'Some Luck' Gets Something Right

Reading Jane Smiley’s new novel, “Some Luck,” one becomes increasingly aware of a simple truth about time: all of history was once the present, and the present will one day be history. Of course, this is a fact one knows in theory, but to make someone truly grasp the concept and its implications is not a trivial undertaking. Textbooks teach the problems of history, but Smiley’s novel aims to convey the full extent of the past’s relationship to the present and to the future, without which one is likely to underestimate the import of today’s problems. Unfortunately, the novel’s very success in this endeavor comes at a cost: in moving through history gradually while preserving a sense of history as a whole, the narrative winds up being boring and dispassionate at times. It’s hard to say whether these faults are unavoidable, but the final product is certainly compelling and original, enough so that readers who stick with the book will be rewarded.

Smiley is the author of many well-received books, most notably the novel “A Thousand Acres,” a modern retelling of King Lear for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. As one would expect from this author, “Some Luck” is peopled with interesting and varied characters who share complex relationships. The novel’s third-person narrative has access to the minds of all the main characters, young and old, and as babies they already have unique personalities. The reader watches the characters grow up in remarkably believable ways and has the unique privilege of sometimes remembering things about a character that they don’t even recall themselves.

At the sentence level as well, the book is elegantly written. The narrator doesn’t dwell on sensory details, but what little there is packs a punch: “pale-apricot stone buildings” and leaves that “were the brightest green in the world, maybe in the universe—flat and waxy and full of themselves.” But “Some Luck” is perhaps most successful on the level of structure—this may be a case where the premise of the book surpasses its content. “Some Luck” is meant to be the first of three books in “The Last Hundred Years Trilogy” and takes the reader from 1920 to 1953. The trilogy will span a century and extend into the future, to the year 2020. The narrative follows the Langdon family through the generations, and, though many characters grow up and move away to start their own families, they retain their ties with the Langdon’s farm in Iowa.

The novel’s premise is its great strength, but it is also the source of various weaknesses. For instance, in reducing history to a series of present moments, the novel ends up progressing slowly at times. Most of the narration focuses on mundane activities like preparing meals, harvesting corn, and walking to school. Even when the story follows one of the Langdons onto the battlefields of World War II, the tone doesn’t shift from slow, methodical depictions of routine. Yes, this is an accurate representation of reality; even in war, a soldier is simply continuing to live his life, one day at a time. But accuracy and philosophy aside, the book is at times simply boring.

Another side effect of the novel’s structure is that much of the romance of time’s passing is lost. The years come and go with such a pragmatic realism that there is little room for the emotional realism fiction can provide—few waves of nostalgia or recognition of one’s own mortality—which one might expect to be par for the course in a book centered around the passing of time. This isn’t because Smiley looks down on emotion: there are moments when a character reminisces about an earlier moment in the book, and the narration appears meant to elicit nostalgia. The reason these attempts fall flat is that the novel has already committed to an accurate portrayal of the passage of time. Though the novel traverses many years, it does so slowly and continuously enough that each new moment feels like the present. And yet, the reader has at each moment, on every page, access to the whole of the story. It is in this way—by making us aware simultaneously of the present and the whole—that the book elucidates the continuity of time. But it is also for this reason that the reader isn’t as susceptible to the emotion a character feels looking back on his lifetime.

Adding to this deficit of emotion, the characters can feel distant and even difficult to connect to at times. For example, Frank, the oldest of the Langdon children, is almost as mysterious to the reader as he is to his family and friends. Smiley reveals who he hates and who he loves but doesn’t let the reader get close enough to understand why. His mother, Rosanna, looks to religion for emotional stability, but precisely how it provides solace isn’t always clear. This distance from the characters is a palpable loss, but it also makes its contribution to the novel’s cause. Because the members of the Langdon family are held at arm’s length, the reader becomes close to the family as a whole over any one of its members.

By the end of the novel, it’s hard not to want to know what happens to the next generation of Langdons. Even more exciting is the prospect of them and their children and grandchildren intersecting with 2014 and then progressing beyond it. If Smiley adheres to the rhythm she sets in “Some Luck,” history will become the present very gradually, so that the reader will hardly notice how many years the novel is traversing. This is different from the thrill of, say, reading a love letter written 50 years ago, which is titillating precisely because of the gaping stretch of time the letter bridges. Smiley’s approach to historical narrative is, rather, astonishing in its utter normality. One questions whether the novel could have painted a similar portrait of history without losing a sense of nostalgia and a personal emotional stake in the character’s lives. But insofar as the book’s flaws are a necessary consequence of this portrayal of history, ultimately it seems worth the cost.