All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

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Summary: the subject of the novel merits better writing than this
Review: the story of the wooing, wedding and widowing of young Lidie Newton in the tumultuous middle years of 19th century America is told by jane smiley at a frantic pace. Characterisation and credibility are weak: some of the key personalities such as Thomas Newton and Lidie's nephew Frank never come alive on the page, and to this reader at least the miscarriage suffered by Lidie and indeed her later return to Quincy read as news items inserted into the story rather than as integral to the development of the novel

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Summary: Try the Unabridged Tape
Review: I listened to the excellantly narrated unabridged version of this novel, and think it might be better than reading it. The dense political commentary is clearly and vividly read and may actually be more interesting than in text form.

While I, too, got ansy to get back to the story of Liddie and Thomas, I was also gratified to receive an education on the tangled history of Kansas/Missouri relations. I had no idea that this was part of our country's history.

Liddie's narrative was so genuine (and obviously well-researched)that I often forgot it was fiction. The details of homesteading, steamboat travel, and pioneer life are outstanding. The only reason for not awarding 5 stars is the proponderence of political detail, which was a bit of overkill. Still, historical fiction readers will not want to miss this one.

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Summary: Something rare - an accurate historical novel
Review: This is a great book, with excellent writing and grasp of details. I fear it won't get the acclaim it deserves, because the True History woven into this story is, even after 130 years, too hard to accept by most Americans.

And while Lidie's love story is sweet, I was fascinated by the way Ms Smiley explores the roots of Southern incalcitrance regarding slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights. If you wonder why it is that so many otherwise decent people remain so intractable over Civil Rights and issues of Race, this book does an excellent job of explaining some of it. Yes, it's a bit slow at times, but you know, our culture is too bloated on things like fast food and simple movies and short books. This is a nice one to savor and enjoy. If you find something that you really want to learn more about while you're reading it, it's ok to jump up and grab the encyclopedia or do some online research on it. Honest.

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Summary: Huck Finn, Meet Lidie Newton
Review: What American writer could without trepidation set a picaresque novel with a young protagonist in the region and time of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and in the telling take up the moral questions of slavery and abolition? Doing so invites unfavorable comparison with a master and a masterpiece, even invites mockery. Then, too, there is the question of how you could retell such a tale without descending too deeply into irony. Why would you head willingly into such dangerous territory? Who but a fool would do so?

Jane Smiley must certainly have considered these questions in writing The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton. She, the author of a number of exquisite books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres, is too talented a writer not to have known what she was getting into. That she chose to go forward in the face of such questions speaks volumes about her courage as a writer and about the importance of her undertaking.

In many ways, Smiley's courage is akin to that of her heroine, Lidie. Lidie Harkness's adventures begin in Quincy, Illinois, a river town where she is being raised by step sisters whose grudging charity seems to reach only as far as to endeavor to marry Lidie off and get her onto another family's ledger. Lidie is not the marrying kind, however. She is tall and plain and makes little effort to improve her appearance or her prospects for matrimony. She has neither talent for nor inclination toward domesticity. She cannot and does not care to sew, tat, cook or clean, the occupations of every other woman in her world.

With her young cousin Frank (a wonderfully drawn "wild boy" character with elements of Huck himself), she cultivates other, eventually far more useful, skills. She can walk far without tiring, shoot a rifle and ride better than most men. She's strong and bold enough to swim across the Mississippi in summer pool and utterly indifferent to the disapproval such unfeminine acts generate. We quickly come to love Lidie for h! er independence and strength.

Spinsterhood seems Lidie's lot until Thomas Newton happens into her life. He is an eastern abolitionist on his way to settle in Lawrence, K.T. (the Kansas Territories). The "goose question" is the issue of the century. Will Kansas come into the Union as free or slave? Thomas and his fellow abolitionists intend to people K.T. with free staters who may then vote the state into the morally correct column. A host of Missouri ruffians and other southerners invade K.T. equally intent on putting the state in their column.

Thomas is quick to spot Lidie's marvelous qualities. She in turn is drawn to this quiet, kind, purposeful man. We wonder, as does Lidie herself, how much of this attraction is love and how much is longing for the adventure of life in K.T. Lidie and Thomas marry and set off to the dangerous frontier of K. T. With that act, the story takes on a momentum much like the historical momentum driving free and slave states toward war. We know something important must happen and we want to stay with the story to see it out.

Smiley's narrative proceeds from this point with the quiet force and inevitability of a river making its way to the sea. She moves you down the page in rich three and four inch paragraphs that are like the glasses of river water her characters drink: clear at the top but dense enough to plow at bottom. At the top, we are taken with Lidie into the turmoil and adventure of K.T. It is populated with characters who might easily have stepped out of the pages of Huckleberry Finn, people who seem like they must have known Aunt Polly or encountered The Duke.

As the goose question heats up in K.T., violence erupts. Lawrence is sacked and someone close to Lidie is shot in cold blood. Lidie rips away her skirts, dons a man's clothing, shears off her long hair and, packing a deadly dragoon revolver, sets off into fiercely pro-slavery Missouri to find the killer and exact revenge.

However, this is not a tale of revenge. The real story, the one Smiley take! s so many risks to tell, is in the muddy depths of Lidie's emerging consciousness and the questions she asks herself. How can she value herself? What is her relationship to Thomas Newton? What is it to be married to someone you hardly know? What kind of creatures are men? What is love? How can good people differ so much on a moral question like slavery? Is all life happenstance, or can you choose to act in meaningful ways? What is there in death or after death? What surprises are there left in life?

I found myself reading ever more slowly as I followed Lidie's story. I wanted not to lose any bit of it, to savor it all. I was unsuccessful in that. It is just too rich to let go after a single reading. This is a book to buy and keep and read again and again.

I have a postscript for any Hollywood types who may read this. If you have any brains at all, get the screen rights to this story. It is linear in a way that lends itself perfectly to film. It is set in a powerful and compelling time. Most importantly, Lidie Newton is a character who can dominate the screen, capture the hearts of an audience and make an important statement. Such roles for women actors are too rare. Here is your chance to fix that.

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Summary: A great read!
Review: The range of issues covered by Jane Smiley in her last three works is extensive. She has gone from family relationships (A Thousand Acres) to academic institutions (Moo) to a much larger palette in this novel with her snapshot of Kansas in 1855. Although I found the first half of the novel at times tedious (possibly a reflection on the New England characters that frequent it?), the second half (where Lidie is on her own) is compeling. It is a fascinating study of her emerging self-awareness and self-worth. She learns in the process that life's situations are not black or white but most often gray.

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Summary: A woman's view of a crucial moment in American history
Review: Jane Smiley sets her novel in "Bleeding Kansas" before the Civil War and makes her readers appreciate what led up to that confict, its seeming inevitability and the consequences that are present even today. Her central character is not anachronistically feminist for the mid-19th century, but is still recognizable as a woman who finds traditional female roles unsatisfactory and who learns a commitment to freedom. Her awakening during her travels in Kansas and Missouri are at the heart of the book. Smiley does an amazing job in setting the scene and conveying to the reader the tension of the time.

This book should have been a bestseller, but didn't get great reviews in the big papers - I can't imagine why not, because it's very good.

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Summary:
Listen to Lidie Newton - Unabridged

Review: "Even 19 hours of `Lidie Newton' aren't enough. It's a rare audiobook that can hold your interest for 19 hours and still make you want more. And in an audiobook of any length, it's even more unusual when you can easily pick up the plot days later. This is one of those audiobooks. Reader Anna Fields superbly evokes a woman of that time and place. This is one for the permanent collection, an audiobook you may want to listen to again and again." -Associated Press

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Summary: Too much history not enough Lidie.
Review: I've been a fan of Jane Smiley's for a long time. This work reminds me of the Greenlanders- rich in historical detail but lacking the personal touch that made 1,000 Acres so moving.

The KT/abolitionist issue is well researched but I found myself skipping entire passages to get back to the story of Lidie and Thomas. I was able to put the book down and, indeed, finished it through sheer will. It's not bad but it's impersonal until the end when the author finally seems more connected to her heroine.

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Summary: Entertaining, but a bit too educational
Review: The writing in this book is excellent, the characters interesting and the situation new, at least to me. I especially enjoyed the first 150 pages. Eventually the story bogged down and had to be revived by a death that seems both inevitable and contrived. Anyhow, I kept reading through mounds of social and political history because I was hooked on the narrator. I'm glad I did.

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Summary: Smiley's Answer to Huck Finn?
Review: I have read elsewhere that Jane Smiley has taken offense to Twain's description of the relationship between Huck Finn and the slave Jim. In the Lidie Newton book Smiley has Lidie risk her life to help a slave escape her master. While not burning with the abolitionist fervor of her dead husband, Lidie cannot resist helping someone who wants to be free. This book provides interesting insights to the Kansas-Missouri troubles of the 1850s as well as a fascinating exposition of the social culture of the times. My only problem with the book is its ponderous pace. While Lidie has many exciting adventures we seem to travel through them with the speed of a Conestoga wagon. That aside, this is a book that truly deserves reading.