OK. So I finally finished this trilogy and am, overall, glad that I finished what I started.But was it great? No.The first book, where we were introduced to what was then a family unit of a size we could get to know, was pretty good (and made for an excellent book group discussion).I then decided to continue with the second book and now this final book. Each book was more disappointing than the one before.Yes, it's inevitable with a family saga that the cast of characters will grow as time passe...

The Langdon family finale. Nearly 100 years later and the family is exponentially expanded - the tree is off the page, I can’t remember one kid from the next or their slang names. It’s now the 1980s, everyone is making ridiculous money - so much success abounds - and then, inflation. So while the depression and world war depicted book one and wars and nuclear threat dominated book two, the finale is very much about financial rise and fall.Again, the swoosh of time rushing past is thematic. Chara...

The third and final novel in the Last Hundred Years Trilogy, Golden Age treats us to the last chapter in the long, sprawling history of the Langdon family. We first met them in 1918, right after WW1, and we have come to know the family, warts and all, in intimate detail. The cast of characters is huge, requiring frequent glimpses at the genealogy chart found at the front of the book. It is not surprising that many people die in this novel, considering we have been following them for so long. Of

I won a free copy of this book from the publisher through Goodreads. Thanks, PRH and Goodreads!I am conflicted about how to approach this novel. I'm a Jane Smiley fan and I loved the previous two books in the trilogy, Some Luck and Early Warning. This trilogy is about a farming family, the Langdons, as they expand and spread across the U.S. during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It covers the past hundred years of history and ends a few years in the future (2019). Smiley's writing is t...

Jane Smiley almost hits it out of the park with this one. As a whole, this trilogy has been an examplar of the power of realistic fiction--a saga of a family and its branches. It's well written and observed without suffering from the self-consciously clever MFA workshop overwriting that seems to be overwhelming younger literary fiction writers. (Irony, considering Smiley's own pedigree.) There are two things that make this last novel just short of a five star book. As the expanding family trees

I really liked the first book in this trilogy, which begins on an Iowa farm in the 1920s. The second book, which begins in the 50s and runs through the late 80s was far less interesting to me. It seemed that the focus switched from the characters themselves, to current events featuring them. One joins a cult, one goes to Vietnam, one is gay and deals with AIDS...cliched and a bit Forrest Gump-y. But I wanted to give it one last chance, and unfortunately the third book is worse. The characters--

Golden Age is the third and final book in Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga trilogy, which began with Some Luck. The Langdon family has spread far and wide since the first chapter of Some Luck opened in 1920, but both books start in the same place--the farm fields of Iowa. The story has now reached 1987, but by the end of the book Golden Age transports readers into the future, through to 2019, to complete the 100 years promised in the series name. Since family members are living al...

(This review contains spoilers out of spite).This novel is a huge disappointment. I’m a big cheerleader for the first two books. Smiley should have stopped with the second, which ends with bastard Charlie uniting with his lost birth family. The third book starts out strong with a family reunion, and it was fun seeing the whole gang back together. Again, Charlie was the catalyst.But it soon becomes clear that Smiley has run out of things to say. She has a couple of hobby horses – climate change a...

Alas, the final installment of the trilogy was my least favorite. There are a few reasons for this. One is simply that I didn’t like the third- and fourth-generation characters as much. Another is that, with such a large family tree, you get more lists of names and catch-up sessions. The intrusion of history is also more overt. I noted this in the 2011 chapter, especially, which mentions the Japanese earthquake, Utøya and the Occupy movement. One character dies on 9/11; another gets a flesh-eati...

This will be a review of the last book as well as the series as a whole.I enjoyed the 100 year journey with the Langdons, however . . . this story has almost no positive. War, early death, disease, alcoholism, financial crisis, adultery, divorce, murder, environmental disaster etc. etc. etc. are all found heavily throughout this series. While these are all facts of life, I can confidently say (and I even doubt that others who have read this would disagree) that there is almost no hope at all in

I'm not sure this book was a 5-star book on its own terms, but the 5 stars come from how much I loved this series and how sad I am that it is over. This is the third and final installment of Jane Smiley's 100 Years Saga and deals primarily with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Walter and Rosanna Langdon, the young couple at the beginning of book 1. As this family tree mushrooms outwards, the intimacy of the first installment is lost, but the sadness I felt about that – and confusion

I had paused in my reading of this third novel in the trilogy, and going back to it I realized why. In 2006, we had to follow one of the second cousins into Iraq. Not a fun place to be. I finally got up the courage to pick it up again, and am very glad I did. Just as amazing, albeit in a different way, as the first two in this classic trilogy. The prose has such a wonderful, rhythm, deceptively simple. Was it a Golden Age? As Claire points out, "...all golden ages were discovered within. No one

The final book in the Last Hundred Years trilogy. Completely heartbreaking. I know that in real life, things are never tied up in a nice tidy bow, but the ending to these books was especially devastating. Of course as the older generations age, there are going to be deaths. However, there are some especially shocking deaths that take place and not a lot of closure for me, as the reader. The middle of the book dragged for me somewhat, as the author delved into politics, the war on terror and the

I breezed through the first two books of the trilogy enjoying them as a wonderfully written family saga. Because each chapter takes place in a year, we see how major and not so major historical events touch various characters - sometimes with a major impact, sometimes only glancingly. Much the way events in the lather world effect us. At times the books are a trifle tedious, at other times they soar. The final book The Golden Age is more problematic. It's strength lies in the detailing of the 'l...

While I rate each of the three books in the triology a 4* read, I would probably give the series as a whole a 5* rating. Why? Because the triology is a family saga that experiences in some fashion most of the major historical events from 1920 through 2014. This is history as lived by those experiencing it. This series demands to be read in order. It seems the publisher, not the author, insisted on breaking it into 3 volumes. Perhaps that made sense, as if the three books were put together, it wo...

Spanning five generations of the Langdon family and 100 years, Golden Age by Jane Smiley is the final book in the trilogy that began with Some Luck and Early Warning.Golden Age opens in 1987 and goes into the future, 2019 for the 100 years. The previous two books in the trilogy covered 1920-1952 and 1953-1986. It must be made clear to anyone wanting to read this final book in the series that you really have to read the previous two novels first. What that means, in all honesty, is that you must

I loved this trilogy-- it was one of the most soulful and enjoyable reading experiences I've had in years. There is something very rare and special about following a group of characters-- a family-- at such a slow pace over such a long period of time. To experience so many characters (from their own perspective) being born and living a full life and then passing away makes you feel like you are one with them; there's nothing else like it. Smiley also has a way with language that every once in a

Two words describe Jane Smiley and her Last Hundred Years trilogy: sheer genius. I wavered after reading the first two books; I liked them immensely but wasn’t sure I could handle umpteen more Langdons over another 33-year period. I was wrong; “Golden Age” convinced me that Smiley’s effort was brilliant.The Langdons, in many ways Every Family, are impressively portrayed in thoughts and deeds, all touching something in us, whether admiration or aversion, connection or distance. The most familiar

I loved this book. I loved the entire series. Thinking about people and events evolving through time, some good, some bad, some a mixture-- and I'm talking about the people and events--certainly something to ponder. Just as I was starting to question the title of this book, Claire explained it--and I totally get it, having recently experienced a surprise party in honor of a new decade for me the same weekend as the awful terrorist attack in Paris. The Golden Age is personal--it is the joy experi...

I was surprised not to enjoy this one more. I guess I wasn't as invested in the new family members as I was in some of the originals (who obviously are starting to be few and far between at this point in the story). Smiley extends the story into the future and I actually found it distracting to figure out what what was going on in her future world politically and environmentally, etc. Mostly I think was just unsatisfied with the way several of the story lines ended. Not happy endings and they di...