I'm a total sucker for this kind of daily-life anthropological fiction, with rich understanding and respect for the characters and the connections between grand social and technological changes and the way people live.

Plus, as a child of Iowa and Kansas with big opinions about how the agricultural communities were screwed and screwed themselves, it was compelling to see if play out in this story. It made me feel more connected to my ancestors, and more melancholy for the life they knew and lost.

Trilogy completion check-in: it's good. Read on. ( )

Last night before bed I was reading some of the critical comments about this book and I had to wonder. It is the first of a trilogy and I think has to be read in that context, but having just finished it I also know that it is a complete story in and of itself and comparable, in my opinion, to Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize winner, A Thousand Acres.

A couple of chapters into the book I made the realization that I was reading the story that I had created in my head about my own ancestors. My family story ultimately began in Massachusetts with men and women of English colonial stock, moved to upstate New York and ultimately Michigan. I have often wondered what their stories were, who they were as people, what was family life like for them, how did they get along, what decisions did they make along the way that this family ultimately ended up where I live now.

This is a generational saga and I think I will appreciate this even more as I dive into book two and three.

Some Luck, the first book, ended in a way that brought me close to tears and it ended in that full circle way that leaves one satisfied with the conclusion if not necessarily happy.

One reviewer stated that characters were not fully developed and that this book was disappointing.
No. You were wrong. Go back and read again. I can assure you that you missed something. ( )

A slow, gentle story covering three decades. Worth the time to think about what it means for a family to have "some luck"--not a lot, not too little. Just some. ( )

This novel spans the years from 1920 to 1953. Every year gets a chapter. Each chapter contains 4-7 vignettes narrated from the perspective of different people in the Langdon family. The family lives in a farm in Iowa. (Eventually, some of the children grew up and moved to New York or D. C., so the more the novel progressed, the less the storyline focused on farm life.) I liked a couple of the vignettes very much, but some don't leave as strong as an impression as the others. I also feel the story runs on to no end, since new things happen every year :P And because the story doesn't have an ending.....I'm probably going to continue to read the second book in this trilogy just to see what happens next. (It's called Hundred Years Trilogy....oh my goodness.) ( )

Good, but a slow start. Not Smiley's best ( )