Golden Age

There are some lucky future readers out there who will plunge in and cherish all three books in this remarkable trilogy, one after the other. I read them in order as they were released, with at least 8 month to a year between each. And so I photocopy the family tree in the front of each book and dive in, putting all else aside.

This last novel goes beyond current times, all the way to 2018. Unexpected environmental and financial disasters await the Langdons and their roots and branches. Beloved characters die and new scions appear. Who would expect that a Norwegian farm family from Iowa would produce both a Madoff and a conservative Democratic congressman from New York City?

Anyone who's read any one of Jane Smiley's other brilliant show more novels would have high expectations, but these three meaty books go above and beyond what any author might achieve. Truly outstanding. The only argument, as in all great trilogies, is: which is the best? show less

Golden Age, Jane Smiley, author, Lorelei King, narrator
This is the third installment in a three part series about the Langdon family. The hundred years begins in the year 1920; this book begins in 1987, and takes us up to the future in 2019. For me, the best one in the series was the first, “Some Luck”. I did make a valiant attempt to read this one, but I failed. I even skipped to the end to see if there was something taking place in the future to hold my interest, but alas, there was not.

It is a major feat of accomplishment if you can keep track of all of the characters, the old and the new. Even taking advantage of the family tree printed in the book, it is a challenge. In addition, if you have any interest in, or can keep track show more of, all of the details right down to what they ate at meals, you are a better “man” than I am. After listening to more than 8 hours of this more than 17 ½ hour audio, I simply gave up. I felt like I was reading a propaganda treatise, disguised as a novel. It simply got too tedious, its politics leaned too far left, and the narrator, though she did an admirable job, could not hold me anymore than the story did.

Over the century, the family suffers through all of the warts and foibles of any family, including the ups and downs of society’s cycles and pivots from one crisis to another, from imbalances in political powers, to economic failures, to bias in the news without skipping a beat. Every sort of societal issue is experienced in this family: divorce, homosexuality, infidelity, secrets, lies, anti-Semitism, mental illness, evil corporations, childhood Cancer, gun control, PTSD, the mistakes of the Iraq war, the dangers of climate change and more. This should give everyone the idea that the author is a liberal and, indeed, she has put forth every liberal view she could while trashing every opposing view from the right with negative terms or implications. All I could finally do was scream, ENOUGH! It went on and on ad nauseam. Perhaps one vignette about each family would have been manageable, but there were simply too many about each member of each family. Did I really need to know that the grilled cheese was made with Emmenthaler Swiss or Black Forest Ham? Okay, so the characters and details did have to be part of the book, but did they have to be dissected?

I ask this question seriously: Is the new measure of the value of a book the number of liberal issues that can be put forth in the maximum amount of pages? The book is too long, there are too many characters and aside from the series being a family saga taking place over 100 years, it simply did not get better with each volume and seemed to have no redeeming feature for me except for its historic content which was well researched, but it was presented with too many, of what I can only assume, are the author’s personal, political views. On a positive note, the characters were very well developed, even if forgettable, because of the number of them.

Finally, after awhile, although I rarely ever give up on a book, this one just became too much for me. I simply did not enjoy listening to it or being harangued by the overwhelming, sometimes outright and sometimes subtle, criticisms of the views of those on the right, of the Republicans, while the views of those on the left, the Democrats, were extolled unmercifully. show less

Jane Smiley almost hits it out of the park with this one. As a whole, this trilogy has been an examplar of the power of realistic fiction--a saga of a family and its branches. It's well written and observed without suffering from the self-consciously clever MFA workshop overwriting that seems to be overwhelming younger literary fiction writers. (Irony, considering Smiley's own pedigree.)

There are two things that make this last novel just short of a five star book. As the expanding family trees on the endpapers show, the Langdons have become quite the clan by the end. This provides a kaleidoscopic cast of characters. Smiley wisely chooses to ignore some almost completely, but she still has some difficulty in maintaining focus and show more keeping threads tied. There were incidents alluded to and not explained (my personal curiosity was Jonah, though in the end, the ambiguity felt calculated rather than an accident of forgetting), and the balancing act doesn't quite work smoothly.

The larger flaw comes in the final years of the book. Smiley chooses to extend the saga till 2019, which gives the final segments a speculative fiction quality that doesn't meld smoothly with the sharp realism of earlier chapters. The politics are too obvious, and too well hinted at, from the anti-GMO and Monsanto segments a few years earlier. The speculative aspect is amped up by an accelerated timeline for climate change that has Iowa as a dust bowl only 4 years from now. Political background forms an important component of the trilogy, increasing over the course of the books, but the jump lacks ease, and takes focus away from the characters as they become pawns in a wider political scheme. The progress makes thematic sense, but isn't quite pulled off.

Over the course of 1000 pages, I've come to care about the Langdons; their farm; their tragedies large and small. Smiley has tried to write her own great saga, the tale of how one family's great success also becomes their downfall. She's almost succeeded. show less

This is the 3rd book of the trilogy. I have read Jane Smiley(a bay area writer) before the trilogy and have always enjoyed her. The trilogy was very ambitious and I would recommend that the books be read in order. The 3rd book deals with many characters and at times it is hard to follow.As the book proceeds the relationships are easier to follow. Smiley deals with how ordinary(all white and originally from a farm in Iowa) react to the times and events of the 20th and 21st century and with each other. With so many characters you sometimes wish for more depth with certain characters. Smiley has a liberal viewpoint but I agree with her take on things. There was some plot points that strained credibility but in the context of the ambition show more of this novel, I looked the other way. This is a great read(the entire trilogy) and I strongly recommend it. Smiley's style is very reporter like so don't expect incredible prose, but she does tell a good story. show less

(7.5)Wow this was a long read but persevere I did. The writing is a huge accomplishment really, following an American family through one hundred years against an ever changing political and societal backdrop. At times the political information made my eyes glaze, not being overly familiar with American politics. I suspected the commentary is very much influenced by the writer's own political beliefs. Also because of the extensive cast of characters it was hard to feel emotionally engaged with them as there could be long periods of time before some would reappear in the story. Nonetheless it did retain my interest to the end.

The final book in Smiley's trilogy takes the extended Langdon family from 1987 to 2019. As the children of Walter and Rosanna Langdon reach their golden years, the story focuses more on their grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they spread across the country. From Wall Street to Washington, D.C., from the family farm in Iowa to a horse ranch in California, the Langdon family is a microcosm of the American experience. This trilogy is nothing if not ambitious, covering the scope of the American experience over a century. But in this volume, I felt that Smiley was at her best when she captured small, intimate moments - moments that were about the particular thoughts and feelings of an individual who felt like family. The challenge of show more moving forward an ever-expanding cast of characters is at its most difficult in this last book of the trilogy, but I was willing to stay with Smiley on that journey simply for the enjoyment of the small intimate moments. show less

(14) This is the third novel in Smiley's trilogy of the Langdon family over the last century. Given the numerous offspring from the original Langdon Iowa farm family circa early 1918, by the time of this last book -- picks up in the late 80's -- there are a lot of offspring to keep track of. Unfortunately, on a Kindle, things like the family tree are virtually illegible. (I am still not entirely sold on e-readers for this and other picky little reasons.) I would say this mostly focuses on the favorite son, Frank Langdon's family. Especially his twin sons and their offspring and familial strife. We see the banking crisis and the Wall Street bailout through their eyes. September 11th effects the family in a personal way. And the show more Iraq/Afghanistan War spirits away Jesse's boys from carrying on with any sort of farming tradition. Or I don't know, maybe it was global warming that did that.

Very preachy about global warming - the whole last ~ 1/4 of the book seemed to focus on this. It almost bordered on histrionic. In general, this was the worst of the three books. Although I read them fairly close together, I struggled to place all the disparate characters. People's lives and deaths seemed to 'jump the shark' as they say. Frank's denouement was bad enough, but acceptable but then Michael's accident, Lois's, Guthries - really? I really had a hard time caring about all the members of the youngest generation and began to feel the novel was aimless and pointless. But I did appreciate her thoroughness in fleshing out all the characters' lives and her attention to detail.

Overall, the series was a decent read. It was better than Follet's historical fiction of the last 100 years trilogy which I have also read recently (but actually that is not saying much.) I think that this could have been done with more artistry by perhaps sticking with just one branch of the family for each novel and focusing the narrative on a few major US historical themes instead of trying to cram an entire huge family and every event of the 20th century into the trilogy. show less