
Some Luck
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $20.25
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lorelei King
-
By:
-
Jane Smiley
About this listen
Longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize: a powerful, engrossing new novel - the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America.
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different children: from Frank, the handsome, willful first born, and Joe, whose love of animals and the land sustains him, to Claire, who earns a special place in her father’s heart.
Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and going up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change. As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts of America, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: One moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis; later still, a girl you’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own, and you discover that your laughter and your admiration for all these lives are mixing with tears.
Some Luck delivers on everything we look for in a work of fiction. Taking us through cycles of births and deaths, passions and betrayals, among characters we come to know inside and out, it is a tour de force that stands wholly on its own. But it is also the first part of a dazzling epic trilogy - a literary adventure that will span a century in America: an astonishing feat of storytelling by a beloved writer at the height of her powers.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2014 Jane Smiley (P)2014 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Perestroika in Paris
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals - and a young boy - whose lives intersect in Paris.
-
-
C’est Si Bon
- By Snorkel Queen on 12-28-20
By: Jane Smiley
-
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive - a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
-
-
Couldn't put it down, didn't want to finish
- By Barbara Nash on 05-08-22
By: Jane Smiley
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Ordinary Love and Good Will
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman's infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will describes a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
-
-
Superb Novellas
- By Sharlotte on 01-29-21
By: Jane Smiley
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Perestroika in Paris
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals - and a young boy - whose lives intersect in Paris.
-
-
C’est Si Bon
- By Snorkel Queen on 12-28-20
By: Jane Smiley
-
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive - a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
-
-
Couldn't put it down, didn't want to finish
- By Barbara Nash on 05-08-22
By: Jane Smiley
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
Ordinary Love and Good Will
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Ordinary Love, Smiley focuses on a woman's infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will describes a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
-
-
Superb Novellas
- By Sharlotte on 01-29-21
By: Jane Smiley
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
Horse
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
-
-
Love Geraldine Brooks
- By Regina on 06-25-22
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
The Bean Trees
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.
-
-
Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
- By Nancy on 02-22-12
-
Horse Heaven
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Shelley Thompson
- Length: 25 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many astonishing and affecting things happen at the racetrack, and the mysterious universe of horse racing, passionate, cold-hearted, pure, corrupt, is woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and reckless courage. Spanning two years on the circuit, from Kentucky and California to New York and Paris, Horse Heaven, puts us among trainers, nervey jockeys, billionaire breeders, and restless track wives.
-
-
I wish I could review book and narrator separately
- By Julie Delio on 03-21-07
By: Jane Smiley
-
Tallgrass
- By: Sandra Dallas
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During World War II, a family finds life turned upside-down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes turn on the newcomers. Rennie has just turned thirteen and until this time, life has pretty much been predictable and fair. But the winds of change are coming, and with them, a shift in her perspective and a discovery of secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas is a riveting exploration of the darkest—and best—parts of the human heart.
-
-
A nice read
- By Daniel W. Eggemeier on 05-24-07
By: Sandra Dallas
-
The Bee Sting
- A Novel
- By: Paul Murray
- Narrated by: Heather O’Sullivan, Barry Fitzgerald, Beau Holland, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
-
-
Bone Clocks meets Jonathan Franzen
- By Cranson on 10-26-23
By: Paul Murray
-
The Secret Chord
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With more than two million copies of her novels sold, New York Times best-selling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, Brooks takes on one of literature's richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.
-
-
Fictional Narrative of a great biblical character
- By Mildred Enriquez on 12-28-16
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
The 272
- The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church
- By: Rachel L. Swarns
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, what is now Georgetown University. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion.
-
-
Hard, but absolutely worthwhile.
- By Michael S. Henderson on 09-06-23
By: Rachel L. Swarns
-
Orphan Train
- A Novel
- By: Christina Baker Kline
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.
-
-
Moving story of sharing and transformation.
- By Kathi on 04-03-13
-
The Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
-
-
Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bon Ami on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
-
Little Fires Everywhere
- By: Celeste Ng
- Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.
-
-
Boring and Drawn Out!!!
- By M. Ryder on 10-05-17
By: Celeste Ng
-
His Dark Materials: Once upon a Time in the North
- By: Philip Pullman
- Narrated by: David Harewood
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this prequel episode from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials universe, Lee Scoresby—Texan aeronaut and future friend to Lyra Belacqua—is just 24 years old, and he's recently won his hot-air balloon in a poker game. He finds himself floating North to the windswept Arctic island of Novy Odense, where he and his hare daemon Hester are quickly tangled in a deadly plot involving an oil magnate, a corrupt mayoral candidate, and Lee's longtime nemesis from the Dakota Country, a hired killer with at least twenty murders to his name.
-
-
Great story
- By Wendy Strgar, sagebrushbooks on 10-04-24
By: Philip Pullman
-
The Lake House
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 21 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented fourteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure ...One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.
-
-
Enjoyed the writing, but oy vey, this book
- By Jennifer S on 12-28-18
By: Kate Morton
Critic reviews
Featured Article: Best Book Trilogies to Listen to Right Now
Here's why good things come in threes! Everyone knows the famous expression "Three's a crowd!"—but that sentiment doesn't ring true when it comes to books. But what are the best trilogies of all time? With thousands of amazing trilogies out there, it's hard to narrow it down. We’ve compiled some book trilogies that represent the best of the best—and don’t worry about spoilers; we’ve only described the first book of the series in each entry.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Perestroika in Paris
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals - and a young boy - whose lives intersect in Paris.
-
-
C’est Si Bon
- By Snorkel Queen on 12-28-20
By: Jane Smiley
-
Moo
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone at the large agricultural college dubbed Moo U. has an agenda. Whether it's massaging data, running secret experiments, or seducing the powerful, each person is dedicated to a plan. Meet Dr. Lionel Gift, who feels that his economic principles come directly from God. Visit with "Earl Butz", who is being groomed to be the biggest hog in history. Mull over The Common Wisdom, what every secretary knows. As these agendas begin to collide, Moo trots toward a deliciously loony climax.
-
-
Totally hilarious and too true
- By Barry on 09-14-12
By: Jane Smiley
-
A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
-
-
good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
-
A Dangerous Business
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can’t resist confronting.
-
-
Just dumb
- By J wilson on 12-14-22
By: Jane Smiley
-
The Greenlanders
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 27 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the 14th century in Europe's most farflung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family - proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable audiobook.
-
-
First-rate! You will be transported
- By Michon Matthiesen on 06-12-18
By: Jane Smiley
-
The Fifth Season
- The Broken Earth, Book 1
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
-
-
The Nay-Sayers are Wrong.
- By Steve Groves on 02-10-20
By: N. K. Jemisin
-
Perestroika in Paris
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres and the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years Trilogy, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals - and a young boy - whose lives intersect in Paris.
-
-
C’est Si Bon
- By Snorkel Queen on 12-28-20
By: Jane Smiley
-
Moo
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone at the large agricultural college dubbed Moo U. has an agenda. Whether it's massaging data, running secret experiments, or seducing the powerful, each person is dedicated to a plan. Meet Dr. Lionel Gift, who feels that his economic principles come directly from God. Visit with "Earl Butz", who is being groomed to be the biggest hog in history. Mull over The Common Wisdom, what every secretary knows. As these agendas begin to collide, Moo trots toward a deliciously loony climax.
-
-
Totally hilarious and too true
- By Barry on 09-14-12
By: Jane Smiley
-
A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
-
-
good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
-
A Dangerous Business
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Therese Plummer
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can’t resist confronting.
-
-
Just dumb
- By J wilson on 12-14-22
By: Jane Smiley
-
The Greenlanders
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 27 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the 14th century in Europe's most farflung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family - proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable audiobook.
-
-
First-rate! You will be transported
- By Michon Matthiesen on 06-12-18
By: Jane Smiley
-
The Fifth Season
- The Broken Earth, Book 1
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
-
-
The Nay-Sayers are Wrong.
- By Steve Groves on 02-10-20
By: N. K. Jemisin
What listeners say about Some Luck
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jacque
- 05-03-15
The ultimate historical novel set in America.
A bit slow at the beginning, I still loved this book. The story encompasses a familiar timeline - the historical period in which the people I love lived their lives. I particularly treasured the detail about daily tasks that technology has erased from our lives.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joe Kraus
- 12-12-15
More Effort than Inspiration
How could the performance have been better?
Lorelei King had a tendency here really to inhabit the children she was voicing. This takes far too long to develop characters who feel as if they have history and substance in any case, and that move exacerbated the novel's flaws.
Any additional comments?
I like to think of narrative as a technology, or a series of technologies. Part of what makes something like The Iliad so compelling is that, in addition to the power (and strangeness) of the story, we get it in so formal and archaic a way. Something like that is true as we move through the early novels, whether it’s Sterne (whose sometimes brilliant ‘technologies’ of inverted chronology get left behind for more than a century) or Scott and Austen, who set much of the pattern that others will follow. Then we start to get psychological novels, Realistic ones, and Naturalistic ones, before we move into stream-of-consciousness and other Modern technologies.
Anyway, that unintelligible prologue aside, what strikes me about Some Luck is that it’s a novel written in a now long-discarded technology. The gimmick here is that each chapter of the novel tells a different year in the life of a large (and ever-growing) family from Iowa. They grow through the different economic times, waxing and waning in fortune along with the country at large.
It’s a hugely ambitious project, an attempt to tell more or less the history of the last century from a distinct what-became-of-the-farm-family perspective. I admire that ambition, and – after a long while – come to enjoy some of what it relates. Smiley is a strong historical fiction writer, and she weaves in all sorts of arcane information, whether the nature of commodity prices in the middle 1930s or the advances in the manufacture of gun powder on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1940s.
Such ambition is hard-wired into this narrative technology, though, and we know this because an entire generation of writers attempted experiments in it. John Dos Passos was doing something that I find more successful and compelling (read Manhattan Transfer if you aren’t familiar with it) but a host of people in his wake wrote more mainstream, less experimental work. I think in particular of James Farrell, Meyer Levin, and the later Theodore Dreiser, but I’m sure there were others in what I think of as a kind of “Soviet Realism” school of American literature.
One consequence of the form is that we never quite get central characters. The “hero” instead is “the people” in one form or another. It’s an interesting effect, but I find it limited and, in the end, fairly spent. Smiley has some good anecdotes here, and she has the outlines of characters who might be interesting if they were developed, but she never dwells on anyone or anything long enough for it to take on the substance I look for in literature. This is a theory of quantity over quality, and the result is a kind of layering; the novel works by accretion, by adding new characters all the time and by relying on the course of history to move action forward.
By the end, there are elements to admire, but I don’t see how this could ever have been taken seriously for the National Book Award. I’d have abandoned it after 50 pages (and likely would have if I weren’t listening to it as an audiobook) except for the fact that I know Smiley to be one of our serious writers and because it was so tedious in the early going that I figured I had to be missing something of her project.
What I was missing, I think, is precisely this idea of her experimenting with narrative technology. But I say as well that it’s been done before – just as well, if not better, in the 1920s and 1930s – and I’m much more interested in seeing how other people have moved forward with the narrative technological potential that Dos Passos showed: with the decentered but deeply drawn characters of some of our best contemporary novelists like Colum McCann, Jennifer Egan, Eleanor Catton, and Richard Flanagan. Those writers are doing some of the best work I know, exploring the way deeply developed characters comprise larger communities of people, become collective heroes in complicated contexts; this, instead, feels like nostalgia, like a kind of dead end.
Some of the sequences here are solid – and there’s something to be said for the way the entire apparatus keeps moving forward. I like a lot of the farm-centered narrative, and I like the World War II sequences, but the Cold War subplot seems amateurish at best, and there are long stretches interrupting some of the experiences of characters we were made to care about earlier. In the end, I’m afraid, this seems more notable for its effort than for either its craft or its insight.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- KD Stinkypaws
- 09-05-15
Beautiful story
Well written and narrated. I thought it was a little slow and was going to be boring in the beginning but found myself continuously wanting to read more and falling in love with the book. I can't wait to read more!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- kamf
- 05-11-16
Great narrator & great story!
Great historical look at farm life in the 20's and 30's. Great characters and very descriptive details.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Placeholder
- 08-01-15
Great piece of Americana
The story of a family from the heart land against the background of US history.
The narrator's straight forward delivery was complimenting to be the story.
A real American novel.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- carlos montoya
- 08-15-22
Never understood it
Even though I liked the details and the writing, I failed to understand what the book was about. Walter? Frankie?
A trilogy? It’s a nope for me.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- Annette Wooden
- 05-06-15
Some Luck - Somewhat enjoyable
Nothing happens except their lives. Farm life described in detail - almost daily but still an enjoyable book once you understand nothing is going to happen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Johnny Kibler
- 10-01-18
Kind of a bore
I just couldn’t get into the characterizations or the story. I usually like Jane Smiley but I am safe from a trilogy.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- T. Gardiner
- 04-09-15
Engaging story
Narrator was expressive and easy to listen. I enjoyed the story so much that I listened to the book twice.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- PK 444
- 02-09-16
Sing-songy reading
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I can't recommend it because I couldn't bear the reader's style after 15 minutes.
What could Jane Smiley have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Use a better reader.
What didn’t you like about Lorelei King’s performance?
She reads it like a fairy tale: sing-songy, as if for children. There's a touch of irony in every phrasing and her voice did not settle into a normal tone even once. It was exasperating. And I see she's the reader for the whole trilogy! What a shame.
Any additional comments?
I made the error of not listening to a sample first or I would never have wasted a credit on this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!