Private Life

When Margaret narrowly escapes spinster status and weds Andrew, her mother reminds her she must obey her husband for only the first year of marriage. If only Margaret had heeded her mother's advice and not yielded to her self-centered husband for so long--her life might have inspired a livelier novel. Kate Reading does her best with this laborious story, which spans the turn of the twentieth century. At times, she herself seems worn down by the slow pace and voices Margaret in dull tones. Smiley, who is usually unparalleled, seems unable to light the spark that would drive this narrative. Rather than a riveting audiobook, PRIVATE LIFE is a mildly diverting listen. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

January 25, 2010
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Thousand Acres
delivers a slow-moving historical antiromance in her bleak 13th novel. In the early 1880s, Margaret Mayfield is rescued from old maid status by Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early, an astronomer whose questionable discoveries have taken him from the scientific elite to a position as a glorified timekeeper at a remote California naval base. Margaret’s world is made ever smaller as the novel progresses, with no children to distract her and Andrew more excited by his telescope than his wife. Isolation and boredom being two dominant themes, the book is a slow burn, punctuated by detours into the larger world: the Wobblies, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and both world wars. The old-fashioned language can be off-putting, though it does make the reader feel like a reluctant second wife to Andrew as his failed scientific theories are revealed in tedious detail and the gruesome monotony of marriage is portrayed in a repellant but fascinating fashion. Thus, when Margaret finally realizes her marriage is “relentless, and terrifying,” it feels wonderfully satisfying, but the proceeding 100 pages offer a trickle of disappointment and a slackening of suspense that saps hard-earned goodwill.