Private Life - Softcover

"Masterly. . . .[A] precise, compelling depiction of a singular woman." -The New Yorker

"Extraordinarily powerful. . . .It's not often that a work as exceptional as this comes along in contemporary American letters." -Washington Post

"Smiley's best novel yet. . . . [A] heartbreaking, bitter, and gorgeous story." -The Atlantic Monthly

"Remarkable. . . . With its quietly accruing power, [Private Life is] the kind of book that puts the lie to those who claim that great novelists produce their best work early and spend the rest of their lives gilding the lily." --Chicago Tribune

"Has a Jamesian twist of the unforeseen, but it's achieved with a sureness of hand that's all [Smiley's] own." --The New York Times Book Review

"Smiley's eye is keen, and the book's historical pageant is often mesmerizing and often elegantly composed. . . . A quiet tragedy." --The Seattle Times

"Private Life, perhaps Jane Smiley's best novel since her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, is so firmly anchored in its historical setting that the past comes to seem like the reader's present." --The Oregonian

"Smiley tells her story precisely. . . . Private Life has a stunning specificity of detail. . . . Husband and wife are three-dimensional, alive and memorable in the way characters in fiction and people in biographies so rarely are." --The Miami Herald

"Brilliant. . . . A story of immense originality and insight. . . . It is served well by the fascinating era in which it is set, and most of all by Smiley's wit and erudition." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A book whose enormous power sneaks up on you. . . . Unlike so many contemporary novels, which start out sure-footed but eventually lose focus, this novel keeps getting better." -The Newark Star Ledger

"Powerful. . . . Smiley is a wonderful writer. . . . [She] creates a convincing, nuanced portrait of a woman's life when women had few options." --San Diego Union-Tribune

"Brilliant. . . . Private Life is a powerful, challenging and, ultimately, fierce work of fiction, a masterpiece of a novel that stands with the best of Smiley's work." --The Guardian (UK)

"A fine portrait. . . . [Private Life] should only enhance Smiley's reputation as one of the most innovative and accomplished writers currently at work." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"A chilling tale, quietly absorbing." --Bloomberg

"Richly detailed. . . . I read parts of Smiley's novel to my mother and, afterward, we found ourselves wondering about our dead female relatives. . . . They lived, they sorrowed; maybe now we understand them a little better than before." --Susan Swan, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)