The age of grief

Literary fiction

Print length: 213 pagesAnchor Books, 2002

Description

Five short stories and a title novella examine relationships at the moment when affection becomes inseparable from uncertainty. In the novella, Dave and Dana are married dentists whose shared practice and family life appear secure until Dave begins to suspect that Dana is having an affair. Unable to confirm or dismiss his fear, he watches ordinary domestic routines acquire painful new meanings while considering what love demands when trust falters. Elsewhere, separation, disruptive attraction, and the desire for independence unsettle people who believed they understood their own commitments. Smiley approaches these crises through intimate observation rather than melodrama, tracing the compromises, evasions, and flashes of tenderness through which adults endure emotional change. The collection’s connecting subject is grief not simply as bereavement, but as a stage within love itself.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Lyrical · Spare

Pace

Measured

Tone

Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective · Wistful

Structure

Anthology

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

FreedomGriefIdentityLoveMarriage

About Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is an American novelist whose fiction ranges from family tragedy and intimate studies of marriage to broad institutional satire. Across these forms, she examines apparently stable social worlds under pressure, tracing how inheritance, ambition, money, desire, and private grievance reshape relationships. She adjusts her narrative method to the scale of the subject: A Thousand Acres uses Ginny’s first-person perspective to recast King Lear on an Iowa farm, while Moo distributes attention across more than a dozen plots to portray a Midwestern university as a network of competing interests. The Age of Grief narrows the focus, allowing marital uncertainty to gather through ordinary domestic routines. Her nonfiction extends this attention to the novel itself. Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel considers its history and nature across a span from The Tale of Genji to contemporary American women’s writing.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Anchor Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780385721875

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