Title: Early Warning
Author: Jane Smiley
First published April 23, 2015
476 pages, Hardcover
ISBN: 9780307700322 (ISBN10: 0307700321)
Rating: 3.85
Overview
In Jane Smiley’s Early Warning, the Langdon family returns as they navigate the tumultuous decades of the 1950s through the early 80s. With the sudden death of their stalwart patriarch, Walter, the Langdon children must choose their own paths.
As they traverse the changing landscape of America, from the Cold War to the social and sexual revolutions of the 60s and 70s, they face their own trials and tribulations. Twin boys become both friends and rivals, while a rebellious daughter finds herself caught up in the Peoples Temple in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, a golden boy drops out of college to fight in Vietnam, leaving behind a secret legacy that will shake the Langdon family to its core. Early Warning is a beautifully told story of the intricacies and rewards of family in the midst of the most turbulent of times.
About the Author
Jane Smiley, an accomplished American novelist, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her exceptional literary work. Originally from Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb near St. Louis.
She attended Vassar College and later the University of Iowa, where she earned both a M.F.A. and Ph.D. degree. During her pursuit of a doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar.
For fifteen years, from 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University.
Smiley’s writing career began in 1980 with the publication of her first novel. Her short story “Lily,” published in , earned her the prestigious O.
Henry Award in 1985. Her best-selling book, a story based on William Shakespeare’s , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992.
The book was later adapted into a film that shared the same title in 1997. Smiley also wrote a television script for an episode of in 1995, and her novella was adapted into a film in 2002.
In 2005, Smiley wrote a non-fiction book that explored the history and nature of the novel, following in the tradition of E. M.
Forster’s seminal . The book covers a wide range of topics, from eleventh century Japan’s Murasaki Shikibu’s to twenty-first century American chick lit.
Smiley’s contributions to literature have not gone unnoticed. In 2001, she was elected as a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Editoral Review
With “Early Warning,” the second installment in her ambitious Last Hundred Years Trilogy, Jane Smiley continues to explore the lives of the Langdons, a sprawling family whose fortunes rise and fall with the tides of American history. Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has tackled themes as diverse as academia, horses, and King Lear, turns her attention to the quiet dramas that play out in families over time, illuminating the ways in which personal struggles intersect with larger cultural shifts.
The book picks up where “Some Luck,” left off, in the early 1950s, as the three Langdon siblings – Frank, Joe, and Lillian – begin to carve out their own paths in life. Frank pursues a career in farming, while Joe becomes a lawyer and Lillian a wife and mother.
Along the way, they face challenges both external and internal: the rise of McCarthyism, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and their own tangled emotions and desires. Supporting characters come and go – spouses, children, friends, and neighbors – each adding their own texture to the narrative.
What sets Smiley’s writing apart is her ability to move seamlessly between the individual and the collective, between the personal and the historical. She never loses sight of the larger forces that shape her characters’ lives, but she never reduces them to mere symbols, either.
Each Langdon is a fully-realized human being, with flaws and virtues, dreams and disappointments, and Smiley captures them all with a poet’s eye for detail and an anthropologist’s curiosity.
The book is sprawling and immersive, with a vast cast of characters and multiple storylines that unfold over several decades.
There are times when the pace flags, or when a subplot feels underdeveloped, but for the most part, Smiley manages to maintain a sense of momentum and unity. She balances social commentary with intimate drama, moving from the horrors of the Vietnam War to the quiet tensions of a family dinner party with ease.
At its heart, “Early Warning” is a novel about change – social, cultural, and personal. Smiley shows us how the Langdons adapt to the shifting landscape of mid-century America, how they grapple with the legacy of their past and the uncertainty of their future.
The book is a meditation on the passage of time, on the meaning of family, and on the enduring complexity of human relationships. It’s a masterful work of fiction, and a worthy successor to “Some Luck.”
Readers who enjoyed the first book in the trilogy will find much to admire here, but “Early Warning” can also stand on its own as an engrossing and thought-provoking novel.
Smiley’s prose is lucid and evocative, her characters unforgettable, and her vision of American history both panoramic and intimate. It’s a book that rewards close reading and rewards rereading, and it’s one that will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered what their own place in the world might be.
Rating: 4/5
