Word: smileyness
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What on earth could have inspired Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning (not to mention New York Times best-selling) author, to begin her latest work with such a verbose, grammatically-clumsy sentence? An attempted strive for originality in the increasingly-formulaic world of American literature? A desire to jump to the opposite end of the writing spectrum--or, in this case, to an entirely different dimension--than that of her last piece Moo, about a corrupt university? Most importantly, does Smiley's new take on an old-fashioned technique of writing work...
...time one reads the last page of Smiley's latest, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, all of these questions remain unanswered--except for the last one. The idea of anyone writing a picaresque novel about a bold, "plain-looking," young woman settling in Kansas Territory with her abolitionist husband during the 1850s, sounds like a difficult sell, even for an extremely popular author...
Fortunately, with Lidie, Smiley proves once again that she can jump through genres with the blink of a metaphorical eye and leaves the `repetitive subject matter' label with the likes of John Grisham and Danielle Steele. She takes the astoundingly courageous story of one pioneer woman, mixes it with a potentially-dry `olde-tyme' writing style and comes up with a tale that takes a few pages to get into, but that takes great effort...
...While Smiley's straightforward style may not be the best method of recounting the almost overwhelming challenges that Lidie faces (both physically and mentally), it keeps the book feeling genuine, and never once lets it digress into a cheap Western adventure-romance dime novel. The author relies a bit too heavily on powers of description, with enormous paragraphs dedicated to describing the finery (or lack thereof) around the heroine. But then again, such descriptions keep the authenticity of the book alive...
...breaking away from the modern-day Midwestern world with A Thousand Acres and Moo, Jane Smiley has gambled--and won. The title character of The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is much more than Laura Ingalls Wilder all grown up. Lidie confidently balances wonder and practicality to make herself, if not the most memorable literary heroine in recent times, than definitely an enjoyable one. "No one could describe what was true in Kansas or Missouri," she contemplates as she concludes her story. But with good old-fashioned honesty and a surprisingly plucky star, Jane Smiley manages...