Good Faith

Rating:
Summary: disappointed
Review: I finish 99 percent of the books I read if only out of vanity. This one I didn't even skim to the end to see if it got better. The excerpt I read on Amazon was promising enough for me to buy the book. I am also a Smiley fan and have read and enjoyed most of her books. And I don't mind reading a novel about real estate in the 80's, although I was quite young then. I would read a book by Smiley about filing tax returns, at least I would give it a decent chance before puttting it aside.

This book was just - dull. It made no impression on me, except that I could think of half a dozen things I'd rather be doing. I didn't even care enough to hate it or get angry that it had wasted my time.

The three stars are because Smiley on a bad day still writes better than most writers on a good day. It's well-written just not interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautifully written Disappointment
Review: I have been an unabashed Jane Smiley fan for many years. I thought that "Moo" and "Horse Heaven" were two of the best novels of the past ten years. I am sorry I can't say that about "Good Faith." Jane Smiley is one of our best writers so it came as no surprise that this novel was well observed and crisply written. But it seemed to me that Ms. Smiley didn't have much to say. The '80s were a time in which many small time business people got in over their heads and when the bubble burst -- as bubbles inevitably must - failed, as a lot of banks and savings and loans who ill-advisedly lent them money did as well. Joe Stratford, the easygoing protagonist, is a real estate broker who goes into business with a charismatic and, as it turns out, crooked ex IRS agent, Marcus Burns. Most of the book is spent describing the details of the purchase of a large estate for development, the development itself and, finally, the crash and its aftermath. Beyond that, there was not much in "Good Faith." To me the 400 plus pages that Smiley spent on the dreary details of a business failure were hardly more interesting than the foregoing short description - that is not very interesting at all.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful bits, but boring overall
Review: I, too, am a Smiley fan: the Age of Grief is spectacular (and Moo hilarious), and this book started along similarly spare, beautiful lines. And the goal: to probe big issues of trust, infidelity (as always, with her), and business through reallllly small time real estate in northern PA - it's a noble one.

It seemed like she got the details right, and Joe, her flat, dull, straightforward hero, was to me at her most engaging when he talked about the random sales he was making at the beginning of the book. My two largest problems:
- too talky. The whole thing is dialogue, essentially, and dialogue ultimately about a particular real estate transaction in far too much detail. We're supposed to get the hang of Marcus (the interloping deal-crazy source of action) and Joe through their talk, but it's just talk, no distinctive voices, no distinctive observations, long paragraphs, etc. The exception here is Felicity, the temptress, but her sing-songy weirdness was, though distinctive, not very plausible. Or alluring.
- too flat. Exhibit A here is all the attention given to food. The food's always boring. It's burgers and fries and other sandwiches and potato chips. And yet people are always going to eat, where they can have long, long conversations over uninteresting, uninterestingly described food, which nonetheless earns pages of copy.

So in the end, I stopped caring. I did finish the book, and good on Jane Smiley for putting me in a world, and engaging difficult issues, but this book should have been more written. And shorter.

Three stars, though, only because I hold her to very high standards. You won't feel like someone stole your time if you read this.