Showing results by author "Jane Smiley" in All Categories

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.

Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive - a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.

Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse?

True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner - a woman brand new to the riding stable - was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue, how are you?" he whinnies back. But sometimes True Blue seems... spooked. He paces, and always seems to be looking for something.

Oscar-winning writer-director Max, whose star is clearly beginning to dim, wakes up the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards lying next to his lover and feeling understandably groggy from the previous evening's festivities. But this is no time for Max to lounge about and chat his way idly through a hangover. There's a houseful of guests to worry about, and they all need attention.

When eighth grader Abby Lovitt looks out at those pure-gold rolling hills, she knows there's no place she'd rather be than her family's ranch - even with all the hard work of tending to nine horses. But some chores are no work at all, like grooming young Jack. At eight months, his rough foal coat has shed out, leaving a smooth, rich silk, like chocolate. As for Black George, such a good horse, it turns out he's a natural jumper.

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.

Of Charles Dickens, Jane Smiley says that "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels". Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic, and lionized.

Gee Whiz is a striking horse, and only part of that is because of his size. He is tall, but also graceful, yet his strides big but precise. At the same time, he keeps his eye on things, not as if he's suspicious, but as if he's curious. When Abby is confronted with an onslaught of reminders of just how little of the world she has seen, she finds herself connecting with Gee Whiz's calm and curious nature, and his desire to know more.

In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a lonely, single woman befriends the married couple next door, hoping to learn the secret of their happiness. In "Long Distance," a man finds himself relieved of the obligation to continue an affair that is no longer compelling to him, only to be waylaid by the guilt he feels at his easy escape. And in the incandescently wise and moving title novella, a dentist, aware that his wife has fallen in love with someone else, must comfort her when she is spurned....

Now the Congress of Animals is in control, unforgiving, and debating the fate of the planet’s most reviled species. The popular ruling: Exterminate humankind without exception. But a curious mare, coming of age, is making a case for a seemingly gentle person she longs to save - a wish for mercy that could once again unbalance the new and righteous nature of the world.

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.

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.