Jane Smiley, you are my new favorite author.I picked this up on a whim at the library (slim paperback, easy to read while nursing), and ended up loving it. One, I love good dialogue, but I also love when an author can pick up on the subtleties (how a character is eating while they talk, or are they smoking, or whatever, and what does it mean), what our main character is thinking about as she watches the others (are they being genuine???), what memories are arising from this conversation, etc. And there were some complex relationships in this novel to build off of. Alice herself (our main character) annoyed me a bit (get over your ex, stop being so hopelessly infatuated with Susan, be normal with Henry, please) but she was so very realistic too that I wasn't mad at it. Even though obviously I don't approve of the murderer and the motivations behind the murder, there was some dark humor that I enjoyed. **SPOILER KIND OF** Basically: "They just wouldn't shut up about their stupid album. I couldn't hear it anymore." I mean, have we not all felt like that at some point? "If he says that once more, I swear I'm going to...""I love you." (That's Alice to Susan. I'm rolling my eyes.)"I know. I've thought about that phrase a lot. It flew around my apartment, I must say, with complete abandon. It never made a difference, never stood up to anything. Usually it meant 'you owe it to me to do what I say' or maybe, 'thanks for doing what I said.' I couldn't figure out what love was, or why anyone wanted it, even when I was saying it.""Susan! Is there anything else to your secret? You could have just left him!"Susan's eyebrows lifted and she shook her head. With a smile, she replied, "We were in love. Let's go, really."We were in love. Gaaaah.
I listened to this book, which may have largely contributed to my not really liking it. I didn't know anything about it and just picked it up at the library because I like Jane Smiley.The premise was somewhat interesting -- two musicians were found murdered in their NY apartment, and the list of people who had keys to the apartment was so long as to make it nearly impossible to reconstruct, and thus the list of possible suspects was equally long.The narrator, Alice, found the bodies of her friends, and the story was told from her p.o.v. The problem was that I just didn't find her character compelling, or even all that likeable. Worse still, the reader of this audiobook was singularly annoying. The voice she used only for Alice sounded like an elderly woman (possibly her attempt at making her sound shy and vulnerable?). In addition, she said grimace with a long A. The first time she said it, I thought I heard her wrong, but she went on to say it several more times. (I looked it up to see if that was an alternate pronunciation, and it turns out it is, but I still found it highly distracting.)As I progressed in the story, the CDs became more and more prone to skipping, which ultimately made the decision to stop listening halfway through an easy one.The highlight for me was learning two new words:sybaritic (adj.)1. (usually lowercase) pertaining to or characteristic of a sybarite; characterized by or loving luxury or sensuous pleasure: to wallow in sybaritic splendor.2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Sybaris or its inhabitants.adamantine (adj.)1. utterly unyielding or firm in attitude or opinion.2. too hard to cut, break, or pierce.3. like a diamond in luster.Interesting, but not enough to recommend.
What do You think about Duplicate Keys (2004)?
My first Smiley novel. This one was actually pretty good, better than I expected, but I must admit my expectations were not high. This book started strong, sucked me in and made me attached to Alice. I liked her, the divorced librarian originally from Minnesota and now taking on the Big Apple with a close-knit group of friends.Mystery and some twists kept me guessing about who the murderer/s might be and for a while I actually cared who did it. But just over half-way through this book went stagnant. Too many side dramas, too many other things to focus on and distract. The ending was disappointing. I expected more of a show down, more detective work, more denials, more near-death encounters or actual deaths... I expected anything else but the anti-climactic occurrences that are packed into the final chapters of this book.In the end I still like Alice and I was happy for her situation when I closed the back cover, but after starting the novel with a banging double murder, overall the ending could have been more of a page turner. I kept turning the pages to finish the book after reading that far, not to solve the mystery and find the killer... not the best reasons for pages to keep turning.
—Kelley
Listened to the audiobook from Recorded BooksNarrated By: Ruth Ann PhimisterJane Smiley’s talent for creating emotionally-gripping tales of family relationships was celebrated when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for A Thousand Acres (RB# 94792). In Duplicate Keys, Smiley displays her flair for creating a haunting mystery. Everyone has keys to Susan’s New York apartment: all her friends, and friends of friends. So one afternoon, when Alice unlocks Susan’s door to water the plants, she isn’t surprised to find two men sitting in the living room. However, that they are both dead is a shock. Now Alice must sort through a tangle of personal connections, schemes and motives to find the key to who killed them and why. As she talks with the police, the answer that starts to nag Alice is a chilling one. Ruth Ann Phimister’s narration underscores the finely-phrased atmosphere and suspense.
—Johnsergeant
Alice is from Rochester, MN and is a librarian at the New York Public Library in 1980, which allows Smiley to comment about libraries, librarians, and people from Minnesota. This mildly interested me. However, the mystery itself was of poor quality, and the characterization left me wishing that all of the hapless Minnesotan transplants were bumped off instead of just two. Excepting the studly and enthusiastic botanist (the love interest) and the stereotyped but clever detective, the cast ranges
—Ardys
