Jane Smiley once said that every book she writes is political. And given that she has written about everything from horses, farming, real estate and financial scandal, to the nature of American violence and politics, it's perhaps not surprising she should turn to the politics of marriage in her new and 13th novel, Private Life.
In some ways, the only predictable element of Smiley's stellar literary career has been her unpredictability and astonishing breadth on the page. There's little this celebrated, Pulitzer Prize-winning author won't attempt. She has written every kind of novel, biography, comedy, tragedy, saga and satire. 'I'm fascinated in all kind of things,' says Smiley, who chaired the judging panel for the Man Booker Prize last year. 'But I'm not obsessed. Just fascinated.'
Smiley's fascination with the world around her, has led her to write countless essays, along with some 17 titles, including a biography of Charles Dickens and her 2005 meditation on the history and nature of the novel, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. Two of her novels have been made into Hollywood films, including her 1992 Pulitzer-winning novel A Thousand Acres. Smiley also finds time to raise horses, but admits that she writes every day, as much for pleasure as anything else.
'I know there are writers who don't find their work easy or pleasant, but I do, and I think I'm lucky in that I love books. I love novels, I love the sort of unfolding puzzle of the plot, I love the characters. They make me laugh, they make me cry,' she says. 'They don't feel like part of me - they feel like visitations from the world.'
But this only partly explains why Private Life - a grand, sweeping novel in the 19th-century tradition that follows the fortunes of a woman and her unhappy marriage - packs such an unexpected punch. The novel unfolds deceptively languorously at first, its initial pace intricately tied to the character of the late 19th century in which much of it unfolds. Its hardworking and reticent protagonist, Margaret Mayfield, has been traumatised in childhood after witnessing a public hanging aged five, followed by the death of two brothers, then by her father's suicide. By the age of 27, Margaret is considered an old maid. She resigns herself to spinsterhood until manipulated into a marriage with Captain Andrew Early, an astronomer known as the town's genius.
Smiley hints at what is to follow in the novel's inscription: 'In those days, all stories ended with the wedding.'
