‘Early Warning’: Second in Smiley trilogy a worthy sequel

Back in September, I gave Jane Smiley's 'Some Luck” - the first novel in a trilogy that follows an Iowa family 100 years from 1920 through 2019 - a glowing review.

'Smiley's prose is beautiful,” I wrote, 'her insight into her characters is broad, and her empathy for each person's struggles is deep. She sets her story against the sweep of history without ever allowing her focus to waver from her central concerns.”

'Early Warning,” the recently published second novel in the trilogy, lives up to every bit of that praise. Covering the years 1953 through 1986, 'Early Warning” reinforces the brilliance of Smiley's accomplishment and had me wishing I could start the third volume immediately.

The new book is steeped in Cold War fears and individual and collective quests for meaning and satisfaction. Smiley continues to deftly handle her large cast, increasingly demonstrating ways in which subsequent generations reflect, reject and require generations preceding them.

Among the most remarkable accomplishments of this quite sizable book - nearly 500 pages - is the way it highlights the rapid current of time. Each chapter is a single year, and none is overlong. As a result, we see children grow up, careers begin and end, and adults age and die with a rapidity that is sometimes shocking.

'Early Warning” ends with a coincidence that promises to lead to significant developments in the third book. It's a credit to Smiley's skill that it is wholly plausible, just another of the various amazing and quotidian things that might happen over the course of a lifetime.