Oh dear. This is a book I've been looking forward to all year, and in the event my disappointment is so keen that I wonder whether the author is the Jane Smiley I was thinking of, or if this one is another woman of the same name. My admiration for Jane Smiley is so high that I only reluctantly review this book at all. It is the one blot on a brilliant career.
The point of reviewing it, however, is that Jane Smiley ought to be able to write an extremely good book about Dickens. From the evidence of her novels, one would easily have concluded that she had carefully studied Dickens's methods, and had understood his complex and virtuoso techniques. Her books, particularly the recent ones, have a real mastery over Dickensian style. Horse Heaven, a sublime book, takes on a big Dickensian idea, of economic exchange and its human implications, and explores it with magnificent gusto through dozens of stories and a world of peculiar physical profusion. It really is a serious challenge to Bleak House.
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