Golden Age

Description

The third novel in the dazzling Last Hundred Years trilogy from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 1987. A visit from a long-lost relative brings the Langdons together again on the family farm; a place almost unrecognisable from the remote Iowan farmland Walter and Rosanna once owned. The family have spread across the US, and whilst some have stayed reliably unchanged, others have evolved with the times. The eldest Langdon, Frank - always cold and distant - finally starts to break down the wall he built between himself and his wife, but can a loving relationship be grasped in their twilight years? Their son, Richie, finally out from under his brother Michael's shadow, finds himself running for congress almost unintentionally, and completely underprepared. And Michael, on the brink of self-destruction, seems to make the biggest change of all, but could it be too good to be true? New life blooms; close-calls threaten to take away; and other lives come to unforeseen ends. After a hundred years of change and US history, filled with words unsaid and moments lost, this dazzling final instalment in the acclaimed Last Hundred Years trilogy sees the final repercussions of time on the Langdon family. Moving through the 1980s to 2020, we discover who thrived and made their mark on the world, and who faded into the backdrop of time.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2006 she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her latest novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. She lives in northern California.

Jane Smiley is a master of expansive, effortlessly readable sagas, and this is no exception. * Daily Mail * The phrase Great American Novel gets bandied about a little too liberally, but rarely is the Great American Novelist in question a woman. It is an accolade that Smiley (who won a Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres) richly deserves -- Sam Baker * The Pool * With the Last One Hundred Years trilogy, [Smiley] surely confirms her place alongside Roth, Updike and Bellow as one of the truly great chroniclers of 20th-century American life. . . The historical and political canvas of Golden Age is breathtaking in its expansiveness, and there is an epic quality to the trilogy as a whole. But Smiley is equally compelling on the domestic and familial . . . Reading the Last One Hundred Years trilogy [is] such a powerful, moving and rewarding experience; a rare chance to witness, from the sidelines, five generations of a family unfold. -- Hannah Beckerman * Guardian *