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Some Luck - Jane Smiley
Some Luck
by: (author)
National Book Award Nominee A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, The Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage 1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank, into their family... show more
National Book Award Nominee A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, The Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage 1920, Denby, Iowa: Rosanna and Walter Langdon have just welcomed their firstborn son, Frank, into their family farm. He will be the oldest of five.         Each chapter in this extraordinary novel covers a single year, encompassing the sweep of history as the Langdons abide by time-honored values and pass them on to their children. With the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change through the early 1950s, we watch as the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis. Later still, a girl we’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own.           The first volume of an epic trilogy from a beloved writer at the height of her powers, Some Luck starts us on a literary adventure through cycles of birth and death, passion and betrayal that will span a century in America.
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Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780307744807 (0307744809)
ASIN: 0307744809
Publisher: Anchor
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Reflections
Reflections rated it
4.5 A family saga that opens in the farm fields of Iowa
Some Luck opens during the flapper era jazz age, but the young Langdon family spends their time in the farm fields of Iowa, not the speakeasies of Chicago or salons of Paris. The first of Jane Smiley’s family saga trilogy, there’s one chapter for each year from 1920 to 1953, taking the story through...
Just Olga and her books
Just Olga and her books rated it
5.0 Some Luck: A novel
Some Luck by Jane Smiley. A novel about the things that really make life what it is.There is something very attractive about settling down to read the story of a family and getting to know them for a lengthy period of time, as if they were family friends. In the case of Last Hundred Years Trilogy, o...
Thewanderingjew
Thewanderingjew rated it
3.0 This first book in the series leaves you wondering what will come in the second!
This book, the first in a series of three, covers the time period from 1920-1953, but it relates facts from earlier in the century when ancestors of the Langdon family are introduced into the storyline. Because the story goes forward for more than three decades, many major, traumatic events of the 2...
Bookivorous
Bookivorous rated it
3.5 Can Jane 'Pulitzer Prize' Smiley pull off another blinder? Jury is still out
Title Some Luck Who wrote it? Jane Smiley, Pulitzer prizewinner and all round literary heavy weight. More at Knopf's author page. Plot in a Box Man and woman marry and settle on an Iowa farm in 1920. They have kids. The kids grow up. America changes. Invent a new title for this book Li...
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