The Washington Post – Marie Arana

Smiley's virtuosity should be no surprise to us. She has proven herself in a dozen wildly different books?But Private Life is a quantum leap for this author, a book that?burrows deep into the psyche and stays. It kept me up all night, long after I'd finished it, remembering the lives of my mother and grandmothers, recalling every novel about women I had ever read, from Anna Karenina to My Antonia. In a fair world, it will get all the readers it deserves. It's not often that a work as exceptional as this comes along in contemporary American letters.