Clocking in at almost 500 pages, “Early Warning,” the middle volume of Jane Smiley’s three-volume saga of the Langdon family, is a good reminder of our culture’s conflicted tastes. In an era of tweets, texts and flash fiction, the big, juicy novel is ascendant again. Calling the projected work three volumes rather than a trilogy may seem like a fine distinction, but “Early Warning” makes clear from its opening that it’s a continuation of last year’s “Some Luck,” and, as its title suggests, it foreshadows even more disasters, outrages and triumphs to come in the lives of Walter and Rosanna Langdon’s descendants.Read full article >>