Golden Age

Ask me.  Go ahead and ask me. Did I like reading Golden Age by Jane Smiley; the third in a trilogy of the Langdon family from 1920 to 2020?  No, I didn't like it.  I loved it.  I came to the end in trepidation like a good weekend coming to Sunday night at 9 p.m. or the last piece of a really great pizza.  I'm so lonely without reading about the Langdons.  This book was from 1987 to 2020. Excellent book.  There was drama, politics, farm economy, intrigue, family dynamics so strong that as I read the book I said aloud, "I can't believe this is happening!"    Obviously I didn't expect Richie and Michael Langdon to act the way they acted.  Smiley's interpretation of history is very interesting.  When she writes about the 2016 election results coming in late because of a close vote, for a minute I forget this is fiction and no one knows who the next president will be. She obviously hates Monsanto's corporate policies and the way it has pressured people to use glycophate.  Incidentally I read on the news that we are finding glycophate (Round Up) in food products now.  So for a few years glycophate using farmers got better yields because of the weed reduction but now weeds have grown to be resistant to it and we have more weeds plus more cancers too.  Her book details the death of the family farm and it was very sad to read how the Langdon farm ended up in foreclosure and part of a corporate farm.  Sad yet real because these kinds of things are happening all around the Midwest.  Global warming, weather disruptions, fires on the plains in Canada; Smiley is correct when she writes about these events.  I suspect someday this trilogy will be part of the classic American literature and I look forward to the day I find a book as entertaining as these three books have been.