A book about the ordinary nothings that, in the end, are everything

We live in a world in which nuance is trampled on and cannot survive. Is that true? I don’t know. But the further point is, must authors now preface their novels with introductory letters, in which they carefully explain the central themes of their work? Epistolary prefaces in general are not remotely new: you often find editors and publicists addressing readers with disinterested solicitude. (‘We care about you dear reader and only want the best for you, Buy this book’).

Of course, Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer-prize-winning author of such novels as A Thousand Acres and The Greenlanders, is entitled to communicate with the reader in any way she likes. Yet, in turn, the reader might baulk just slightly at being told that ‘writing this novel and the two that will follow has been a pleasure and a revelation,’ or that ‘it thrills me to give them to you’.

Smiley also explains that Some Luck is the first volume in a trilogy called ‘The Last Hundred Years’, following a family from 1920 to 2020.