinating and entertaining. The books in this trilogy could be though of as 33 interwoven short stories, and it's a testament to Smiley's skill as a writer that we come to care about all these characters with just snippets of insight into their lives. Smiley has taken on an ambitious project with this trilogy and I am enjoying it immensely. I eagerly await the final novel, even though I'll be sad to close the book on this quintessential American family.
December 23, 2021
Book two - straight into it while I can still remember all the characters. It picks right up - at the funeral of the family patriarch. A sombre way to start, and certainly, book two and three are more sober than the first.
What is profoundly clear in the next two books is the rapid passage of time - and how little of it we truly have. How lucky we are to experience what we do - even the hardships, as the alternative is very bleak and finite.
The cast comes and goes. Children have grown up and are making their own families, failing and succeeding and arguing and loving in round abouts. Much of book two is the post war period and into the Cold War threat and the horror and division of Vietnam. It was interesting to read an American perspective and to understand the politics in the USA at the time.
Less engaging than book one - but I have formed some attachment to the Langdons and all their off-shoots, so I move on to book three.
What is profoundly clear in the next two books is the rapid passage of time - and how little of it we truly have. How lucky we are to experience what we do - even the hardships, as the alternative is very bleak and finite.
The cast comes and goes. Children have grown up and are making their own families, failing and succeeding and arguing and loving in round abouts. Much of book two is the post war period and into the Cold War threat and the horror and division of Vietnam. It was interesting to read an American perspective and to understand the politics in the USA at the time.
Less engaging than book one - but I have formed some attachment to the Langdons and all their off-shoots, so I move on to book three.
February 17, 2020
This is the second novel in the trilogy and I liked it just as much as the first. Smiley writes excellent dialogue and her characters are portrayed as rich and full of the best and worst of humanity.
April 25, 2016
(Sequel to Some Luck.) This second book covers 1953 to 1986. The family loses one member to Vietnam, one to cancer, and one to the easiest, simplest death you could imagine. There’s a shotgun wedding, a divorce, and several affairs. In short, it feels like a real family, like your family. Events seem arbitrary at the time but later take on the cast of inevitability. Historical landmarks are there as background information, not as clichéd points of action (a good example is the JFK assassination). The Vietnam War threads through the middle section, but isn’t overpowering. The connections with history are pretty subtle here. One of my favorites is when Janet, at a Vietnam protest march, suddenly realizes she’s behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Spock. Her later involvement with the Peoples Temple grew tiresome for me, but I appreciated the ironic eye on the future: in 1980, “Well, I guess, they invaded Afghanistan…wherever that is!”
Iowa was still my preferred setting, an ideal site for pondering time’s workings and how money comes and goes: Joe “knew enough at his age to know that dollars were like drops of mist – they fluttered around you and then dissipated.” I also like Andy’s therapy sessions, frequently featured in the first half. There’s even a gentle mystery in this book: a boy who doesn’t seem to be related to the family keeps showing up, but by the end we figure out who he is.
People may rise and fall in importance, just as they do in real life, but everyone has a perspective. That’s part of Smiley’s message here, I think. Early on she observes that Rosanna “hadn’t thought of Roland Frederick as having a point of view.” Recognizing other people as valid subjects, overcoming solipsism, is really what literature is all about.
Although I’m interested in what happens next, I don’t like the grandchildren generation all that much; Richie and Michael are especially unpleasant, and I have a feeling they will be major players in Golden Age. Still, I feel invested in and close to this family, so I’m going to see it through to the end.
Favorite passage:
Joe’s dystopian vision: “But he could see it, looking south – he could see all the layers lift off – the roof of the house, the second floor, the first floor. He could see the children and Jesse and Jenny and Lois and Minnie being lifted out on a fountain of debt and scattered to the winds; then he could see the corn and beans scoured away, and the topsoil, once twelve inches thick, now six inches thick, and below that, the silty clay loam, more gray than black, then the subsoil, brownish clay all the way down, down, down to the yellow layer, mostly, again, clay, all of it exposed, all of it flying into the atmosphere like money, burning up in the hot sunshine, disappearing.”
Originally published at my blog, Bookish Beck.
Iowa was still my preferred setting, an ideal site for pondering time’s workings and how money comes and goes: Joe “knew enough at his age to know that dollars were like drops of mist – they fluttered around you and then dissipated.” I also like Andy’s therapy sessions, frequently featured in the first half. There’s even a gentle mystery in this book: a boy who doesn’t seem to be related to the family keeps showing up, but by the end we figure out who he is.
People may rise and fall in importance, just as they do in real life, but everyone has a perspective. That’s part of Smiley’s message here, I think. Early on she observes that Rosanna “hadn’t thought of Roland Frederick as having a point of view.” Recognizing other people as valid subjects, overcoming solipsism, is really what literature is all about.
Although I’m interested in what happens next, I don’t like the grandchildren generation all that much; Richie and Michael are especially unpleasant, and I have a feeling they will be major players in Golden Age. Still, I feel invested in and close to this family, so I’m going to see it through to the end.
Favorite passage:
Joe’s dystopian vision: “But he could see it, looking south – he could see all the layers lift off – the roof of the house, the second floor, the first floor. He could see the children and Jesse and Jenny and Lois and Minnie being lifted out on a fountain of debt and scattered to the winds; then he could see the corn and beans scoured away, and the topsoil, once twelve inches thick, now six inches thick, and below that, the silty clay loam, more gray than black, then the subsoil, brownish clay all the way down, down, down to the yellow layer, mostly, again, clay, all of it exposed, all of it flying into the atmosphere like money, burning up in the hot sunshine, disappearing.”
Originally published at my blog, Bookish Beck.
February 8, 2016
“If you lived in the same place long enough, everything reminded you of everything else.”
“Early Warning” begins where “Some Luck” left off, 1953, family gathers for the funeral of the family patriarch. As I began the second in Jane Smiley’s trilogy, I thought momentarily that it would be a good idea to have made a poster size family tree of the family, their children, and perhaps a brief note about some characters. With the funeral, it’s easy to be reminded right off that your most difficult task will be in following the children, their spouses, their children, who has done what. Life was less complicated when the family rarely left Denby, but as they gathered back together, it was like a test: “You remember so-and-so.” That moment when you may recognize the name, but can’t recall whose child they are or how they are related. Of course in both the hardcover and kindle editions the family genealogy is on the "front" page.
What remains the same: with each year is its own chapter, but this is a family saga, and people have a way of reproducing and multiplying, moving to new places – making the connection to the now geographically more distant family members becomes slightly problematic. I read this book on my kindle, as highlighting a name typically brings up some reference meant to remind you how that person fits in. For me, I felt “Early Warning” suffered just a bit from the growth, some of life stories away from the farm were less compelling than others, and the characters hadn't had sufficient time to get to know them. One of the strengths, for me of “Some Luck” was the extreme tightness of the family bond, inevitable when their day-to-day life included one another.
Filled with sorrow, joy, surprises, all of the political and social changes that came between the years 1953 - 1986, “Early Warning” covers all the local and world events of those years., from Berkeley, California to Washington, DC.
“Early Warning” begins where “Some Luck” left off, 1953, family gathers for the funeral of the family patriarch. As I began the second in Jane Smiley’s trilogy, I thought momentarily that it would be a good idea to have made a poster size family tree of the family, their children, and perhaps a brief note about some characters. With the funeral, it’s easy to be reminded right off that your most difficult task will be in following the children, their spouses, their children, who has done what. Life was less complicated when the family rarely left Denby, but as they gathered back together, it was like a test: “You remember so-and-so.” That moment when you may recognize the name, but can’t recall whose child they are or how they are related. Of course in both the hardcover and kindle editions the family genealogy is on the "front" page.
What remains the same: with each year is its own chapter, but this is a family saga, and people have a way of reproducing and multiplying, moving to new places – making the connection to the now geographically more distant family members becomes slightly problematic. I read this book on my kindle, as highlighting a name typically brings up some reference meant to remind you how that person fits in. For me, I felt “Early Warning” suffered just a bit from the growth, some of life stories away from the farm were less compelling than others, and the characters hadn't had sufficient time to get to know them. One of the strengths, for me of “Some Luck” was the extreme tightness of the family bond, inevitable when their day-to-day life included one another.
Filled with sorrow, joy, surprises, all of the political and social changes that came between the years 1953 - 1986, “Early Warning” covers all the local and world events of those years., from Berkeley, California to Washington, DC.
November 15, 2015
Early Warning covers the years 1953-1986. The second generation of the Langdon family is now in their sixties and the third and fourth generations are making a much larger appearance. I love how these books move the family's stories forward by devoting each chapter to a specific year. In doing so, Smiley showcases the highlights (or low lights in some cases) of not only the family members, but the current world events of the time.
Moving, joyful, sorrowful and still surprising, this was a great read!
Moving, joyful, sorrowful and still surprising, this was a great read!
December 31, 2015
3.5 Stars
I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first one. It kind of felt more haphazard. But, at the same time, I think that is necessary to convey the Langdon family as it begins to spread out from the main family core.
I did enjoy how current events were intertwined withing the Langdon Family Saga.
I didn't enjoy this quite as much as the first one. It kind of felt more haphazard. But, at the same time, I think that is necessary to convey the Langdon family as it begins to spread out from the main family core.
I did enjoy how current events were intertwined withing the Langdon Family Saga.
January 19, 2016
The second book in the Langdon family trilogy isn't quite as sharp as the first one, but still compelling. It takes some time to get used to the growing cast of characters as the family expands, but Smiley provides a helpful family tree. She ends the book with the Langdons in the 1980s--I can't wait for the third book, which will come out later this year. I admit she had me in tears near the end.
August 11, 2017
Not your usual family saga. Year by year, the best and the worst of the family stories. Constantly engaging, disturbing, moving, and thought-provoking. A classic. A masterpiece.
May 18, 2015
Back in the fall, I compared Jane Smiley's Some Luck, the first volume in The Last Hundred Years trilogy, to a fat album of family photos. The book spanned 1920 to 1953, and each chapter was a snapshot of a year in the life of Iowa farmer Walter Langdon, his wife Rosanna and their five children. The shifting perspective -- sometimes close-up, sometimes wide-angle -- made for a saga both epic and intimate. I liked it very much. Ditto for the second book, Early Warning (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley), although it's less the family album and more like home movies. Some scenes blur, especially in the beginning, as the Langdon family goes forth and multiplies. It takes awhile to become reacquainted with the characters from the last book, even as more arrive. But Smiley doesn't pause. The action picks up where Some Luck left off, with the 1953 death of patriarch Walter and the family's reactions to his loss. Again, change is as constant as the seasons.
Matriarch Rosanna still has a part to play, eventually deciding it's time she learned to drive a car and not just a horse and wagon. Son Joe, who has stayed on the farm with wife Lois and their son Jesse, keeps an eye on her. Meanwhile, elder son Frank ascends the business ladder in New York, while his wife Andy uses alcohol and psychoanalysis to escape from her rambunctious brood of children. Their daughter Janey prefers visiting her cousins in Washington, D.C., where Frank's sister Lillian seems to run the perfect suburban household. But her husband Arthur's CIA job will cause family conflict. Elder son Tim will go to fight in Vietnam, and his sister Debbie will march against it. Janey's bid for independence will take her to California and the People's Temple pre-Jonestown. Before that, though, Langdon daughter Claire will marry a controlling doctor, and her handsome brother Henry, pursuing his academic career in Chicago, will acknowledge that he's gay.
Historic milestones and social issues flash by -- the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War, the Kennedy assassinations, Kent State, the beginnings of the AIDs crisis. Smiley details the outward trappings of the Mad Men era even as she illuminates the Langdon's interior lives. The effect is cumulative. Once again, readers are emotionally invested in the sprawling Langdon clan. They are as familiar -- and sometimes as frustrating -- as your own kin. What will they do next? We'll find out in the fall when the third book arrives
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever
Matriarch Rosanna still has a part to play, eventually deciding it's time she learned to drive a car and not just a horse and wagon. Son Joe, who has stayed on the farm with wife Lois and their son Jesse, keeps an eye on her. Meanwhile, elder son Frank ascends the business ladder in New York, while his wife Andy uses alcohol and psychoanalysis to escape from her rambunctious brood of children. Their daughter Janey prefers visiting her cousins in Washington, D.C., where Frank's sister Lillian seems to run the perfect suburban household. But her husband Arthur's CIA job will cause family conflict. Elder son Tim will go to fight in Vietnam, and his sister Debbie will march against it. Janey's bid for independence will take her to California and the People's Temple pre-Jonestown. Before that, though, Langdon daughter Claire will marry a controlling doctor, and her handsome brother Henry, pursuing his academic career in Chicago, will acknowledge that he's gay.
Historic milestones and social issues flash by -- the Cuban missile crisis, the Cold War, the Kennedy assassinations, Kent State, the beginnings of the AIDs crisis. Smiley details the outward trappings of the Mad Men era even as she illuminates the Langdon's interior lives. The effect is cumulative. Once again, readers are emotionally invested in the sprawling Langdon clan. They are as familiar -- and sometimes as frustrating -- as your own kin. What will they do next? We'll find out in the fall when the third book arrives
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever
May 11, 2015
I usually don't write reviews, but Smiley's writing is amazing. I loved the pacing and the character development over the course of the two novels. The story could be any family history but her deft touches of character and their relation to events in America create a portrait with depth and veridity.I plan to read the both the firts and second books again when the third is released to enjoy the flow.
May 16, 2015
Fantastic continuation of this family saga. Smiley has an uncanny ability to select an enchanting combination of mundane, unusual and puzzling moments in time that, over the course of the book, cohere to become a complete picture of a sprawling family.
September 5, 2015
Classic Smiley. Must be read in order, though.
did-not-finish
July 23, 2022Not enjoying this at all. Time to pull the plug.
May 28, 2015
Early Warning follows Some Luck as Book two in Jane Smiley’s planned trilogy, a trio of books that follows a farm family, the Langdons, and their offspring through an entire century. In fact this bucolic verbal tryptic is called The Last Hundred Years Trilogy. As more and more offspring choose to leave the farm, the lives of the Langdon offspring obviously become less and less rural.
Walter and Rosanna are the founders of this Midwestern dynasty and the offspring become so numerous that it becomes difficult to trace them back up the family tree and to locate them back into their appropriate nest. It may be hard to keep track of who their parents are but they remain interesting characters/people.
Joe, one of the sons of Walter and Rosanna, farms on the land next to his father. He must predict each year which crops will sell best in next year’s market and he is good at choosing correctly. His farm prospers while others fail. Once in a while we can feel his exhaustion and, after he loses his wife, Lois, we feel his loneliness. The children have been to college and have jobs away from the farm, even some quite influential jobs. Joe and the matriarch Rosanna are at the center of this story.
Walter and Rosanna sire six children, Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire. Five children survive and sire 13 offspring. Jane Smiley offers us some unique trait and fate to differentiate all these offspring and their mates, and in this second novel, Early Warning we get to experience this American farm family from the point at which, somewhere in the 40’s or early 50’s, the first volume, Some Luck, ends, through the Reagan years and into the Nixon years. Of all the events these years encompass this family seems most affected by the existence of the atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear war, thus the novel’s title.
It’s interesting to contrast Ken Follett’s view of the 20th century with Jane Smiley’s perspective. Ken Follett starts in Europe with the class divide between aristocrats and working class people. Since his characters live in Europe their lives are turned about and twisted by two World Wars.
Jane Smiley is describing an agrarian American experience and the farm becomes the lens through which we view the world. Smiley does not examine class in America but her farmers are quite conscious of legacy and inheritance, of success in a hard life, or failure. The places their children go in this second volume exemplify the great migrations in American culture away from a rural, farm-based lifestyle to the urban/suburban lifestyle.
Now we may be ready to cut ourselves loose from the suburbs in order to move onto the next thing. Will we move back to the farm – not corporate farming - the family farm; or will we move on to the hive cities that we worry technology might lead to where we live in a cubicle and only experience others through our computer interfaces?
It is brave to make the third novel in this trilogy have as its focus the post-Nixon years. It should be very interesting to see how Jane Smiley handles that.
Walter and Rosanna are the founders of this Midwestern dynasty and the offspring become so numerous that it becomes difficult to trace them back up the family tree and to locate them back into their appropriate nest. It may be hard to keep track of who their parents are but they remain interesting characters/people.
Joe, one of the sons of Walter and Rosanna, farms on the land next to his father. He must predict each year which crops will sell best in next year’s market and he is good at choosing correctly. His farm prospers while others fail. Once in a while we can feel his exhaustion and, after he loses his wife, Lois, we feel his loneliness. The children have been to college and have jobs away from the farm, even some quite influential jobs. Joe and the matriarch Rosanna are at the center of this story.
Walter and Rosanna sire six children, Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire. Five children survive and sire 13 offspring. Jane Smiley offers us some unique trait and fate to differentiate all these offspring and their mates, and in this second novel, Early Warning we get to experience this American farm family from the point at which, somewhere in the 40’s or early 50’s, the first volume, Some Luck, ends, through the Reagan years and into the Nixon years. Of all the events these years encompass this family seems most affected by the existence of the atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear war, thus the novel’s title.
It’s interesting to contrast Ken Follett’s view of the 20th century with Jane Smiley’s perspective. Ken Follett starts in Europe with the class divide between aristocrats and working class people. Since his characters live in Europe their lives are turned about and twisted by two World Wars.
Jane Smiley is describing an agrarian American experience and the farm becomes the lens through which we view the world. Smiley does not examine class in America but her farmers are quite conscious of legacy and inheritance, of success in a hard life, or failure. The places their children go in this second volume exemplify the great migrations in American culture away from a rural, farm-based lifestyle to the urban/suburban lifestyle.
Now we may be ready to cut ourselves loose from the suburbs in order to move onto the next thing. Will we move back to the farm – not corporate farming - the family farm; or will we move on to the hive cities that we worry technology might lead to where we live in a cubicle and only experience others through our computer interfaces?
It is brave to make the third novel in this trilogy have as its focus the post-Nixon years. It should be very interesting to see how Jane Smiley handles that.
July 25, 2015
This second book of Jane Smiley's trilogy was much more interesting to me and I read it twice as fast as I did Some Luck. This is certainly because the book takes place during the first 35 years of my life. I was fascinated to see which events Ms. Smiley chose as important in her continuing saga of the 20th Century, as well as which children and grandchildren of Rosanna and Walter Langdon she placed into which events. As in the first book, Ms. Smiley does not give the reader one character to love and follow but rather gives the reader the 20th Century and how it played out in the lives of one family from Iowas.
This book could be read on its own, but the reader would miss the richness of the first half of the 20th Century in Some Luck. I am looking forward to October and the publication of the final installment.
This book could be read on its own, but the reader would miss the richness of the first half of the 20th Century in Some Luck. I am looking forward to October and the publication of the final installment.
May 31, 2015
I've loved some of Smiley's work, but I was disappointed in this book. Like the first book in the series, Some Luck, Smiley covers too many characters too thinly. I didn't really care about any of them, because I didn't feel like I knew much about their motivations and inner lives. A lot of what they did just seemed random. And it annoyed me that almost all of them are rich in this book. If you're telling the story of the 20th century family, the rise of the middle class is the real story. She started that in Some Luck, but kind of dropped it in this second book in the series; almost everybody has a swimming pool in their back yard. I'll read the third one when it comes out, but my hopes aren't high.
October 21, 2023
I am loving this series. I admire Jane Smiley’s skill in writing it. It has made me think more about my family history also. I will continue on to the final book in the series. I am grateful to my bookgroup choosing Some Luck for our October meeting.
January 16, 2021
Setting: USA; 1953-1986. This is the second book in The Hundred Years trilogy, following on from the first book, Some Luck. As the Langdon family's children spread their wings, the action moves from the largely farming-based Iowa community. Against a backdrop of political uprising and anti-Vietnam rallies, the children and grandchildren of the original Langdon family try to make their mark. Another excellent instalment in this trilogy and looking forward to reading the third part - 8/10.
June 28, 2015
In the second book of the author's Last Hundred Years trilogy, Smiley spins an absolutely masterful tale, continuing the story of the Langdon/Vogel families begun in Some Luck. Sprawling doesn't even begin to describe the cast of characters; thank heavens there is a genealogical chart in the front of the book to help me keep track of who's who.
I enjoyed the first novel, Some Luck,set in Iowa farm country, which tells the early story of the family, beginning after WW1, continuing to 1952. So deftly does Smiley recount the difficulties and the realities of farm life that I was shocked to learn (heard her speak at a local bookstore) that her only knowledge of the industry comes from reading the Des Moines Register! Obviously her great talents as an author take over and enable her to create magic out of that knowledge to weave an incredibly realistic tale about life on the farm. Walter and his wife Rosanna settle down to the task of raising a large family while attempting to hang on to the farm during the depression. After reading the first novel I came away with a much deeper appreciation for farmers and more importantly for farmers' wives, for their role is certainly not an easy one. Here is an insight into Rosanna (said of an older Rosanna in Early Warning): "Death was a fact and no one knew that better than an old lady on a farm." The life is not for the faint of heart, for sure.
In the second book Early Warning, the story continues and as the Langdon children grow up, they leave the farm and settle all over the country, marrying, having babies, divorcing, growing old, getting sick, engaging in covert government activities, you name it, they do it. In fact, the brilliance of these novels, particularly Early Warning, is just how ingeniously Smiley has managed to weave just about every major historical event into the lives of her characters. World War II, the McCarthy era, Vietnam, Watergate, mass suicide at Jim Jones camp, the AIDS epidemic, the banking and loan scandal of the early 80s, it is all there.
Not everyone leaves the farm though. Joe, the second son of Walter and Rosanna, chooses to stay behind and his character reveals just what the pull is. His thoughts after he learns that the farm land has become quite valuable" Dollars were like drops of mist, they fluttered around you and dissipated. The real mystery was how your farm bound you to it, so tightly that you would pay any price, literally, in interest or make any sacrifice just to take these steps across this familiarly undulating ground time and again."
The Langdon family is not all that extraordinary when you get right down to it. They are just regular people, living out their sometimes simple, sometimes complicated lives against the backdrop of the tumultuous years of 20th century America, through 1986. The third novel, which will take us through to present time, is due out this October. I can't wait.
I enjoyed the first novel, Some Luck,set in Iowa farm country, which tells the early story of the family, beginning after WW1, continuing to 1952. So deftly does Smiley recount the difficulties and the realities of farm life that I was shocked to learn (heard her speak at a local bookstore) that her only knowledge of the industry comes from reading the Des Moines Register! Obviously her great talents as an author take over and enable her to create magic out of that knowledge to weave an incredibly realistic tale about life on the farm. Walter and his wife Rosanna settle down to the task of raising a large family while attempting to hang on to the farm during the depression. After reading the first novel I came away with a much deeper appreciation for farmers and more importantly for farmers' wives, for their role is certainly not an easy one. Here is an insight into Rosanna (said of an older Rosanna in Early Warning): "Death was a fact and no one knew that better than an old lady on a farm." The life is not for the faint of heart, for sure.
In the second book Early Warning, the story continues and as the Langdon children grow up, they leave the farm and settle all over the country, marrying, having babies, divorcing, growing old, getting sick, engaging in covert government activities, you name it, they do it. In fact, the brilliance of these novels, particularly Early Warning, is just how ingeniously Smiley has managed to weave just about every major historical event into the lives of her characters. World War II, the McCarthy era, Vietnam, Watergate, mass suicide at Jim Jones camp, the AIDS epidemic, the banking and loan scandal of the early 80s, it is all there.
Not everyone leaves the farm though. Joe, the second son of Walter and Rosanna, chooses to stay behind and his character reveals just what the pull is. His thoughts after he learns that the farm land has become quite valuable" Dollars were like drops of mist, they fluttered around you and dissipated. The real mystery was how your farm bound you to it, so tightly that you would pay any price, literally, in interest or make any sacrifice just to take these steps across this familiarly undulating ground time and again."
The Langdon family is not all that extraordinary when you get right down to it. They are just regular people, living out their sometimes simple, sometimes complicated lives against the backdrop of the tumultuous years of 20th century America, through 1986. The third novel, which will take us through to present time, is due out this October. I can't wait.
May 28, 2015
If only I could have read Early Warning directly following Some Luck, the first in Smiley's family saga (which I loved)... Then I could have kept the characters straight! Instead, I flipped back to the Langdon family genealogical chart provided in the front of the book. Ultimately I had to add a Post-It note, I was consulting it so often. Marching year by year from 1953 to 1985, of course the family multiplies and new characters are introduced. (This structure reminded me a little of family Christmas letters, though of course, the quality of writing was much higher than such letters usually are). Often I wanted to stay with my favorite characters longer than that hopping-around structure provided. Also, my memory was taxed trying to recall what I knew about the original characters, but eventually most of that context came back.
I sound like I am complaining more than praising the novel. But Smiley is a brilliant American novelist who obviously has a vast imagination and a true gift for characterization. The time period coincides with my life, so it was familiar and well depicted. Perhaps the original novel tickled my fancy more, featuring earlier decades including the Great Depression, always fascinating to me. Some Luck had a salt-of-the-earth quality that I did not find in Early Warning. I guess I expected to return to life on the farm, but alas -- very few Langdons kept their connection to the land. And so it goes, life marches on. Although I will reach for the forthcoming final novel in the trilogy with somewhat lowered expectations, I'm sure I will be glad to catch up on a least a few of the life stories so splendidly sprawled out for us here.
I sound like I am complaining more than praising the novel. But Smiley is a brilliant American novelist who obviously has a vast imagination and a true gift for characterization. The time period coincides with my life, so it was familiar and well depicted. Perhaps the original novel tickled my fancy more, featuring earlier decades including the Great Depression, always fascinating to me. Some Luck had a salt-of-the-earth quality that I did not find in Early Warning. I guess I expected to return to life on the farm, but alas -- very few Langdons kept their connection to the land. And so it goes, life marches on. Although I will reach for the forthcoming final novel in the trilogy with somewhat lowered expectations, I'm sure I will be glad to catch up on a least a few of the life stories so splendidly sprawled out for us here.
January 24, 2016
"The problem [no one has solved] or even [knows] existed, was how quickly it passed, every joke, every embrace, every babyhood and childhood, every moment of thinking that [we have] things figured out for good..."
This fact is shown through this history of the Langdon/Vogel family from 1953 - 1986. Each chapter is a year; each year contains anecdotes about the elders, the parents, the children of this family. From their farm in Iowa, the family has scattered: some remain farmers, while others serve in the CIA or business or real estate or socialist co-ops on the west coast. Each chapter reveals how people have grown and changed in what they eat, what they hope for, what's important to them over time.
This is an amazing social history. I had forgotten about cooking, Betty Crocker-style, and I hadn't thought about the Russian wheat embargo in a long, long time. I had forgotten about the rises and crashes of land values and the changes in who academics are and what role they play in society.
It's easy to read a catalogue of the big events of this time: the end of WW II, the rise of McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jim Jones, etc...but the more interesting and important changes are in these pages: the newly discovered love of European foods that no one had heard of before, the family dinnertime conversations/arguments as television brought the news into every living room, the back yard bomb shelters, the loss of loved ones who followed paths that took them so far away from their homes, families, and old ways.
This is the 2nd of a trilogy that offers the "real" history of America, I think.
This fact is shown through this history of the Langdon/Vogel family from 1953 - 1986. Each chapter is a year; each year contains anecdotes about the elders, the parents, the children of this family. From their farm in Iowa, the family has scattered: some remain farmers, while others serve in the CIA or business or real estate or socialist co-ops on the west coast. Each chapter reveals how people have grown and changed in what they eat, what they hope for, what's important to them over time.
This is an amazing social history. I had forgotten about cooking, Betty Crocker-style, and I hadn't thought about the Russian wheat embargo in a long, long time. I had forgotten about the rises and crashes of land values and the changes in who academics are and what role they play in society.
It's easy to read a catalogue of the big events of this time: the end of WW II, the rise of McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jim Jones, etc...but the more interesting and important changes are in these pages: the newly discovered love of European foods that no one had heard of before, the family dinnertime conversations/arguments as television brought the news into every living room, the back yard bomb shelters, the loss of loved ones who followed paths that took them so far away from their homes, families, and old ways.
This is the 2nd of a trilogy that offers the "real" history of America, I think.
July 3, 2015
This is the second of a three-part trilogy of the past 100 years of the life of a particular family from Iowa and their descendents. This follows the clan, starting in the year 1953 and ending in the late 1980s. There is a large cast of characters and the author provides a family tree to help keep track of them all. I referred to it often in the first few chapters, and it did take me a while to figure out who the characters were. Each chapter is a year in their lives in successive order. In most of the chapters, she divides them up to deal with multiple characters in multiple locations. The book takes place in Iowa, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Chicago. There are issues of women's rights, civil rights, Gay rights, amongst others. In the background are events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and they are used kind of in the way they are shown in the show Mad Men.
Some will find this book a bit tedious, but I found it fascinating to follow these characters, especially knowing some of the historical situations before they did. The reader knows what's coming while the characters, obviously, do not. It is not a very exciting or compelling book. Jane Smiley is an author who never says more than she needs to in order to get her points across. She is a very intelligent and knowledgeable individual, and this is reflected in the writing of this trilogy.
Some will find this book a bit tedious, but I found it fascinating to follow these characters, especially knowing some of the historical situations before they did. The reader knows what's coming while the characters, obviously, do not. It is not a very exciting or compelling book. Jane Smiley is an author who never says more than she needs to in order to get her points across. She is a very intelligent and knowledgeable individual, and this is reflected in the writing of this trilogy.
September 9, 2015
I found this disappointing compared to the first volume in this family saga trilogy.
I had felt somewhat invested in the characters in the first book and she kept my attention. In this book, my mind wandered frequently and I was far from gripped.
To an extent, with a family saga, as you go through the generations, the characters multiply and, unless you narrow your focus or make the personalities clearly distinguishable from one another and compelling, it becomes easier to lose track of who's who.
It didn't help that some of the grandchildren (of the original main characters Rosanna and Walter) preferred spending time with their uncles and aunts rather than with their own parents, thus contributing to my confusion (and, ultimately, lack of interest) about who actually belonged to whom.........
The author's style also seemed less consistent than in the first book.
It wasn't all bad, especially towards the end of the book, and I'll definitely read the final volume of the trilogy. It's out in a month or so.
In for a penny...........
I had felt somewhat invested in the characters in the first book and she kept my attention. In this book, my mind wandered frequently and I was far from gripped.
To an extent, with a family saga, as you go through the generations, the characters multiply and, unless you narrow your focus or make the personalities clearly distinguishable from one another and compelling, it becomes easier to lose track of who's who.
It didn't help that some of the grandchildren (of the original main characters Rosanna and Walter) preferred spending time with their uncles and aunts rather than with their own parents, thus contributing to my confusion (and, ultimately, lack of interest) about who actually belonged to whom.........
The author's style also seemed less consistent than in the first book.
It wasn't all bad, especially towards the end of the book, and I'll definitely read the final volume of the trilogy. It's out in a month or so.
In for a penny...........
June 15, 2015
Maybe because I haven't read Some Luck, I was continually confused by the author's style, using the device of giving a minute snapshot of one character after another, experiencing some brief moment in life. I assume if I continued reading, the overall plot would emerge. But, after a third of the book, I was still confused by the laundry list of people involved ("Now, WHO is this?" as I constantly flipped to the family tree in the front) as I waited to care about these folks and their daily activities. It never happened.
January 23, 2020
This is the second volume in Smiley's chronicles of the twentieth century, this one following the various members of the Langdon family from 1953 to 1986 Walter, the patriarch has died suddenly, leaving Rosanna a widow.. Their children are all mostly grown and only Joe and young Claire remain on the farm. Frank and Lillian's husband, Arthur, are involved in the CIA and then, later in the military/industrial complex. Henry is immersed in the esoteric topic of medieval literature.
AS Walter and Rosanna's children marry and have children of their own, the country passed from the prosperous post-war 1960's to the turbulent q960's and '70's and tehn into the showy, splashy 1980's. Throughout it all, the family manages to hold onto the threads that bind it together and the reader gets to relive the Vietnam war, student protests, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the People's Temple in San Francisco, the Reagan revolution and finally the collapse of farm prices and the S&L loan scandal
Smiley not only gives us a panoramic view of mid-century life, but also a cast of characters that readers should grow to care about.
AS Walter and Rosanna's children marry and have children of their own, the country passed from the prosperous post-war 1960's to the turbulent q960's and '70's and tehn into the showy, splashy 1980's. Throughout it all, the family manages to hold onto the threads that bind it together and the reader gets to relive the Vietnam war, student protests, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, the People's Temple in San Francisco, the Reagan revolution and finally the collapse of farm prices and the S&L loan scandal
Smiley not only gives us a panoramic view of mid-century life, but also a cast of characters that readers should grow to care about.
January 13, 2023
Slow but interesting family saga. This quote stands out to me....
”“You didn’t love us equally.”“
"Who you are shapes how you are loved. We loved you individually. How could we not?”
”“You didn’t love us equally.”“
"Who you are shapes how you are loved. We loved you individually. How could we not?”
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