In Jane Smiley's rock 'n' roll novel, does good sense make good fiction?
Los Angeles Times -

Toward the end of Jane Smiley’s new novel, “Lucky,” its narrator takes a moment to flip through her mother’s record collection. It’s got a lot of ’60s folk-rock, including, she notes, “the four J’s.” Presumably she means artists like Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Janis Ian. But maybe one of the J’s is the narrator herself — Jodie Rattler, a moderately famous singer with a knack for writing melancholy love songs. “Lucky” is framed as a rock ’n' roll novel, but it’s a tricky and...

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