Some luck

This is a perfectly wonderful book. I was afraid it was going to be as wrenching as "A Thousand Acres", but it couldn't be less like that painful (though beautifully written) novel. "Some Luck" tells the story of a family from 1920 to 1953. It magically, lightly floats you along, one short chapter per year. They live on a farm in Iowa, using draft horses in 1920, and a tractor in 1953. By 1953, two of the children have left Iowa, one living in DC and the other in New York.

The point of view changes with each chapter, cycling between a subset of the characters. Sometimes it's a toddler or child, which Smiley does any amazing job with. One of my friends commented "nothing happens, and everything happens", and that's pretty apt. Loved it.

This was a pretty good, easy enough read. The short chapters appealed to me at this point in time because my attention span is short and I'm easily called away. The negative was the characters were written in this bland non-emotional way so you never really bonded with them or cared too much about their inner workings. And that is a big minus as I gather this is a trilogy and we will revisit these people in later works. I'm not in a hurry to go calling though.

I'm not really sure what I think about this. Fascinating character study.