Private life

The latest novel by Jane Smiley, Private life, describes the lifetime of one woman, a very private life indeed but it occurs over 70 years of public and significant events in American history including the 1905 San Francisco earthquake, the Great War, the Spanish flu epidemic and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. What unfolds against this panarama of history is Margaret's internal struggle to understand herself and her relationships with those around her. In conversation with Kim Hill, Jane Smiley admitted that she set out to write an interesting story and used an eccentric character from her own family as a basis for Captain Andrew Jefferson Early. Posing the question "how does a normal person keep up with abnormality around them" Jane Smiley suggested the book could be seen as a parable for modern American society. I think what she has brilliantly achieved is a distillation of the many threads, forces and coincidences that shaped the life of Margaret and her sad marriage, into a symbolic study of selflessness.

Jane Smiley's book contains several other effective character studies; a Japanese midwife, an elusive male friend and the very independent Dora, a journalist who becomes a European war correspondent in 1916. Another novel worth reading with a female war correspondent, this time during the Second World War, is the Postmistress by Sarah Blake; also a study in the personal versus the political and how people cope in difficult situations.