I'm ready to embark on Jane Smiley's novel Early Warning, which is the second book in a trilogy that encompasses a century in the life of an Iowa farm family. The first book, Some Luck, opens in 1920 and will follow the Langdon family through American history. It is an ambitious story and unusual in its storytelling but easily readable despite the growing cast of characters. It is epic in its outlook but feels intimate in the way the story is told. Unlike some multi-generational stories where the book is massive and might have an almost unwieldy cast of characters, this story seems quite focused in its way. Each chapter covers a separate year in the family's life giving each family member their moment or moments, all interlaced in various ways. Some Luck begins in 1920 and ends in 1953, which is where the second book will pick up. The novels are collectively called The Last Hundred Years Trilogy.
I thought it was time to finally write about it and reorient myself before starting book two. Some time has passed since putting Some Luck down, so details may be sketchy but my recollections of it are quite warm and it was a most satisfying reading experience. It was interesting following the Langdon family's fortunes and misfortunes and unsurprisingly I liked some characters more than others and found that I grew to like some more over time. At the start of the story Walter Langdon has returned home from the battlefields of WWI and married Rosanna Vogel. Both come from farm families, though Rosanna's heritage is German.
Since each chapter is a year and the characters move about, taking center stage or exiting as need be, the story feels somewhat birds-eye-view, maybe a little vignette-y with various episodes in the lives of the Langdons occurring. So it is curious in that way--not exactly your traditional tightly-told story, in a nice tidy linear narrative, but not really short-story-ish either. The Langdons' family grows and this first book concerns itself with the first generation of Langdon siblings branching out into their early marriages and just mentions of their own children. And then there is extended family, too, though they are mostly off in the periphery.
Frank, the eldest, has charm and good looks and there is little surprise that he sees his future elsewhere. Joe, his little brother, is as most little brothers are--put upon by his elder sibling, more the baby and perhaps a little less independent or adventurous. He is more the family's farm boy as a child, in love with a local girl who cannot quite love him back, so he marries her sister instead. Lillian catches the eye of Arthur Manning when he stops in the drugstore where she is working. Two days later he proposes and she accepts and they elope on their way to his home in Washington, DC. By now WWII is over and both Frank and Arthur have served abroad and they end up working together in secret government business. Henry and Claire are the two youngest and each a favorite of one parent. Both are barely finished with school at story's end so I look forward to seeing what their lives bring in the next book.
How's that for glossing over all the details? It's hard to write about thirty-three years in the lives of a family but that is more than a generation. It was interesting seeing a marriage over the course of time. There is nothing overly sentimental about their marriage--perhaps a typical farmer's world filled with happiness and grief. They are both practical people, in love but not overtly so. Rosanna was a challenge for me to like at times as she spent a good part of her life becoming more and more religious and a devout Bible reader, boxing herself in shutting the world and her family out, but she softens over time and I came to really admire her tenacity and how she struggled to care for her family. Frank tends to steal the limelight perhaps more than the others. Typical eldest child?
I can see that this is a book, and likely the story as a whole, that calls to be revisited. I'm hoping it all comes back to me as I begin reading Early Warning, which opens with a funeral. Early Warning is a slightly chunkier book. It begins in 1953 and carries through to 1986 so will eventually begin to overlap with my own childhood so I am wondering if it will feel at all familiar? I've been looking forward to returning to Denby, Iowa and the Langdons, their spouses and children. The next generation of children will quickly come to the fore. Unbelievably I had never read any of Jane Smiley's work, but by the end of this year I hope to have all three of her Last Hundred Years trilogy under my belt and maybe next year will see me picking up her other books.
If last month was a mostly meh reading month, this one is looking to be especially good between A Suitable Boy, my German Literature reads and now back to Jane Smiley!