Biography
Jane Graves Smiley was born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angeles, CA, the only child of James and Frances Smiley.
At age four her parents divorced, and while growing up she rarely saw her father, who suffered from mental illness. Smiley's mother, a newspaper journalist, moved with her daughter to St. Louis, Missouri, where her parents lived.
According to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Neil Nakadate, the soon-to-be writer "had frequent contact with the families of her mother's siblings, Jane, Ruth, and David, enjoying the secure environment of this large, close extended family, all of whom were storytellers. Smiley has said that the first 'novel' she ever knew was her family."
Smiley is known for her lyrical works that center on families in pastoral settings.
Biography
During adolescence Smiley became an avid reader and student of history, citing John H. Storer's The Web of Life, a First Book of Ecology, as a particularly strong influence due to its discussions regarding the interconnectedness of life on Earth.
In 1967 she enrolled at Vassar College, where she earned a B. A. in 1971. During this time she married her first husband, John B. Whiston; the pair lived in a Connecticut commune.
After graduation, Smiley and her husband moved to Iowa City, where she pursued a master's degree in English. "In a rented farmhouse outside of Iowa City, Smiley and Whiston lived a version of back-to-the-land existence," Nakadate commented, adding that the author's "experiences during this period contributed significantly to her fiction writing."
Smiley earned her M. A. in 1975, an M.F.A. in 1976, and a Ph.D. in 1978, all from the University of Iowa. She then began publishing short fiction in journals, and also completed a pair of novels.
From 1981 to 1996 she was a professor of English at Iowa State University and subsequently turned to writing full-time.
Biography
She divorced John Whiston in 1975, and subsequently married William Silag (an editor) in May 1978.
They divorced in February, 1986, and she married Stephen M. Mortensen (a screenwriter) in July 1987; that marriage ended in 1997.
She has 3 children:
Phoebe Graves Silag, Lucy Gallagher Silag from her second marriage,
And Axel James Mortensen from her third.
Currently, (I think) she is married to Jack Canning. They have three dogs, Frida, Fallon, and Abby Rose.
Biography
Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won an O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily," published in The Atlantic Monthly.
Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has participated in the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Cheltenham Festival, the National Book Festival, the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, and many others.
She won the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, and chaired the judges' panel for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
The themes of family life that have characterized Smiley's body of work were present in her first work of long fiction, Barn Blind, a "pastoral novel of smooth texture and—like the Middle Western summer in which it is set—rich, drowsy pace," as Michael Malone described it in the New York Times Book Review.
The story revolves around Kate Karlson, a rancher's wife, and Kate's strained relationships with her four teenaged children.
"Smiley handles with skill and understanding the mercurial molasses of adolescence, and the inchoate, cumbersome love that family members feel for one another," Malone noted.
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
In At Paradise Gate Smiley looks again at conflict between family members. In this story, elderly Anna Robinson faces the imminent death of her husband, Ike. The couple have had a rough marriage; Ike is an emotionally cold and violent person. When Anna's three daughters arrive to visit their dying father, old sibling rivalries are revived, tensions between the parents are renewed, and Anna must confront the failures and triumphs of her life.
According to New York Times Book Review contributor Valerie Miner, the novel's storyline "is not so much about Ike's death as about Anna's life—a retrospective on her difficult past and a resolution of her remaining years."
At Paradise Gate, Susan Wood maintained in a review for the Washington Post, "is a sensitive study of what it means to grow old and face death, and of the courage to see clearly what one's life has meant."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
Smiley experiments with genre fiction in Duplicate Keys, a mystery novel set in Manhattan, but the plot is undergirded by a complex network of family relationships.
Lois Gould, writing in the New York Times Book Review, found the novel to be only incidentally a mystery. "More important and far more compelling," Gould noted, "is the anatomy of friendship, betrayal, the color of dusk on the Upper West Side, the aroma of lilacs in Brooklyn's Botanic Garden, of chocolate tortes at Zabar's, and the bittersweet smell of near success that is perhaps the most pungent odor in town."
Laura Marcus, reviewing Duplicate Keys for the Times Literary Supplement, called the book a story about "marriages, affairs, friendships, growing up and growing older . . . . Smiley demonstrates a considerable sensitivity in the treatment of love and friendship."
Alice Cromie, in the Chicago Tribune Books, dubbed the work "a sophisticated story of friendships, loves, jealousies, drugs, celebrities and life in the fastest lane in Manhattan."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
In addition to fiction, Smiley has penned shorter works, the first of which were published in 1987 's The Age of Grief. A collection of five stories and a novella, the book focuses on the joys and sorrows of married life.
Reviewing the work for the Chicago Tribune, John Blades noted that Smiley writes "confidently and affectingly [about] the delicate mechanics of marriage and family life, the intricate mysteries of love." The title novella, according to Kaufman, "is a haunting view of a marriage from the inside, a tale told by a betrayed husband full of humor and sadness and sound and quiet fury."
Michiko Kakutani, writing in the New York Times, observed that "The Age of Grief" expands "organically, from a comic portrait . . . into a lovely and very sad meditation on the evanescence and durability of love.
"Speaking of the book as a whole, Roz Kaveney noted in the Times Literary Supplement that "one of the major strengths of this quiet and unflashy collection . . . is that . . . events are entirely in keeping with her strong vein of social realism, but they have too a quality of the unpredictable, a quality which gives an uninsistent but pervasive sense of the pain and surprise which lie beneath even the most conventional of lives."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
In 1988 Smiley published The Greenlanders, a "sprawling, multi-generational, heroic Norse narrative," according to Richard Panek in Chicago's Tribune Books. At 500 pages, the historical novel set in fourteenth-century Greenland took Smiley five years to research and write.
Based on Viking sagas, surviving accounts of the colonies the Vikings established in Greenland, Smiley blends fact and fiction to create a modern novel with a traditional flavor.
It has a "folkloristic" modem—with its stories overlapping other stories, folded into yet others." This technique presents "more than an individual's story. It is the community's story, the land's." "The result," Panek wrote, "is a novel that places contemporary conflicts into the context of the ages."
Within her examination of cultural disconnect, Smiley weaves her characteristic themes involving family relations. "Family matters, . . . " Yolen stated, [it is] "both the focus and the subtext of the novel: the feuds, the curses, the marriages, the passions and the brutal deaths." The novel is complex and Smiley is able to "telescope certain incidents, unravel personalities in a few paragraphs, [and] delve into a kind of folkloric metaphysics."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
A Thousand Acres is a subtle account of a family's disintegration that plays out against a painstakingly detailed backdrop: Midwestern American farm life during the unsettled economy of the early 1980s, a time when many family farms were lost during a wave of bank foreclosures.
Despite this less-than-epic setting, the Washington Post noted that Smiley's novel "has all the stark brutality, if not the poetic grandeur, of a Shakespearean tragedy."
The correlation to Shakespeare is no accident; A Thousand Acres is a deliberate recasting of King Lear. "Her feminist re-writing of Shakespeare's plot replaces the incomprehensibly malign sisters with real women who have suffered incomprehensible malignity," noted the Times Literary Supplement. "In giving Goneril a voice, Smiley joins the distinguished line of women's writers who have written new parts for Shakespeare's women."
As the Cook family saga unfolds, Smiley gently yet skillfully reveals her feminist and environmentalist sympathies. "In A Thousand Acres, men's dominance of women takes a violent turn, and incest becomes an undercurrent in the novel," wrote Martha Duffy in Time. "The magic is that it deals so effectively with both the author's scholarship and her dead-serious social concerns."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
In Moo, Smiley pokes some fun at campus life, which she explores at the fictitious Midwestern agricultural college, nicknamed Moo U. While Los Angeles Times Book Review commented that Smiley wields "considerable wit" and "provocative intelligence," it also faulted the novel for being "a playful takeoff on too many things, all crowded together and happening at once."
In contrast, the New York Review of Books found Moo to be a social comedy similar to those of Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope. "Smiley subverts satire," Schine added, "making it sweeter and ultimately more pointed.
A reviewer for Publishers Weekly offered praise for the work, writing that in Moo "Smiley delivers a surprising tour de force, a satire of university life that leaves no aspect of contemporary academia unscathed."
Joanne Wilkinson sounded a similar positive note in her review for Booklist, writing that "Smiley's great gift here is the way she gently skewers any number of easily recognizable campus fixtures . . . while never failing to show their humanity."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
Following Moo, Smiley returned to historical fiction with The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, 1998. Smiley explained that the novel "takes place in the mid-1850s, mostly in Kansas and Missouri. It's about a tall, plain woman without any prospects, and a man, associated with an abolitionist group from New England, who passes through Lidie's town in Illinois. "Lidie and this man, Thomas, fall in love, marry, and settle in Kansas. There Lidie must confront primitive frontier living conditions, conflicts about free labor versus slavery, and the "worst winter in a hundred years."
"I once read that every 19th-century American novel was actually a romance," Smiley said, "so I wanted to write a romance, a story in which the protagonist sets out on a journey and sees many amazing things."
Smiley drew inspiration for her work from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton is "believable period fiction," that explores both "the bloody conflict over slavery and the simultaneous awakening of the feminist movement within the parameters of a love story."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
In Horse Heaven Smiley explores the contemporary world of thoroughbred horse racing at tracks throughout the world from 1997 to 1999. Trainers, jockeys, owners, gamblers, an animal communicator, horse fanciers, and assorted racetrack hangers-on share center stage, exploring their own lives and others through love affairs, business dealings, friendships, and betrayals.
Yet as Paula Chin noted in People, "it is the hearts of the magnificent thoroughbreds that Smiley describes most movingly." Barich offered a similar assessment, commenting, "What's remarkable about Smiley's handling of horses as characters is that she manages to bring it off at all—and more, she does it brilliantly."
Among Smiley's four-legged protagonists are the savage stallion Epic Steam, the delicate and insecure Froney's Sis, the aging Mr. T., and the five-year-old gelding Justa Bob, the last characterized by Barich as a "joker at heart."
Publications—from encyclopedia.com
Returning to the same decade in which she set A Thousand Acres is Smiley's Good Faith. Joe Stratford, a successful but modest realtor in rural New Jersey, crosses paths with Marcus Burns, a shady and manipulative former employee of the IRS. Burns convinces Stratford and his partner, Gordon Baldwin, to invest in and develop a new property, the fabulous estate of Salt Key Farm.
"The suspense in the novel doesn't lie in our uncovering Marcus's villainy or in waiting for the real estate speculation to explode," noted Paul Evans in Book. "He's patently a slickster, and the deal screams danger. Rather, what's intriguing is the good faith that Joey and Gordon first lavish upon the suspicious stranger—trust bred of equal parts backwater naivete and starry-eyed optimism—and our witnessing that good faith erode."
One reviewer concluded that Smiley "knows something about land and the many ways it accrues value, sometimes just in the imagination. Her book is a wise comic tale about the ways in which money makes more substantial things—land, love, friendship—dematerialize." Another praised the novel as "a clever and entertaining cautionary tale" that casts a humorous light on America's recent cultural past, while also echoing the author's characteristic focus on the fragile balance within human relationships.
Publications—Novels
Barn Blind (1980)—focuses on the relationships between a mother and her children
At Paradise Gate (1981)
Duplicate Keys (1984)—mystery novel
The Greenlanders (1988)—a sweeping epic centered on the Gunnarssons, a 14th-century family
A Thousand Acres (1991) Pulitzer Prize. Modeled on Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear, it focuses on the Cook family and farm life in Iowa in the 1980s
Moo (1995)—a satire on academia
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (1998)
Horse Heaven (2000)
Good Faith (2003)
Ten Days in the Hills (2007)—a reworking of Boccaccio’s Decameron set in Hollywood
Private Life (2010)—examines a woman’s loveless marriage and interior life
Publications—Novels
Some Luck (2014)—first book in an epic trilogy, it covers 33 years in the history of the Langdons, a farming family. Early Warning and Golden Age (both 2015), the second and third volumes in this expansive narrative about subsequent generations of the Langdon clan.
Early Warning (April, 2015)
Golden Age (October 20, 2015)
Perestroika in Paris (2020)
A Dangerous Business (2022)—Set during the California Gold Rush, this novel follows two prostitutes who, inspired by Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” hunt for a serial killer.
Publications
She has also written two short story collections, five non-fiction works and several books for young adults
While Smiley captures the subtleties of human interaction, such subtleties help to illustrate more expansive themes, such as loss and recovery. According to Thom Conroy, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Smiley's stories are inherently moral. If her characters continue to plumb the depths of the human heart for understanding, it is because Smiley believes enduring truth can never be found anywhere else. They must face the consequences of their own familial histories, but through this path they come to a new understanding, both of themselves and of their place in the community at large."
Smiley also exhibits what Jane Yolen, writing in the Washington Post, described as "spare, yet lyric" prose, the mark of "a true storyteller." Within her stories, while rock-solid family traditions may appear to survive a crisis intact, by story's end readers aware that those traditions have actually undergone a seismic shift; all is, perhaps, not what it seems on the placid surface. As Joanne Kaufman remarked in People, Smiley "has an unerring, unsettling ability to capture the rhythms of family life gone askew."
Publications—other
Short story collections
The Age of Grief (1987)
Ordinary Love & Good Will (1989)
Non-fiction books
Catskill Crafts (1988)
Charles Dickens (2003)—a biography
A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck (2004)—memoir of her years as a racehorse owner
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005)-- highly personal study of the form and function of the novel, a non-fiction meditation on the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel.
The Man Who Invented the Computer (2010)
Publications—other
Young adult novels
The Georges and the Jewels (2009)
A Good Horse (2010)
True Blue (2011)
Pie in the Sky (2012)
Gee Whiz (2013)
Riding Lessons (2018)
Saddles and Secrets (2019)
Taking the Reins (2020)
Cast of characters
Madame Eveline de Mornay, grandmama, and Etienne, her grandson, who live on Rue Marimoni.
Madame Éveline de Mornay was not yet a hundred, but if she lived for three more years (and one month), she would be.
Her grandfather had come from Domme, a lovely hill town on the banks of the Dordogne, a place Madame had loved to visit. He had come on one of the first rail lines, built during the Second Empire. He had made a great deal of money in soap and creamy lotions scented with lavender and verbena, then bought this house abutting the Champ de Mars, not far from the École Militaire.
Éveline’s father had been killed in the First World War—she was three years old at the time and didn’t remember him.
Her husband and her brother had been killed in the Second World War.
Cast of characters
Madame Eveline de Mornay, grandmama and Etienne, her grandson, who live on Rue Marimoni.
Her son had died in Algeria, and her grandson and his wife had died in an automobile crash on the Périphérique.
She now had this one child left—his name was Étienne. He was eight years old, almost exactly the same age as this twenty-first century, a century that Madame had never expected to see. With each death, Éveline had closed a room or two in the large house she lived in, and now she and Étienne made use only of the cuisine, the dining room, her father’s old study, which she used as a bedroom, and the small library, which now belonged to Étienne.
Cast of characters
Madame Eveline de Mornay, grandmama and Etienne, grandson, who live on Rue Marimoni.
Étienne had taught himself to read—there were books not only in his room, but all over great-grandmama’s house—and after that, he had taught himself to count, to add, to subtract, to multiply, and to divide.
Others might have said he was dangerously isolated, but he was used to it, was leery of other children. What his great-grandmama told him of the outside world didn’t make him want to go out there, and he thought that if he could learn to do these things on his own, there was no reason to make himself known to the other children or at the school.
But sometimes he did feel lonely. For a while, he’d enjoyed the company of a neighborhood cat, but the cat had vanished. After that, he’d left crumbs for a pair of pigeons on the sill of his window, but the pigeons remained shy.
He’d been watching Frida now for two weeks, and he knew for certain that she lived beside the pond to the north of the Tour, and that a horse lived there, too.
Cast of characters
Madame Eveline de Mornay, grandmama and Etienne, grandson, who live on Rue Marimoni.
Just before she dies:
She thought of her husband, that dapper heartthrob, her mother and her brother, her son, and her grandson and his wife, Étienne’s parents, and she hoped some idea would come to her. No one had ever suggested that death was voluntary, unless you counted heading off to war a voluntary act, which it sometimes is and sometimes is not.
Her father had died a commandant, which meant that, if he had not embraced that war, he had embraced his duty therein. Her husband had sent Madame and their son to Domme during the second war, then fought with the Resistance, died in a bombing raid upon Lyon, killed, ironically, by his own allies.
And then her son had gone to Oran as a representative of de Gaulle. He had intended to stay eight days and had been killed by a ricocheting bullet on the second day; her grandson was a year old at the time. Her grandson had used his portion of the family money to live in Alaska, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Australia, Kuala Lumpur—anywhere that was not like Paris. Perhaps he had married, perhaps not.
Cast of characters
Madame Eveline de Mornay, grandmama and Etienne, grandson, who live on Rue Marimoni.
He returned home with a lovely girl from Dublin, twenty-five years old to his forty-four. The three of them had lived well enough in the house—Madame kept to herself on the ground floor; André and Irene ranged through the upper stories. André made big plans to renovate the whole place, to return it to its former undusty glory. His friends showed up, of all types, speaking all sorts of languages, but Madame was already fairly deaf by that time, and could make out very little. Irene’s French was good.
Though her accent puzzled Madame, she’d liked the girl, the girl who was driving the night they were killed, the girl who got confused and entered the Périphérique going the wrong direction. Étienne was two and a half.
Madame did not know if he remembered his parents—and if she were to ask now, she would not be able to hear his reply. She did not remember her own father. It was their fate as a family, perhaps, or merely luck, merely a part of being French in the twentieth century, when wars came and went like terrifying, unstoppable tempests.
Cast of characters
Frida: dog, Germain pointer
Could a dog with lots of bills leave Paris altogether and go back where she came from—back to the place Frida did remember, but not well, where there were plenty of trees and huge fields to run in, where there were pheasants and geese and partridge and deer, animals that were beautiful and inspiring and difficult to stalk? She hadn’t stalked any of them, because she was only a puppy, but her mother, and then the other dogs she knew as she got older, had talked all the time about ways to approach, how to go undetected, avoiding anything that would make a noise, like a fallen leaf or a twig.
She had belonged with Jacques who treated her well, taught her how to deal with humans and other animals, just as she taught him about dogs.
Cast of characters
Raoul: corvus-corax: a raven. Imelda has been his mate
Ravens were an argumentative lot, and Raoul had had his fill of it. Perhaps the other ravens didn’t know that he had a mate, Imelda, who was almost as old as he was. The two of them had plenty of offspring, so many that they had parted amicably when she had indicated to him that she was tired of reproducing, and also of listening to what she called his never-ending observations.
By the end of the novel, Raoul made himself an excellent nest in the fork of a chestnut tree not far from the training track.
Kurt: the rat who lives in the house; Conrad is his father, a sceptic about the human world,
But by the end of the novel Kurt has found Noelle, "an agile black rat, a month or so older than he was, whom Assassin had never been able to catch. Their first litter had three pups, two females and a male."
Cast of characters
Sid: a mallard duck, and his mate Nancy
Ravens, in Sid’s experience, lived off the efforts of others and considered themselves very smart. He pondered screaming at the raven, too, but he suspected that the raven would ignore him, or perhaps get some other ravens and mob him. That would not be a pleasant experience. Sid decided to keep his trap shut. Nancy, he could see, was relieved.
Sid was a bossy one, but Nancy quacked that she could not complain, and she had never closed herself off to him, as some ducks did, not only to interlopers, but to their own mates.
He was a good provider, and a duck had to be fat, because the ducklings would slim her down to nothing if she didn’t take care of herself ahead of laying time. And anyway (Nancy lifted her wings and tossed her head), Sid knew how to shake a tail feather.
Sid was in charge of the nest, and he had decided that this year, since Paras and her friends were always present, they needed to build it in a safer spot. So he marched about the pond and the neighboring groves, trying to make up his mind.
Cast of characters
Sid: a mallard duck, and his mate Nancy
“There, you see,” he said, “the outer edge is too far into the open. Very dangerous, but if we make the nest smaller, that has its dangers, too. We haven’t lost a duckling in three years. It’s a point of pride for us, and I speak for Nancy as well as myself, because we each have our duties and responsibilities, and my responsibility is the nest.”
Sid stepped carefully, looked here, looked there, kept going. “Can’t be too far from the water,” said Sid. “Very vulnerable if they have to walk far. Owls at twilight, hawks during the day, foxes anytime, dogs for that matter, cats. You ask anyone, mallards are fair game.”
He coughed and glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. “Rats.”
Sid, Nancy said, did not live here all year round. He appeared every autumn about this time, decked out in green. He stayed with her for a while, and then flew south. He was sensitive to the cold. Winter migration was statistically the norm, but if you lived in Paris, well—Nancy cocked her head, then went on—it was an issue between them, but she was a homebody. She liked her territory.
Cast of characters
Sid: a mallard duck, and his mate Nancy
The pond had frozen over completely only one time. Down south (she had gone with him once), you had to put up with chaos. The worst of it around here, according to Nancy, was that, in addition to her own six or eight or ten eggs (one year she laid twelve), if she didn’t hide her nest well, other eggs could turn up, and there you were, you had hatched some completely alien little thing before you knew what was what.
Her last bunch had just flown off a month before. Nancy pushed them out as soon as they could go—she realized that she was a bit impatient about it, but they were well cared for and strong, and she felt that she needed at least some time on her own, didn’t Paras agree?
Paras of course agreed, since she liked to have a lot of time on her own.
Cast of characters
Anaïs: baker who befriends and feeds Paras, although she wonders if Paras is actually a horse.
Anaïs had then decided that Paras was a spiritual embodiment of some sort—And she knew from all the stories she had heard as a child that if a god or a spirit asked something of you, your job was to provide it in good faith and with a happy heart. And so she did.
The horse came three or four times a week. Her provisions added maybe 1 percent to the wholesale expenditures of the bakery and the café, so Anaïs raised the prices of some of the luxury items that her customers should not be eating anyway, like chocolate croissants and lemon tarts, to cover it.
And though Paras only trotted away when she was finished with her grain, and was not, at least for now, flying Pegasus-like into the empyrean, Anaïs had a remote hope that something amazing would some day—say on the vernal equinox.
Anaïs loved her job, but since she was up all night, hers was a rather lonely life. She was isolated from her family because of the religious disagreements, and all of her friendships were based on business, not a sense of connection. She was now in her thirties, unmarried, hadn’t had a boyfriend in four years, so it was a great pleasure to pet the horse, to feel the warmth of her coat underneath her mane, to sense her kindness and her enjoyment of the food Anaïs put together for her.
Cast of characters
Jerome: shop owner in a prosperous neighborhood that Etienne and Madame visit
Jérôme was familiar with troubled lives. The village he had grown up in, north of Toulouse, was not a wealthy one,
Jérôme considered himself taciturn. He loved vegetables, he loved his neighborhood, he kept his eyes open, he knew it was not his job to gossip about his customers. Now that the dog always accompanied the boy and the old lady to the shop, he felt that his original instinct, that the dog had been ferrying provisions to that household all along, was proved correct (as were most of his instincts).
Cast of characters
Pierre: head gardener of Champ de Mars.
It was Pierre’s job to make a meadow in the midst of a city, to give it beautiful flower beds and swaths of color.
He’d had a wife for a while, but perhaps she had not been able to stand the four cats in the end. She was now living in Montpellier with a man ten years younger than she was who taught at the university. She’d sent Pierre a picture of her apartment—no animals, no plants, no cushions or pillows, and only a futon for a bed. He wished her well.
It was a hectic time, which was fine with Pierre, since he had no one at home but his four cats, and because there were four of them, they viewed him even more superciliously than the citizens of Paris did—the mere fact that they outnumbered him rendered him incidental in their eyes.
Cast of characters
Jacques Seul: Frida's former owner and a busker
Jacques had taken much pleasure in the lights and the busy social scene, had even thought himself, in a way, a part of it, since he had grown up on the Avenue de Messine, and liked walking past his old building when he could.
Jacques had always treated her [Frida] with generosity and affection.
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Quotes—after the death of Madame de Mornay
Conrad, the rat, Kurt's father, is the one who discovers that Eveline is dead. He could no longer feel her "broadcasts."
Frida barked and barked, waking Etienne, although she didn't know why she was barking. Paras bumps her to stop the barking:
Paras said, “What is going on?”
“Everyone needs to know.”
“To know what?”
“I don’t know. Something. Something important. Whatever it is, it is making my skin tingle and my hair curl.”
At last, she said, “I felt this before, but I didn’t know what it was. Now maybe I do. It was when my human vanished.”
Quotes—after the death of Madame de Mornay
Jérôme, at the market, also felt uneasy for some reason. He found himself stepping out into the street without meaning to, looking left, looking right, making himself go back into the shop, only to step out into the street moments later.
After closing the shop, Jérôme walked down the Rue Marinoni and looked at the place. It was all closed up now. He tried peeking through the fence, but the vegetation was too thick—that should have been a giveaway right there.
He stood with his hands in his pockets in the deepening dusk and wondered why he had never thought to do this—follow the boy and the old lady and the dog home, just to see.
Would it have been better if he had?
Anaïs, in her apartment, was brewing herself a cup of tea. She poured the boiling water right onto her hand, cried out, put her hand under the cold tap, and started to weep. Anaïs hadn’t wept in years, she thought; as for burning herself, she did that all the time, but this time was different, somehow.
Quotes—after the death of Madame de Mornay
Pierre, who still had his earplugs in from his morning operating the leaf blower, stepped out of the equipment shed and saw dark clouds to the north—unexpected, because the forecast had been for days of sunshine. He went back into the shed, felt a chilling breeze, found a jacket. When he’d finished hanging up his tools and making the signs he had to redo every year to remind his crew where to put things, he went back outside. Brilliant sunshine. Unaccountable, really.
The gendarme made up his mind to consult his superior officer about that house. There was something funny about the place, and the gendarmerie needed to look into it.
Paras continued to sample the grass and weeds. She knew that Frida thought she was insensitive or indifferent. She wasn’t. She was preparing herself.
Raoul knew exactly what was going on. He stood on the sill of the old lady’s window, tapping. He could see that she had passed, and he knew that it was the animals who had to save the boy.
Question for discussion
Why this description at the passing of Madame de Mornay?
Quotes—after the death of Mornay
When Pierre got to Anaïs’s café, she was there. She had the paper, too. She’d found it on one of the tables when she came in to begin the evening’s baking.
It was an odd thing, to meet this person and that, to compare notes, to solve a mystery that you didn’t even know existed, to answer questions that you had not thought to ask: Who was this boy? (The last in a long line of unlucky ones.)
Who was this dog? (Don’t you remember that busker? Unkempt, but a musical genius, a fellow who had walked away from a promising career. Jacques Seul, he had called himself—no one knew his given name, but that had been his stage name—he had cut two records in the 1970s.)
Who was this horse? Perestroika, by Moscow Ballet out of Mapleton, by Big Spruce, four-year-old, two starts, two wins, bay mare, white star, no other markings—
What else did you need to know?
Question for discussion
Why does Smiley write these "Who?" questions? What is the "theme" of the passage above?
In this world that Jane Smiley has created, the characters are creatures from distinctly different genus and species categories. Raoul, for example, is "corvus corax," Frida is "canis familiaris," and people are "homo sapiens."
Why does Jane Smiley include this genus and species designation?
Questions for discussion
Ironically, this lovely little novel has elements of the epic:
Although a horse, Paras leaves the life she has been brought up in and knows; she sets out on a journey into the unknown, here Paris. But unlike the epic hero, she has no quest specifically in mind; she does so simply out of curiosity.
But along the way, she has adventures, meets new characters (other kinds of animals, including humans).
And at the end, she returns to the life she originally knew.
In the epic tradition, the "hero" or in this case "heroine" returns with knowledge, experience, and understanding of life and herself that she didn't have before.
Do other characters in the novel find themselves on a "quasi-epic" quest?
Questions for discussion
Other characters in this novel have adventures, excursions, as well.
Late in the novel, Kurt goes along when Etienne and his great grandmama visit the shops, hiding himself by walking under Frida and keeping pace, although a gendarme does spot him.
He was still too amazed at his first foray into the great world. He thought that it was no use telling Conrad about it—Conrad would not believe that their kingdom here, so huge to them, was relatively so small and dark, or that the number of humans in the world so defied all of Kurt’s powers of perception that his sensory mechanism had broken down completely. He might believe that the sunlight was so bright that a rat could not open his eyes for more than a second, and that the noise of humans and their doings was overpowering, but he would not believe that a dog had saved Kurt’s life, that cats were relatively few and far between, or that Kurt could not wait to go out there and look again for his doe.
Questions for discussion
Other characters in this novel have adventures, excursions, as well.
Sid and Raoul
Raoul was hard put to maintain his superior demeanor—embarrassingly, it was Sid who had recognized him, not the other way around. But this drake was not the Sid Raoul thought he knew, the screaming, panicked fellow who preened until half of his feathers were plucked. This Sid was easygoing and good-humored, a comfortable member of his cohort.
Sid seemed to be happy to see him. How are they? How many are there? I didn’t want to stop here, I just wanted to get home, is she okay, have any been taken, I hope not.
Raoul arranged himself as best he could, and said, “Sid, your offspring are too numerous to count, perfectly healthy as far as I can see, and awaiting your return.”
Sid glanced back at the other mallards and sighed, then settled down beside Raoul. He said, “I think it will be a wonderful summer. I’ve gotten a lot of counseling this trip. I feel more in control and better prepared for the chaos. I am up to the challenge.”
Questions for discussion
Other characters in this novel have adventures, excursions, as well.
Sid and Raoul
“Every summer is a new beginning, that’s what I’ve learned. I don’t have to carry the past with me. My approach to the dangers of reproduction is my choice. I am in charge of who I am and how I view things. I own my fears.”
“I’ve had my eyes opened. We had many group discussions as we were migrating, and I was given to realize that certain experiences I had as a duckling have had a strong impact on my worldview, especially the death of Male No. 3, who was just above me in the nest, taken by a hawk right out of the middle of the group, and then the hawk, instead of flying away, swooped around us the whole time my mother was hurrying us to shelter. I mean, thisis not an unusual experience for mallards, but I think that I must be especially sensitive, which is nothing to be ashamed of. This autumn alone, humans shot two of our flock right out of the sky as we were flying over Marmande. Did we stop? Did we panic? No, we bade them adieu and flew onward. But I’ve come to understand the effect of duckling experiences much more thoroughly now, and also to understand fate. Fate is simply fate—you are here or you are not. You have to yield to the nature of the cosmos.”
Questions for discussion
Other characters in this novel have adventures, excursions, as well.
Sid and Raoul
Raoul had been seized by a desire for one last circuit. He longed for something more, one last adventure. Out to Vincennes was the obvious alternative, but just when he was almost there, just when he recognized his youthful haunts, he veered around and headed west. He flew and flew and flew—a long way for an old bird whose idea of a voyage was from the Place du Trocadéro to Montmartre, but he rather gloried in his power, the way he once had, at least until the very end, when he came to a screeching, plummeting, aching halt, and landed, pretty wobbly, in the middle of the training track at Maisons-Laffitte, gasping for air and stumbling across the sand, even as a large black horse galloped toward him. He closed his eyes, didn’t move—and the horse galloped on. He heard the rider exclaim, “Mon Dieu!,” and, with the last of his strength, he hopped up to the limb of a slender little tree and sat there, his wings trembling, wishing only for a drink, maybe his ultimate drink, of water.
It's in that condition that Sid, the mallard duck, finds him and leads him home.
Questions for discussion
You might say this novel is about relationships, all kinds of relationships:
Among all the animals
Among the human
Between the animals and the humans.
How would you describe these relationships?
Questions for discussion
I have said in previous classes that this is a matter of perspective. Literally in this case the novel is an alternative perspective on the world in which we live—the perspective of the animals who also inhabit this world.
What does their viewpoint tell us about our world?
Questions for discussion
In some ways, the focus of this novel is Etienne rather than Paras. From the beginning of the novel, we know that he is an 8 year old boy, living with his great-grandmama in an old ancestral home in the heart of Paris.
He is well-cared for by his grandmama but she is old, 97, and has a very limited lifespan left. And we as readers know that Etienne will be left alone when she dies, and he's too young to take care of himself alone.
Is this novel as much about Etienne as it is about Paras?
Questions for discussion
What's the significance of the quilt that Eveline knits at the very end of the novel.
Her project was a useless one, a coverlet to be pieced from the squares she knitted, using up a lifetime of leftovers, most of them merino wool, her favorite.
She had made many a sweater and sock in her day; no doubt her bin of remnants was a riot of colors that did not match.
But she knew her stitches by heart, by feel. She didn’t have to see what she was doing to know whether to knit or purl or pass the slip stitch over. She could do a simple lace if she kept proper count. It was rather like saying her rosary or playing the piano, orderly and reassuring.
Breakout Room Question
What's your final "take away" from this novel?
Saving Etienne
After Madame De Mornay has died, and the animals are making their way back to the racetrack:
Paras was not normally of a philosophical turn of mind, but she was surprised at how natural this was, how easy, really. This was nothing compared to a workout around the dirt track at Maisons-Laffitte. So far, this was a sprint, hardly enough to cause a stayer like Paras to breathe hard.
Why had she waited so long? That was the price of indecision, wasn’t it? And yet it was also the price of freedom.
Although she now felt herself responsible for Étienne, as well as drawn back to Delphine and that former life of fitness and purpose, she understood that her days of doing what she pleased when she was pleased to do it were behind her.
Saving Etienne
As the group nears the racetrack, Paras remembers the night she left:
In her mind, her trek from Auteuil had taken forever, all night, sunset to sunrise, had covered miles and miles.
She had felt as though she were pressing herself through a dense fog that pressed back, slowing her progress, draining her strength.
She had stopped in the one green area, eaten some grass, gone on to the other green area, where Frida had found her.
She had seemed to herself to have left one world and entered another.
Note: can't help thinking of Lucrezia in The Marriage Portrait, escaping the world she actually lives in for the world she has created in her imagination, the world where she is free. Interestingly, in both novels, the forests, the woodlands, represent that space.
Saving Etienne
They're sleeping after the first day of their trip back.
She [Paras] could hear both high sounds and low sounds. The woodland was full of small scuttling animals, blowing leaves, creaking branches, calling birds; the city was nearby, and so she could also hear cars and trucks and the shouts of people. An airplane howled overhead. Humans walked past without noticing the wildlife, chatting with one another, rustling paper. They came and went, came and went.
Underneath these sounds were some very low sounds that surged rather suddenly as a kind of pounding, half aural, half visceral. Paras knew what they were—they were the sounds of a field of horses racing around a track, many sounds melded into one sound, approaching, then receding.
Quotes—near the end
The school may have not noticed Étienne until now, but Étienne had noticed the school, and it looked to him, as it looked to his great-grandmama, like a noisy trap. The riot of the children (he thought of them as “the children” rather than “the other children”) was bad enough, but the noise of the adults was worse—stiff, raised voices, clapping hands, commands. Étienne had never in his life received a command. Even when his great-grandmama told him to do something, she phrased it affectionately, as something that would be done to please her if he cared to do it. And, therefore, he always did it.
Nor had he ever issued a command. Whom would he command? The horse? The dog? They seemed to read his mind—or not. He could go to the sixth step in the courtyard and stand there. He could know that Paras knew he wanted a ride, but that she wasn’t ready at the moment to give him one. If he commanded her to do so, was she likely to agree? Not at all. She was likely to move away.
As for the dog, the dog watched his every move and was ready at every minute to follow him, to go ahead of him, to present herself to his great-grandmama for support, to carry something, to wait for him. She would not give him that silly ball; a command would not cause her to do so. It was her ball.
Quotes—novel's last paragraph
Étienne enjoyed his summer, too. The authorities were patient—they let him get used to the idea of going to school, and they tested him a few times, so surprised were they at what he knew and did not know.
Rania said that she would keep him at her house; there was a school around the corner, and she had an empty room.
The authorities said that they’d consider her proposal, but they said so in that particular way that indicated they’d already thought it was as good a proposal as any—and, after all, why make things more complicated than they really had to be?
Frida and the ball
So now she thought of the terrier and carried her heavy bag down the street. At the very last minute, though, she saw another possibility. A shop door opened, and inside there was a bin full of balls. The door closed. She sat and waited, assembling her dignity, and when the door opened again, she looked into the face of the human who opened it as he was leaving the shop. He smiled and held the door for her.
She went inside and over to the bin of balls, where she set down her bag. The human who now slouched toward her was the type of human she usually avoided—scowl on his face, sour fragrance, lank hair on his head—the type who might give a dog a kick if he thought no one was looking. Before he even got to her, he was saying, “Get out of here, you mutt! No dogs allowed!”
Frida retained her dignity, gave him a level look, and placed her paw carefully on the bin, beside one of the balls. Then she nosed her bag. The human stopped with his legs apart, waved one arm, then put his hands on his hips. Frida knew right then that he was afraid of her. Well, some humans were afraid of dogs. She did what she had to do—lay down, rolled over, and then rolled back over the other way. The human took a deep breath. Frida rolled onto her stomach and crawled toward him. Then she waited. Finally, the human reached out his trembling hand, patted her lightly on the head.
She waited. He patted her again, this time with more confidence. He smiled. Frida stood up slowly, turned, and went back to the bin, where she put her paw next to the same ball. He came over and took the ball out of the bin, then stepped back and tossed it to her. She jumped up and caught it. She carried it to the human’s very large feet and dropped it. He picked it up, tossed it gently down the aisle, toward the back of the store. Frida ran after it and carried it to him, waiting until he opened his hand before she placed it on his palm (Jacques had been very particular about fetching).
Frida and the ball
The human stared at her, tossing the ball back and forth between his hands, then walked away. Frida sighed, and went to her heavy bag. She took the handles of the bag between her teeth, picked up the bag, staggered slightly, then balanced herself.
But here came the human, with something in his hand. He removed the end of that something with a pop, and out of it rolled another ball. He bounced it, and it bounced very high.
Frida dropped her bag, leapt into the air, and caught it. It was light and slightly furry, just the sort of ball she had been looking for. He laughed. She went to her bag and pawed at it, but although she could smell the money, she couldn’t get at it. She dropped the ball into the bag and dragged the bag to the human.
Then she did something that Jacques had warned her against. She barked. Only one bark. She put her paw on the bag. The human stepped back, but it seemed he understood—he came over, reached into the bag, and felt around.
A moment later, he pulled out a bill. Now he really laughed, and he said, “Well, I have to say, I’ve never seen a dog like you before.” He bowed slightly, and said, “Would you please wait here, miss?” He slouched away.
When he returned, he put the thing that the ball had come in into her bag, then helped her take the bag in her jaws. Finally, he squatted in front of her, patted her on the head, and said, “Merry Christmas, pretty one.”
He accompanied her to the door, opened it for her, and, after she went outside, locked it behind her.
Books featuring animal protagonists
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Despite the use of distinctly cute bunnies and rabbits as the protagonists and villains in Watership Down, this novel is by no means meant for children. It is a courageous tale of a small group of rabbits searching for a home after humans have unknowingly destroyed much of the animal’s environment. The overly optimistic rabbits must protect their land and their community, facing ignorantly destructive humans and bloody battles with other animals. Like Animal Farm, Adam’s novel sends a blatant message about the ills of human society.
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of the most well-known books of the 20th century. He claimed that the inspiration for this metaphoric tale came when he, “…saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.” This novel is an excellent example of how authors can use non-humans to express human realities.
Animal Farm is an anti-utopian novel that follows a group of livestock who, led by two pigs, start a rebellion against their farmer to create a free and equal society for the farm animals. Under the new name ‘Animal Farm,’ all those on four legs are empowered, however, when the rebellion turn corrupt, the animals find themselves under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.
Books featuring animal protagonists
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
This is a story for people who follow their hearts and make their own rules . . . people who get special pleasure out of doing something well, even if only for themselves . . . people who know there's more to this living than meets the eye: they’ll be right there with Jonathan, flying higher and faster than ever they dreamed.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is no ordinary bird. He believes it is every gull's right to fly, to reach the ultimate freedom of challenge and discovery, finding his greatest reward in teaching younger gulls the joy of flight and the power of dreams.
Tomorrow by Damian Dibben, Genre: Historical fiction fantasy
Tomorrow is narrated by an immortal dog who is on the hunt for his lost master. Spanning centuries, the dog’s journey sees him visit a number of European cities in different eras, including the London Frost fair, King Charles’ court, the wars of the Spanish succession, Versailles, Amsterdam, and 19th Century Venice
Books featuring animal protagonists
Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
It’s the early 1930s, and Jacob Jankowski abruptly finds himself without a home or a job. His veterinary studies nearly complete, he manages to secure a job as the caretaker of the animals in a traveling circus. They need Rosie the elephant to draw the crowds, but she has thus far proven difficult and untrainable. Jacob soon discovers how to connect with her and becomes her greatest protector. Jacob also falls for Marlena, the beautiful young horse rider who happens to be married to the animal trainer. Her husband’s cruelty, towards both his wife and the animals, puts Jacob and Marlena both in jeopardy., read
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
A sixteen year-old boy survives a deadly shipwreck only to find himself sharing a single lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. This remarkable pairing of man and beast inspires a tale that is insanely imaginative, deeply moving, and surprisingly plausible. Martel pulls off one of the most compelling feats of storytelling I’ve ever come across. There are grand moments of danger balanced by introspective ponderings on philosophy and faith. Then he tops it off with an ending so mind-bending, you’ll be ready to read it all over again.
Books featuring animal protagonists
The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein
is for any lover of human’s best friend, but be prepared to hold back tears. Stein goes into the mind of an intelligent dog, who feels and sees a lot. Enzo, the protagonist and family pet, is an important member of his human caretaker’s lives, analyzing and experiencing their struggles. His brave loyalty is truly touching and will make you want to ruffle the fur of the closest dog. Stein’s visceral novel is a must read.
The story is told by Enzo, the beloved dog of race car driver Denny Swift. This fact alone made me initially avoid reading the book because I have a low tolerance for schmaltzy books, and it seemed gimmicky. But after hearing great reviews from so many fellow readers, I finally gave in. And it turns out that this extremely popular book is actually pretty great. It shows the incredible affection that is possible between people and their pets. Enzo shares his profound insights into human behavior learned from years of walking with Denny through all the difficulties and joys life has thrown their way.
Books featuring animal protagonists
Wish You Were Here, Rita Mae Brown
The protagonist of Wish You Were Here is less known for its loyalty to humans and more for its mischievous ways, which is fitting for this murder-mystery. However, Mrs. Murphy, a house cat, is loyal to her recently divorced, sad owner who is on a mission to find out who is murdering members of her Virginia community. With wit and hilarity, that includes philosophical conversations between a dog and a cat, Brown insinuates that our pets are more astute than their human friends, but they are still there for us. This book, written in collaboration with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, is part of the Mrs. Murphy Mystery series.
Horse Heaven, Jane Smiley
Paradoxically named, Horse Heaven takes place on a horse racetrack where jockeys and trainers are under constant pressure, especially by detached ultra-rich bidders. Written from a horse’s perspective, this novel presents astonishing truths about the world of horse racing, whether it be joy or pain, with excellent character development of both human and horse. At just under 1,000 pages, Horse Heaven is an ambitious, yet rewarding, read
Books featuring animal protagonists
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Edgar was born mute and speaks only in sign. He and his parents live a quiet life on a Wisconsin farm where they breed and train the loyal and sought-after Sawtelle dogs. With the arrival of his uncle, the family’s tranquil life is upended, and a catastrophic event sends the young Edgar out on his own for the first time. All the dogs, especially Edgar’s closest companion Almondine, are crucial characters and even help tell parts of the story. It is a languorous read, with stunning prose you’ll want to savor. As a bonus, Shakespeare fans will find some fascinating parallels to Hamlet.
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
Two surprising things happen on Inspector Ashwin Chopra’s last day of work for the Mumbai Police force. First, he gets a letter informing him that he has inherited a baby elephant. Then he stumbles onto evidence of a mysterious murder that will launch his post-retirement career. The adorable elephant is an unforeseen help in his secret investigation, and it is delightful to see how the two begin to bond. If you love a good cozy mystery, definitely check out this first book in Khan’s Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation series.
Books featuring animal protagonists
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa (translated by Philip Gabriel)
In The Travelling Cat Chronicles, Nana and his beloved human, Satoru, are taking a road trip through Japan to visit Satoru’s old friends. Nana doesn’t understand the purpose of the journey and is confused why people are so interested in him.
Five years ago, Nana was a stray living on the streets. When Nana suffered a terrible accident, Saturo rescued him, nursed him back to health, and they became family. Now they are going on a trip, stopping along the way to visit three of Saturo’s oldest friends. Nana doesn’t know why they have set off on this journey, but he is glad to be along for the ride. As they travel, they will both learn about love, friendship, and how even the smallest gestures of kindness can add up to a meaningful life.
Full disclosure – I’m really not that into cats. I don’t dislike cats, I’m just not a cat person. With that in mind, you’re probably wondering why my spotlight pick revolves so much around cats. Well, actually one in particular – Nana. Let me tell you, Nana is not like other cats; he is witty, dry, and sarky, (which is exactly how I imagine cats would be if they could speak) and makes for a fabulous narrator (especially if you listen to the audiobook, which I highly recommend).
Next week
Spring Break—NO Classes