検索キーワード： 著者 "Jane Smiley" すべてのカテゴリー

Everyone has keys to Susan's New York apartment: all her friends, and friends of friends. So one afternoon, when Alice unlocks Susan's door to water the plants, she isn't surprised to find two men sitting in the living room. That they are both dead is a shock, however.

Kate Karlson's only focus in life is her Midwestern horse farm. Ignoring her husband, she spends long days giving riding lessons and training horses. To showcase her teaching ability, she enters her three sons and daughter in all the equestrian shows. But when her family dares to thwart her interests, the results bring tragedy and devastation.

While her 77-year-old husband lies upstairs, dying, Anna Robison spends her depleting energy defending their home. Their three middle-aged daughters and 23-year-old granddaughter have invaded, radiating vigor and good intentions. But the younger women temper their help with squabbling, ill-considered advice, and an abundant supply of their own problems.

Early Warning opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between.

Why don’t we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we know those of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he never patented his computing machine, and because the developers of the far-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas from him. Jane Smiley tells the quintessentially American story of John Atanasoff with technical clarity and narrative drive, making the race to develop digital computing as gripping as a real-life techno-thriller.

Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post–Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He’s the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomer—a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret’s mother calls the match “a piece of luck.”

Hace ahora justo veinte años, los Kinsella eran, en apariencia, una familia idílica y feliz. De un día para otro, el marido de Rachel vendió sin avisarle la casa en la que vivían y se llevó a los cinco niños al extranjero. Ella tardó un año en volver a verlos, y su pánico era tan intenso que se tambaleaba por la acera a medida que se acercaba a su encuentro.

Bob Miller ha creado el paraíso con el que siempre soñó: una granja en lo alto de un valle, a cinco kilómetros del pueblo más cercano, donde él y su esposa Liz viven y crían a su hijo de siete años, Tommy, cultivando su propia comida, hilando y tejiendo su ropa, fabricando sus propios muebles. Él mismo construyó la casa en la que habitan, sin teléfono ni televisor, sin automóvil, sin más conexión cotidiana con el mundo exterior que los viajes diarios de Tommy a la escuela. Allí viven, piensa Bob, y allí vivirán siempre.

"Nunca más volveré a ser feliz", musita Dana en el asiento trasero del coche familiar, sin reparar en que piensa en voz alta. Al oírlo, Dave, su marido, siente que ambos están a punto de perder todo aquello que una vez desearon: sus años de apacible matrimonio, tres hijas, la próspera clínica dental que comparten. Ahora Dave está convencido de que Dana se ha enamorado de otro hombre y, de manera inesperada, decide que la mejor manera de salvar su relación es evitar que su esposa descubra que él lo sabe.

Jane Smiley has long been acclaimed as one of America’s preeminent novelists. Less known is her nonfiction, her steady and penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. Her approach is both enthusiastic and meticulous, always quick to dive beneath surface-level interpretations of authors and their work. This volume of nonfiction begins with a personal introduction that traces Smiley’s migration from Missouri to California a quarter-century ago.