The Age of Grief

I am on a short story kick lately, and Smiley fed my addiction perfectly. The collection has five shorts and the novella that gives the book its title. One thing that is immediately clear is Smiley is extremely apt in creating different voices. Some short story writers prefer third-person narration and thus tend to have the same narration voice throughout their stories (for example, Carver). Smiley writes (in this collection) mostly in first-person and with incredible agility, creates characters, points of view, and narration styles that are very diverse. This, in addition to her mastery of the everyday words, makes the collection stand out.

There is a wide range of emotion and personal exploration in the stories, too. Perhaps the show more craziest of the stories is "Jeffrey, Believe Me," which is about a woman who is willing to go a bit further than most to get pregnant. "Dynamite" is strangely tense as the ex-anarchist narrator describes her now-sedate life in the country. "The Pleasure of Her Company" and "Lily" are narrated by the third wheel, a woman who witnesses the relationship of a couple. "Long Distance" is the most "American" of the stories, though it pivots around the relationship of an American man with a Japanese woman we never meet. And "The Age of Grief," which seems like the masterpiece in the collection, vibrates with mourning loss during the time of possession, but I wold argue that it only seems that way due to the fact that a novella allows for more space to create depth or character and situation.

Recommended for those who enjoy reading about other people's lives. Also, recommended for those who like LGBT/queer content in literature not marketed for a specific audience as such. Lastly, recommended for those who love or hate dentists, fertilizer plants, driving in snow storms, remodeling, and toddlers. show less

i really like the way jane smiley writes. i didn't connect with each of these stories individually, but i am impressed with the breadth of tone and voice in them, how different each is, even while all being about how people relate to each other and/or themselves. it's actually hard for me to even remember any of the short stories because the book ends with the 100 page novella that gives the collection its name, and i *loved* the voice in this piece so much. i didn't love the entire story (there's a middle part that i didn't much care for, although i understand why she did it) but can't say enough about how much i enjoyed the writing and voice in this last one (the age of grief).

she is a very, very good writer and i'll be glad to read show more her again.

oh, and as much as i enjoyed the novella, (i mean look at the writing below!) i wanted to read a separate novella about this guy, from the age of grief:

"Dentists on television never have people coming in like the man who came to me today. His teeth were hurting him over the weekend, and so he went out to his toolbox and found a pliers and began to pull them out, with only some whiskey to kill the pain. Pulling teeth takes a lot of strength and a certain finesse, one of which the man had and the other of which he lacked. What drove him into my office today, after fifteen years away from the dentist, was twenty-four broken teeth, some in fragments below the gum line, some merely smashed around the crown. Teeth are important. Eskimo cultures used to abandon their old folks in the snow when their teeth went, no matter how good their health was otherwise. People in our culture have a lot of privileges. One of them is having no teeth." show less

This would have been just a 3-star read for me if not for the eponymous novella that closes out the collection. It's the story of an ordinary man and his love for his family, including his wife whom he believes to be cheating on him. There is a section where the family deals with the flu that was just wonderful - funny and sad and heart-stirring.

The rest of the collection is composed of fairly slight short stories that were fine but didn't do much for me. Smiley's writing is excellent, of course, but the stories were not compelling to me.

Notes: Read for the American Author Challenge.

An uneven collection of short stories and a longer piece, ultimately worth reading for the strength of the novella that gives the book its title. The wonder is that Smiley skillfully uses a variety of narrative voices both male and female in this collection, from a fugitive radical from the Sixties to a gentle and contemplative dentist confronted against his will with evidence of his beloved wife's infidelity. Some of the stories ("Long Distance") are so slight as to be barely there, while others ("The Pleasure of Her Company") so exquisitely detail the emotional life of the protagonist as to be almost painful to read. Overall, recommended.

Me gustó más de lo que esperaba y me sorprendió.
Se lee fácilmente, pero no por eso es menos compleja y profunda.
La voz narrativa es tal vez su mejor atributo y lo que más disfruté: la de el personaje principal, un papá contemporáneo que decidió se un “padre involucrado” llamado Dave. Tiene 35 años. Es dentista, está casado, tienen muy buen nivel económico y 3 hermosas hijas.
Dave está convencido de que su esposa (Dana) está enamorada de otro hombre y decide evitar que ella sepa que él sabe porque considera que así salvará su matrimonio.
Se convierte en un una narración que retrata el matrimonio, la convivencia familiar y la crianza desde los ojos y acciones del hombre y con personajes muy bien definidos.
Como show more cereza del pastel, la portada es hermosa.

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“Tengo la impresión de que el matrimonio es un pequeño contenedor en el que a penas caben unos pocos hijos. Dos visas interiores, dos seres reflexivos, de la complejidad que sea, qué brotan de él, una y otra vez, rompiéndolo...”
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“Siempre he creído que un hombre que tiene una esposa y amante lo tiene todo, pero una mujer con un marido y un amante... no da abasto. ¿De dónde saca el tiempo para el amante?”
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“Y ahora la gripe. (...) La gente sin hijos no puede imaginar siquiera hasta qué punto estas enfermedades te ponen a prueba.” show less

The first half of this slim volume is comprised of short stories. The second -- and I think, best -- half is a long short-story (or novella), "The Age of Grief." This short, powerful and tenderly rendered story about the precarious nature of marriage carries the book. Jane Smiley is a masterful writer of character and nuance.

The subject matter of the title novella is tedious, although Jane Smiley's usual artful observations salvage it to some extent. My major criticism, though, is that these could not be the musings of a man! I kept thinking I was hearing Jane Smiley working through her own marital experiences.
The short stories were engaging and intriguing - ideal for consumption on train journeys.