Hot property

Jenny Shank, Special To The News

Friday, April 25, 2003

Good Faith, Jane Smiley's new novel, concerns the quintessentially human journey of a man toward the realization that he was the sucker who was born that minute. Although Smiley has explored some of these themes previously, including divorce and power struggles among families and colleagues, Good Faith once again transports readers to an entirely different milieu than those of her earlier books.

From the exuberant horse world exposé of her last novel, Horse Heaven, to Moo, a satire of Midwestern academia, to her two historical novels, the Norse epic The Greenlanders and the 1850's pioneer tale The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, Smiley has never been content to return to the same setting and time period in her fiction. She is such an avid researcher that the reader never doubts her authority over the diverse subjects she tackles.

Good Faith opens in 1982, and is narrated by Joe Stratford, a moderately prosperous Realtor in an East Coast town. Stratford is recently divorced, affable, handsome, lives in a nondescript condo, and has few hobbies other than frequenting the Viceroy, his local bar of choice.

In a 2000 interview with Bookreporter.com, Smiley said writing her Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres was extremely difficult because the characters in it were in a constant state of conflict; Joe Stratford seems to be Smiley's solution to this problem. He is so easygoing that even during his troubled marriage he avoided confrontation, and declares, "I would probably still have been married if Sherry hadn't acted to unmarry me."

He is the only child of quiet, super-Christian parents who are prone to hosting missionaries and inviting elderly shut-ins to share holiday meals with them, and so, since childhood, Joe has gravitated toward the busy family of the wealthy entrepreneur Gordon Baldwin, the father of Joe's high school girlfriend.

Using the classic plot line, A Stranger Comes To Town, Smiley wrests Joe and the Baldwins from their stasis by introducing Marcus Burns, a slick-talking former IRS employee from New York who rolls into the neighborhood in his Caddy, wearing tasseled loafers and harboring the garish billionaire dreams that characterized the '80s.

When the owners of Salt Key Farm, a huge estate on the outskirts of town, put the land up for sale, Burns proposes to turn it into a massive upscale development project complete with a golf course and ritzy clubhouse, but he needs the help of Gordon Baldwin to finance it and Joe's good standing in the community to earn approval.

Gordon normally is a canny businessman; as Joe describes him, " . . . he just viewed every price as a starting point, and his greatest regrets had to do with having been suckered, as he thought, from time to time over the years."

But Marcus ingratiates himself by making the records of the back taxes Gordon owes magically disappear, and he even manages to rouse the phlegmatic Joe into a fervid interest in his get-rich-quick scheme.

The jaded reader, knowing that these boom times always end gruesomely, will cringe like a viewer of a horror movie at many of the decisions that Joe proceeds to make. But instead of shouting, "Don't go down to the dark cellar alone!", it's: "Keep your money away from that savings and loan!" and "Don't get involved in day trading! Think diversified, low-expense-ratio mutual funds, for God's sake."

Smiley keeps the reader, members of the community, and Joe vacillating between trust in and suspicion of Marcus Burns throughout the book.

While dreaming of riches, Joe begins an affair with Gordon's winsome daughter, Felicity, who is dissatisfied with her marriage, and Smiley expertly splices a series of racy sex scenes with the unfolding tale of real-estate-development intrigue. Although the parallels Smiley draws between sex and real estate are appropriately subtle, it's clear she agrees with the premise of Marjorie Garber's 2000 book, Sex And Real Estate: Why We Love Houses, which posits that transactions of the heart and those of real estate have numerous similarities.

In Good Faith, people long for homes they can't have, homes that wouldn't be good for them because they are too expensive or need massive renovation, homes that are more romantic and enticing than those in which they currently reside. Prospective homebuyers are restless, always hoping the perfect dwelling will be the next one Joe shows them.

Just as an average-looking person might feel vulnerable dating someone much better looking, "Very few buyers want something that is incredibly beautiful or well-done. They seem to feel they are just not up to it, somehow." And yet, people still yearn for that gorgeous mate or house, and as Joe observes, "The lesson of every rule was buy now if you possibly can, or buy up, or take a second job. Whatever boat you were trying to get on was steaming away to the promised land, and we Realtors had the tickets."

In one lovely scene that captures this real estate romance perfectly, Smiley describes the enchantment that a secluded Spanish-tile-roofed house works over a couple that had until then been persnickety, rejecting every home Joe showed them for months. "The Sloans came in from the balcony. They were holding hands and he was smiling, as if she had just made a joke. . . . We strolled through those bedrooms one more time, glanced at the bathrooms. On the first floor, we paused in each doorway as if saying good-bye. By the time we were done, the sunset was enormous in the windows. We went out. I locked the front door and put the key in my pocket. I walked the Sloans to their car, and we stood by the right taillight, lingering just a moment because it didn't seem proper to rush off."

The house has serious, possibly irreparable water damage, and Joe manages to dissuade the Sloans from buying it, but later Mr. Sloan is arrested for squatting in the house. Just as the Capulets and the Montagues couldn't keep their kids apart, sometimes there is just no coming between a man and a house.

A similar display of the emotions provoked by real estate is evident in a marvelous '80s bacchanal scene. A developer throws a party to celebrate the completion of his new, 6,000-square-foot home, inviting everyone to bring their swimsuits for use in his indoor pool. The guests become increasingly drunk, and begin to glory in their own power and wealth.

"The guests were divided about equally between developers and bankers, and everyone was turned on by the grandeur of the setting. . . . Dripping, holding canapés and glasses of wine, I listened in on conversations between virtually naked men I usually didn't ever see in anything but suits and work clothes. And every naked man was excited." The party ends with Joe's date naked in the pool and all the men staggering out to leer at her.

The only problem with Good Faith is that the stakes of this real- estate adventure are never very high for Joe. He has nothing to lose, no children to put through college, plenty of working years before retirement ahead, and solvent, responsible parents willing to lend him money until he can regain his footing. Because of this, the novel never achieves the heightened dramatic pitch of Smiley's A Thousand Acres, but it proves that it can be tremendous fun to read about a swindle when your own money isn't involved.

Jenny Shank's stories have appeared in "Michigan Quarterly Review," "CutBank," "Calyx," and other publications. She lives in Denver.