Short story fans, beware. Jane Smiley has assembled one of the oddest collections of stories ever between two covers. Obviously the original magazines already committed to these authors and stories by publishing them, but for Smiley to call them "best" is unsettling. I thought the first story, Daniel Orozco's "Orientation" (Seattle Review), was the best piece in the book--a knockout tour de force. I also really liked Ellie Gilchrist's "The Stucco House" (Atlantic) and Max Garland's "Chiromancy" (New England Review). Some were near misses for me that some of my students liked (I taught the book in Creative Writing): Kincaid's, Davies', Braverman's. I was shocked to see not one but two creepy stories about grotesquely injured legs allowed to go untended (by Polansky and Dobyns), and Thon's "First, Body" (on a hospital worker who gets trapped under a dead body) is the first story in a BASS anthology I gave a "O" to on a scale of one to ten-- sickening to read. Cozine's very sad tale of a young man's masturbatory personality disorder split my class--some felt it neatly caught gen-x malaise, but one "even hated the paper it was printed on." Well-known writers like Jones, DeLillo, Williams and Jen are not at their best in their contributions here. And why the Atlantic published the farfetched TV-style slick suspense tale "The Artist" (by Falco) is beyond me. I have already found some stories on the 100 title short list at the end I like much better than most of the ones selected. But read the book for yourself and make up your own mind. One thing's for sure: according to these writers, at least, American families are in very deep trouble

My review of this collection is completely biased because of the fact that I appear as a character in one of the short stories. The story is "Hand Jive" by Andrew Cozine and he mentions me by name with the claim that he and I were the smartest students in school. He also goes on to criticize the superhero I created in third grade, for having "too many powers." Unfortunately, my review is tempered by the fact that he incorrectly remembered my superhero's name as "Boy" when I of course know that the real nom de plume was "Comet Boy". As a participant in what is actually an autobiographical story by the author, it is sad to read about the all the personal quirks that tormented Andrew during his life. I'm happy to report that he has turned into a normal, well-adjusted adult (or at least so he seems.)

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.

I can't say that I've enjoyed all of Jane Smiley's books, but I like them enough to always look forward to her newest. I had no idea what GOOD FAITH was about, but when I started reading it at the bookstore it was something I thought I could sink my teeth into. I wasn't wrong, but I have to admit, it took some doing. I also have to admit that there were a few pages that got turned without me reading them just so I could get to the next part. Not many, but a few.

Jane Smiley does build some momentum and it got to the point where I wanted to find out what was going to happen next and how. The main character, Joe, was likable (something that's important to most readers, I believe) and realistic. A simple man with a simple life.

Like Smiley's other books, this is well done and although I found the story a bit unusual, I liked it in the end.

REVIEWED BY ERIN MENDELL ...

Imagine a world where tapas are still exotic, where only a few - those who studied art in Spain - have discovered dried cranberries and no one drinks bottled water. Remember the '80s?
"Good Faith," Jane Smiley's 12th book, follows Joe Stratford, a moderately successful real estate agent in small-town New Jersey, as he is spurred by Marcus, a fashionable newcomer, to invest in developing a high-end neighborhood. Two years into President Reagan's first term, people are ready to buy houses again. They want to live on golf courses. The company they form with Gordon, Joe's surrogate father and a local developer, will make billions.
Their venture is, of course, doomed, and there are pleny of inside jokes of hindsight. Marcus' sister Jane explains junk bonds to Joe (wink). Gold is the safest place to put your money (wink-wink). Deregulating savings and loans will make us all rich in a low-risk way (wink-wink-wink).
Oh, the dramatic irony.
Miss Smiley is good at doom. She does not doom relationships nor businesses. She dooms people. Her characters lose their reputations, their lovers, their dogs. Their most sacred ideals are turned upside down. And when they are bloodied and writhing on their tiled floors trimmed with marble, the writer kicks them one more time for good measure. It's tragedy (the Greek kind), but she avoids melodrama by having Joe, the narrator, present his story with a sigh, as if it couldn't have happened any other way.
Unfortunately, a story - even one as well-made as this one - about real estate has great potential for being boring. And for all its foreshadowing of how the '80s end, "Good Faith" has none of the eerie foreboding that makes "A Thousand Acres," which also centers on land and for which Miss Smiley won the Pulitzer Prize, so exhilarating.
By Page 100, the reader has peeked into the financial statements, bank accounts and mortgage applications for several homebuyers. There's a point to it -that this is the way Joe has been trained to categorize people, the same way Brett Easton Ellis would reduce them to a pair of designer sunglasses and a tan; that this begins a new financial era. But it's a dry point. The details pile onto one another so that it's hard to remember - or care - what the last thing that happened was.
Struggling to climb out from under all those details are some beautiful descriptions. Joe has an affair with Felicity, Gordon's married daughter, whom he has known for decades. Parked outside her house one evening, he is hit by the life she leads most of the time, with her husband, Hank, and their two sons.
"The life Felicity and Hank and Clark and Jason lived on Nut Hollow Road involved sports equipment lying in the yard, a light on in the upstairs window when all the cars were gone, a half-full wheelbarrow next to a flower bed, a sweater draped over the porch railing - many things going on, some of them not finished, tasks put off in favor of, I am sure, more interesting things." Thoughts like that get to breathe when Miss Smiley allows the reader to forget she's making a point about how badly this decade will end.
That point itself manages to be both timely and far removed. The real estate bubble might as well be the tech bubble. References to round-trip sales evoke Enron Corp. When Marcus tells Joe, "'Accountants are in the business of making sure the books balance. That's all. You could [borrow money from a company], but if the books balanced, the accountant would have done his job,'" the ghost of Arthur Andersen lingers over the page.
Despite its relevance, "Good Faith" is hard to relate to because most of the people aren't compelling. Joe isn't all that interesting. He's a nice, trustworthy guy, which is a fine thing for him to be if he's going to marry your daughter but not if he's going to be your tour guide for 400 pages. Marcus is a man who's a little too coordinated. Even Felicity, who at first seems like she has the potential to be intriguing, turns out to be only unhappy and weird, albeit charmingly so.
The characters with the best ability to draw the reader in - a couple, both named David, who have things other than real estate and development on their minds - spend too little time onstage, and when they're around, Miss Smiley often falls back on [the typical]. They spend their weekends fixing up their second house.
They have a friend in New York who needs a place to store costumes. They travel in the same circle as an up-and-coming designer named Yves. And because they are usually referred to as "the Davids," their identities get lost. It's not clear why the Davids are around other than, perhaps, to remind the reader that ... (male) couples are the harbinger of trends.
Amid all the unhappiness, the saddest part of Joe's story is how content he is. His high school girlfriend taught him how to dress; Gordon got him started in business; Felicity decided they would have an affair. Joe is brought deeper and deeper into Marcus' development idea without being dazzled by the billions of dollars Marcus keeps bringing up, his motivation being that he is dazzled by Marcus' friendship.
Joe is a man whom things happen to, and though he eventually begins to pursue the project (and his life) actively instead of just reactively, that proves a short-term development brought on by a desire to be like someone else, Marcus. In the end, nothing has changed, and the protagonist hasn't developed into a person.

im sorry jane-but this book was so boring. you develop the characters for the first 6 chapters and nothing really happens in those chapters. I mean john screws up, margaret crys, henry spys on John, kate and axel fight and thats about it. the last chapter is alright but there's no point to the book. All it does is just explain this family's daily life and it talks way too much about horses. So, unless you have a couple hours to spare (even though i just summarized the book) and your sanity, buy a different book.

This book literally haunted me. I found myself constantly thinking about the characters days after I finished it. It is a quiet kind of story, packed with repressed emotions, and somehow the ending felt cathartic although not immediately so. I could see chaos in this large rambling horse farm family and I could put together the events with a clarity I did not feel the moment I finished the book. It took awhile, and slowly these people took more shape and I began to understand more and feel the story's latent ending. I was intrigued by the family dynamics, the dominant mother/trainer, the passive, ever-loving, forgiving father, and each child responding in the only way their personalities would allow to the intensity of their demanding mother. The end was powerful. I reflected on the father holding his head in his hands as he realized there was no end in sight to his wife's sovereignity and determination to carry on at any cost. I crave a sequel, yet I already know it. It is the epitome of barn blind.

I have no great interest in horses, but my daughter does, so I found the horse aspects interesting. I have no idea if it was accurate, and the "convenient abrupt ending" another reviewer alluded to I found to make perfect sense with the flow of the rest of the novel. Throughout there was a sense that *something* was going occur and it was going to be very important, and well, finally it did. I didn't like the characters themselves a lot either, with the exception of Axel, but only when reading "Women in Love" by DH Lawrence, has that really mattered to me. I found the characters interesting and on the edge of transformation. What I really did wonder about through out was why Henry wasn't riding, but maybe he didn't know, and neither did anyone else, so why should we? My major objection to the edition I had was the cover. The farm in the book is a horse farm; the farmm on the cover was a crop farm.