Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief

A wonderful collection of five short stories and a novella. The novella, which is titled "The Age of Grief," is the work that the movie "The Secret Lives of Dentists" was based on. I didn’t think of it at the time I read the back cover and bought the book (this was in early March when we were in Portland and Powell’s was having a 30% off sale on all Smiley’s works for some reason). That movie was damned depressing, and its original material was too, no surprise, but as is so often the case, I liked the novella much, much better, again no surprise.

The stories were originally written during 1977 to 1987. In “The Pleasure of Her Company,” a woman befriends her new neighbors and becomes very involved in their daily routines. She envies their marriage and seeks to emulate their life, and is quite surprised when the couple breaks up. Later, she learns that the whole period of their friendship as a threesome took place during the worst of the couple’s troubles and that she was a buffer for them. In “Lily,” a married couple at war with one another visit an old friend for the weekend. It’s a wonderful portrait of dysfunction. A dysfunctional family also underpins “Long Distance,” which features a man visiting his brothers and their families for Christmas. He had planned to take along his Japanese girlfriend, but at the last minute she does not come to the US to be with him. “Dynamite” is the story of a woman trying to escape her past, and you’ll have to believe me that “Jeffrey, Believe Me” is an extremely weird tale, and the weakest item in the collection for me.

I have enjoyed everything I’ve ever read of Smiley’s, but especially the academic satire Moo and the suspenseful Duplicate Keys. This collection is now among my favorites of her works.