Customer Reviews

Good Faith

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Outrageous versatility is not something we readers look for in our favorite authors, but Jane Smiley, in book after book after book, refuses to be pinned down. She can write pathos, tragedy, slapstick, satire, mystery... Where will it end? Never and nowhere, we hope.
This is a novel about greed in the 80s, that decade when it seemed the Good Times would roll on forever. The story concerns an amiable, trusting, 'good' man who is lured down the shady paths of easy money. It's a story about principles, ambition viewed through the gauzy curtain that hides (not very well) The American Dream.
Smiley scores again.

My only complaint is that the book rushed itself to a conclusion. We spent hundreds of pages establishing (and destroying) relationships, exploring secrets, waiting waiting waiting for a happy ending... and the book takes care of all the open loops in the last 25 pages. Just didn't seem fair to the characters. Wouldn't they have more to say about what happens to them?

Otherwise: fun, a trip through the 80s, a reminder of how good fortune can make any of us crazy for just long enough to make a big mistake.

Jane Smiley tackles different material with almost every novel. Her Pulitzer-winning novel A Thousand Acres was a deft portayal of the demise of a family farm, her last effort explored the world of horse racing, and now she brings us into the 1980s world of real estate development in Good Faith. While her novels are captivating cultural history, it's her characters that remain her strength.

I know Joe. Sure, my friend isn't named Joe and isn't a real estate agent, but I know decent people like Joe who have a gift for the largely unrecognized jobs they do and who realize, at some point, that they're doing pretty well financially. In fact, recent polls suggest the vast majority of us, even those who are statistically lower class or in the upper percetages of incomes consider ourselves middle class but still not as well off as our friends. And I know a Marcus, too, who's a smooth-talking, good-natured fellow who inspires loyalty in people for no logical reason. And I know a Felicity or two who married because nearly everyone does but who doesn't quite fit the frat house her homelife seems to be. I know a few Betty and Gordon couples and the Davids as well. So, Smiley's characters have a vague familiarity, even as they each are distinct and engaging.

Even more importantly, Smiley understands the small, odd traits that people find attractive or off-putting in each other. When, for instance, Felicity reveals that she's not kind but that she is affectionate, we understand something about human behavior that we hadn't quite noticed before. Little moments like this one drive the novel seemingly effortlessly.

While I had no knowledge of and little interest in real estate, the characters and the impending demise or success of their business dealings drew me in. By the end, I even found the so-called topic of the novel relevant to recent economic events in the stock market and to political issues such as allowing for individual investment choices for social security. Now, thanks to Smiley, I also understand anew how people are shaped by economic events and how we make some of the major decisions of our lives.

Good Faith is a great read. The overt topic may be real estate development, but the novel's real subjects are relationships in many varieties. Just as you didn't need to know about Iowa farms to appreciate A Thousand Acres nor know about dentistry to enjoy The Age of Grief, if you're interested in a good story with realistic characters, you'll like Good Faith.

I hear, by the way, that a film version of The Age of Grief is forthcoming. To my mind, her novellas (that one and Ordinary Love & Good Will) are Smiley's strongest writing.

Anyone who has read "Moo" or "A Thousand Acres" can attest to Jane Smiley's ability as a writer. Her plots are interesting, her characters enthralling and her writing as fluid as a warm country lake. "Good Faith" is a dog. An old, lazy dog. Not even Jane Smiley can turn the S&L scandal and a real estate deal into a lively, engrossing book. I never thought I'd skip pages in a Smiley book, but the last 60 pages of this book was so dull I wanted to gnaw off my limbs. The plot is hidden under a dusty quilt of minutiae and the characters are as insipid as those surrounding the Whitewater fiasco. If you haven't read Jane before -- don't read this one. Choose another because she has truly given us some of the best books ever written.

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 expected big things from this book after reading a glowing

review in the San Jose Mercury News. It was supposed to be a

cautionary tale on 80's greed, about how a good guy gets caught

up in financial roulette. It didn't read that way to me. The

business transactions seemed pretty routine for your average

entrepreneur. I'm not sure the main character is really all that good of a guy.

And the ending felt anti-climatic to me. I was like:

"Is that it?" The author does build up some interesting characters

and some interesting situations, and she can write some vivid

scenes, but I felt generally disappointed when I finished reading

it.

I just finished reading Jane Smiley's novel Good Faith, and found it to be an interesting read on many levels.

I have read other of Smiley's books, and she fills each of them with meticulous detail that helps the reader create a vivid world for her characters to inhabit. The last book of hers I read, Horse Sense, was a very detailed look at horse racing framed by the relationships of people -- as well as the horses -- involved in the sport. This time, Smiley painstakingly recreates the world of late seventies early eighties real estate in the Northeast. I was really just a wee child during that time in history, but I could appreciate that setting as one for a story of real estate, money, wealth, sex, greed, adultery, deceit... and some other stuff.

Good Faith did not turn out to be the novel I thought it was when I picked it up at a used bookstore. The cover depicts two pairs of feet, a man in black pants and shoes and a woman barefoot in a white dress. The picture, juxtaposed with the title, suggests a novel about marriage and fidelity, but the book is about so much more. What I like about this book is that the title suits the book in many ways, and the idea of good faith becomes a metaphor or analogy that can be applied to various elements of the story.

The lives of the characters that populate Good Faith are intertwining representations of faith. One part of the story does deal with fidelity and the faith of marriage and even the act of faith that is love. The plot centers on the faith that so many people had circa 1980-82 in the booming real estate market, and the amazing, risky, and downright dirty financial and social activity generated by this faith in the almighty dollar. This is also a story of faith of friendship, faith in oneself, and deep religious faith. Ultimately I think the story is one of having faith that everything will turn out OK in the end, despite life's ups and downs.

I enjoyed this book although it was a long read. I am a fast reader and, although I enjoyed the complex characterization and the amount of detail Smiley puts into describing houses and people and conversations, there was a point where I wanted the story to hurry up. I guess this is the suspense smiley wanted, though, because I did feel like I was inhabiting a world she created. It was a bit more boring than suspenseful at some points, but I found the end satisfying. I liked Horse Sense, more, however, because of the subject matter and would recommend that for a first time Smiley reader.

I would never have guessed that the author of this novel was a woman, so completely does Smiley take us into the man's world of property speculators, businessmen, and investors. Though a man myself, it is not a milieu that especially appeals to me, and it took me 50 pages or so to feel at home in the life and work of its Realtor hero, Joe Stratford. But he is such a likeable character that I was soon turning the pages, in fascination mingled equally with amusement and dread, to find out more about his story. Nor does it hurt that Marcus Burns, the antihero, combines a boldness of vision with the charisma of a true con man, as he rides this provincial community into the boom years of the early eighties, where even the thought of money gives rise to more money. As a time-capsule of the heady excesses of an era, the novel might have been written by Tom Wolfe (BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES or A MAN IN FULL) or Jonathan Franzen (THE 27th CITY or THE CORRECTIONS).

Even the sex in the book is shown from the man's point of view. I thought this a pity, because sex too often takes the place of romance, or the mental and emotional links between two human beings. The cautionary tale of this novel, in which an amoral adventurism battles with honesty and soundness for possession of the businessman hero's soul, is apparently echoed by his relationships with the two women in his life. One is an adulterous affair; the other a slow courtship heading towards marriage. But both are blurred by episodes, including the sex, in which the women become almost indistinguishable. So although the outcomes are not necessarily what one might have expected, one does not care enough about the women as individuals to experience more than a brief sigh of disappointment or smile of satisfaction.

Indeed, I agree with several other readers who have complained that the final sections of the entire book are negotiated too rapidly for what has gone before. For 370 pages, Jane Smiley has led us into the lives, hopes, and fears of people (especially the men) who seem real. It is disappointing to see her abandoning such nuance and detail in the last 50 pages for an ending that seems contrived to wrap up the plot and more or less restore the moral balance, but hardly seems to emerge as the inevitable consequence of character.

I, too, am a Smiley fan: the Age of Grief is spectacular (and Moo hilarious), and this book started along similarly spare, beautiful lines. And the goal: to probe big issues of trust, infidelity (as always, with her), and business through reallllly small time real estate in northern PA - it's a noble one.

It seemed like she got the details right, and Joe, her flat, dull, straightforward hero, was to me at her most engaging when he talked about the random sales he was making at the beginning of the book. My two largest problems:
- too talky. The whole thing is dialogue, essentially, and dialogue ultimately about a particular real estate transaction in far too much detail. We're supposed to get the hang of Marcus (the interloping deal-crazy source of action) and Joe through their talk, but it's just talk, no distinctive voices, no distinctive observations, long paragraphs, etc. The exception here is Felicity, the temptress, but her sing-songy weirdness was, though distinctive, not very plausible. Or alluring.
- too flat. Exhibit A here is all the attention given to food. The food's always boring. It's burgers and fries and other sandwiches and potato chips. And yet people are always going to eat, where they can have long, long conversations over uninteresting, uninterestingly described food, which nonetheless earns pages of copy.

So in the end, I stopped caring. I did finish the book, and good on Jane Smiley for putting me in a world, and engaging difficult issues, but this book should have been more written. And shorter.

Three stars, though, only because I hold her to very high standards. You won't feel like someone stole your time if you read this.

This is my first Smiley novel and I loved it! I thought she did a wonderful job setting up her characters and environment. I really felt I was in a rural community in the early 1980s before our world had succumbed to the "Pottery Barn" syndrome where we all have the newest doorknobs and furniture placed just so.

I was intrigued with the "likeable" real estate agent, Joe. In my opinion, he was as much to blame for what happened as was Marcus! He was interesting to watch because he evidently had a lifetime habit of not being involved or being passionate about anything! His parents were very passionate about their faith, JOe had no passion for God. His ex-wife was very opinionated, Joe simply complied. In real estate, he never seemed too caught up in closing a deal. He was successful at real estate because of his ability to stay detached from the deal! Even with Felicity, he sat back and rode out her affections and at the first sign of her backing off, she never heard from him again, even though he was crazy about her. Talk about the walking dead!

Now, this guy Marcus comes to town and he just passively goes along with all of Marcus' ideas? I think he was curious to see how far it could go even though he professionally saw that it was surely headed for destruction! What a weak man.

I think Jane Smiley did a great job of catching a small town man at a time in his life when he was ready for something interesting to happen, but didn't know how to start it.

I agree that the wrap-up of the crises was disappointing, but workable. All in all, I found this a gread story.