> Orig. published 2010
> Setting: Moves from Missouri to San Francisco area, around 1905...time of San Francisco Great Earthquake
> Characters: Margaret (daughter of Lavinia, whose husband committed suicide), Andrew Early (Margaret's husband, and astronomer who is brilliant but severely lacking social skills, whose mother perished in the great earthquake), Naoko (servant girl at boarding house in which Margaret gave birth to Alexander, (Dora, Margaret's brother-in-law's sister, a reporter)
> Epigraph..."In those days all stories ended with the wedding." - Rose Wilder Lane, Old Home Town
> p.28..."She didn't know what to make of herself, truly. She might have said that for ten years (and who could remember before that?) she had repeatedly pressed on, doing and thinking what she judged to be right and natural at the time, only to be told afterward that she had done just the wrong thing. It was as if she were plowing a furrow, intent upon the ground in front of her, only to stop and look around and discover that she was in the wrong field, and, indeed, the wrong country entirely."......Margaret's sense of not being right in the world
> Lavinia's primary goal was to get her three daughters married to the right men
> p.57..."Mrs. Bell's attitude was one of grievance against Dora for, in the first place, having no feminine assets and, in the second place, making nothing of those she had."....LOL
> p.58..."It was the death of Lawrence that did him in."...LOL
> p.61..."Even so his presence had an odd effect on her--it was as if something around her, some field or edge, were impinged upon or dented by the same thing, but much more powerful around him. It was a relief he was sitting across the room."...Margaret's impression of Andrew before he proposed
> p.114..."But even the longest book, she now understood, was the merest reduction of any experience, or any life."
> p.125..." It was as if he were a dye and she were white wool. Looking at him and holding him dyed her through and through."...Margaret's love for her first child, Alexander
> p.144..."Their lives were mostly private now, lived side by side as necessary, but whatever there had been for them both--in the earthquake or the moon book or their hopes for Alexander--had dissipated the way certain qualities of light did."
> p.203..."Just then, she saw Andrew as the world saw him, and she did it all at once, as if he had turned into a brick and fallen into her lap--who he was was that solid and permanent for her--he was a fool."
> p.214..."Through the years no one had said what she now thought, which was that marriage was relentless, and terrifying,m and no wonder that when her father died her mother had risen from her bed and gone to work."
> p.233..."She thought of her mother and Mrs. Early. The one so busy, the other so elegant. They had known what marriage was like. They had known what ANDREW was like. That they had colluded in bringing this very moment about made her tremble with something unspeakable."
> p.248..."She could describe this feeling she had,m that her marriage had become an intolerable torture, that the sight of his head ducking slightly as he went through doorways of the new house was repellent to her, that she felt warm, humid air press against her when he entered the room, that his voice made her want to scream, that she thought he was a fool and even a madman, and that she was going mad herself, that, from the outside, every marriage looked as bad to her, because she knew every house she passed was a claustrophobic cell where at least one of the partners never learned anything, but did the same things over and over, like an infernal machine, and the other partner had no recourse of any kind, no way out, no one to talk to about it, not even any way to look at it all that gave any relief."
> LibraryThing Review: I think that Jane Smiley has a true gift in her ability to take a commonly understood concept and weave it into a meaningful story. "Private Life" concerns itself with the private life of a married couple, the private side that no one can see from the outside looking in. It isn't necessarily a pretty picture, but it is very real for many people. What do couples accept about one another, what do they regret, what makes them furious, and most importantly, what makes them stay? These are some of the issues addressed in this story of a brilliant/crazy man and his wife whose mother was relieved to "finally" marry her off at the spinsterly age of 27, around 1900. The couple weathers two world wars and their own relationship.....tough to call on which is more difficult! This is the best Smiley novel I have read since "A Thousand Acres".
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