Jonathan Evison's Small World is an epic novel for now. Set against such iconic backdrops as the California gold rush, the development of the transcontinental railroad, and a speeding train of modern-day strangers forced together by fate, it is a grand entertainment that asks big questions.
The characters of Small World connect in the most intriguing and meaningful ways, winning, breaking, and winning our hearts again. In exploring the passengers' lives and those of their ancestors more than a century before, Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from numerous points of view across place and time. And it does it with a fullhearted, full-throttle pace that asks on the most human, intimate scale whether it is truly possible to meet, and survive, the choices posed--and forced--by the age.
The result is a historical epic with a Dickensian flair, a grand entertainment that asks whether our nation has made good on its promises. It dazzles as its characters come to connect with one another through time. And it hits home as it probes at our country's injustices, big and small, straight through to its deeply satisfying final words.
Jonathan Evison is the New York Times Bestselling author of All About Lulu, West of Here, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, and Lawn Boy.
In his teens, Evison was the founding member and frontman of the Seattle punk band March of Crimes, which included future members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
Born in San Jose, California, he now lives on an island in Western Washington.
I'm still stunned by how Jonathan Evison managed to take a cast of about two dozen primary characters and points-of-view, spanning nearly 170 years in American history, render it in high literary ambition and style ... and make it read like a sleek and streamlined genre thriller. And do so without making it a cheap read, like a Reader's Digest Condensed Novel or a James Michener soap opera.
Every character has multiple layers, numerous obstacles and different levels of determination and perseverance (often determined by race and economic class), but all are united by dreams of a destiny beyond their present, a destiny that runs atop or alongside the rails that made the American states (and territories) into the United States from all points: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, in between, all aiming north and west as if directed by a star.
Not everybody gets what they want, or what they deserve, but they give it their all and then some, and each push and each page with leave you breathless with fear for their setbacks and joy for their gains, and what's more emblematic of the American Dream than that?
As Brianna Flowers, the poor Black mother of a teen Portland, Oregon basketball prodigy, puts it: "A body couldn’t depend solely on one’s gifts. A body had to work harder than anybody else. Because America was a rigged competition. Because the playing field wasn’t level and never had been, at least not for the Flowerses, not since her forebearers had dared to free themselves from bondage 170 years ago. And so, a body had to sacrifice certain comforts, squelch certain temptations, eschew certain pleasures in the name of gaining an edge, because that was the only advantage you could ever have over the guy who’d started on third base."
Sounds to me like the thematic foundation of just about every great American story ever told.
This was a great book. I feel it could either have been a hundred pages shorter or handed a little more in the way of action. But still, Evison deserves a lot of credit for crafting such a moving and intelligent story.
Since there have been so many fine books in this genre, fictionalizing the past via interlocking histories, I almost didn't pick this up, but when I did, I put it on audio and gave scant attention. Then the story itself kicked in, and I started reading in print from from page 1. So glad I did. Jonathan Evison's choice of presenting past and future is brilliant. The chapters seesaw between mid-nineteenth century and 2019, with chapters matching forebears with their descendents, but at no time is the writing muddled or the characters confused. What I particularly loved was that Evison didn't clutter up the book with intermediary generations, making clean connections between the two generations, and each story is a page turner. Highly Highly recommended.
Jonathan Evison's new novel Small World is, no exaggeration, his masterpiece. He had mentioned on Facebook a few years ago that he felt like this is the novel he was born to write. And he wasn't wrong.
Small World is a huge, ambitious, but incredibly immersive Great American novel about how we're all connected in striving for the Great American Dream. A huge cast of diverse characters both in the present and in the 19th century populate this novel with interconnected stories about how beating injustice and flourishing in this Great American Experiment is at its essence a team sport.
So as a train speeds through a snowy night in Oregon, several passengers on this train are connected in ways they couldn't possibly know. A mom trying to give her basketball prodigy son a leg up. A woman escaping her abusive boyfriend. A family making a huge change in their lives. And the train engineer, on his last run before retirement. We get the stories of each of these people, but as importantly, we get the story of the 19th century ancestors of each of these people. An enslaved person who escapes in Illinois. Irish immigrant twins who try to make their ways in Chicago and then the sprawling West. A Chinese immigrant who pans for gold in California. And a Native American girl who yearns for open spaces and freedom.
It's a lot, for sure. But Evison nails it! You never feel overwhelmed or have trouble keeping these characters straight. Without question, this structure was risky: There are literally eight different strands of story (and really nine, because we get both of the Irish twins' stories), and so this could've easily gone sideways.
But I couldn't wait to get back to each story. Would the Irish twins find each other after they're separated? Would the basketball superstar get his time to shine? Would the woman escaping her a-hole boyfriend truly escape? How are all these people connected, both in the past and the present? But most importantly, how would all of these characters be able to overcome injustice, inequity, and a deck stacked against them to strive toward their American dream?
To be honest, I'm just about done with long novels of interconnected stories (thanks a lot, Cloud Cuckoo Land). Everyone's doing it now and it's getting a little tiresome. But I'm glad I got this one in under the bell before I got tired of these, because this one is a paragon of the genre. If you've been a New Dork Review reader for any amount of time, you know I'm huge Evison fan. I've read everything he's written, and I can happily report this novel represents a major step forward for him as a writer. I've really enjoyed all his novels, but this is my favorite since The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which is still my favorite of his. But this is now a very close second. Highly, highly recommend.
THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ THIS YEAR! This is an amazing work of fiction. Multiple characters but you will not have difficulty keeping them straight. It is an American story of hope and hard work. A story of disappointment and death. The author does a masterful job of tying all the stories together.
This book checked a lot of my boxes. It's a historical novel that takes place on double timelines, with multiple perspectives. Check, check, check.
The characters are great, and their dilemmas draw the reader's sympathy and interest. In the modern timeline, several characters will all converge on the same train on a very fateful day. And in the 19th century timeline, the modern characters' ancestors travel the American west and many of them briefly meet or pass by each other
Laila Tully is escaping an abusive boyfriend in 2019, while in the 19th century timeline we watch her ancestor Luyu, a displaced native American, seek a secure home.
Jenny Chen and her husband leave San Francisco to seek a less stressful lifestyle. In the earlier timeline, Jenny's ancestor Wu hides a terrible secret from his wife.
In the 19th century George Flowers escapes from slavery and must stay on the run. His 21st-century descendants, Brianna and her son Malik, place all of their hopes in Malik's extraordinary height and basketball skills.
Norah and Finn Bergen are Irish immigrant orphans who are cruelly separated. In the 21st-century, Finn's descendant Walter will be making one last run on the Coast Starlight line before his retirement.
I loved these characters, and I liked how Evison beautifully portrays a diverse, restless nation in two different time periods. But I felt betrayed by this novel in the end. We don't get to see how anyone's story ends! Does George eventually find his way to secure freedom? How does Ai Lu react when Wu finally reveals his agonizing secret? Does Laila find a better life? Does Malik ever get a basketfall scholarship? All of that, and more, is left up in the air. I think Evison did that intentionally. Life, after all, is never completely settled. Americans in particular are always questing. But it was very dissatisfying to me, after becoming so invested in his characters.
Also I'd have liked to see a little more of the ancestors' traits and fates expressed in their descendants. Certainly, Laila and Luyu share a similar dilemma, but they are very different in character. Some of George's grit and determination come out in Brianna and Malik. And we see both Wu and his descendant Jenny as strivers. But, I think I wanted a bit more. Some circling back of fate or something. In the end, I was disappointed in this book.
Tastes change over time. I don’t get to re-read many books (there are just too damn many that need reading), but if I did I am sure many of the books I previously loved would probably fall short of those fond memories. I really liked Evison’s ‘West of Here’. I loved that the central character was the land itself and I remember being impressed with the writing.
Either Evison’s writing has gone to shit or my tastes have changed significantly. ‘Small World’ bored me to no end and I couldn’t stand Evison’s insistence on explaining every comment and thought from his characters. I suppose I’ve grown to enjoy writing that leaves much to interpretation; writing that doesn’t feel the need to hold our hand to help us understand characters.
The structure of the book is actually quite good. I liked that Evison tells us straight from the get go what is going to happen to the present day characters, but I was disinterested in the personal stories of both the modern day characters and those of the 19th century. I found them flat and, dare I say, cliche.
Evison was on to something with the general concept of this novel, but the execution was not there. I didn’t like it at all, and now I need to re-read ‘West of Here’ to find out just how much my tastes have changed. A book that is not totally devoid of merits, but a one star read for me.
Really interesting approach - connecting multiple present characters to their ancestors' stories and tying everything together. And I get that he couldn't conclude all the stories in a satisfying way, but I was expecting a little more at the end, and was rather surprised when I turned the page and saw Acknowledgements. But an interesting and enjoyable read, nevertheless.
An intricate historical puzzle composed of multigenerational family dynamics and suspense.
Jonathan Evison’s Small World is quite large actually, encompassing four sets of ancestors and associated persons from many distant countries. The stories of the characters in the novel begin in the 1800’s, entwine with each other over two hundred years, and collide, astonishingly, on a train ride in Oregon in 2019. It is the crossing of paths by disparate ancestors and the coming together of their descendants near the end of the story that suggest the title of the novel.
A variety of protagonists populate Small World. Evison’s development of them is brilliantly done, not only for its detail but also for its clever and subtle juxtaposing of the circumstances of their lives and the hardships they endure, culturally and physically. Racism and prejudice abound, blatantly in the eighteenth century parts of the story and evasively by the twenty-first century. The ancestors set the stage. George (Othello) Flowers is a runaway slave in Chicago, Wu Chen is from China, a gold rush prospector and then shopkeeper in San Francisco, John and Luyu Tully are American Indians struggling to make a home in the Rocky Mountains, and the Bergen twins from Ireland are separated in a Chicago orphanage, Nora sent to be a servant in the home of a rich man, Abraham Seymour, who was once a Jewish orphan in England, and Finn adopted by the Vogels, German immigrants intending to be farmers in the Midwest. Their descendants complete the themes: Walter Bergin, a railroad engineer; Malik Flowers, a budding basketball star; Jenny Chen, a successful businesswoman; and Laila Tully, a young woman fleeing from an abusive man. The villains are well done: Don LoPriori, a chauvinist business owner; Warnock, a slave owner; Boaz, an abusive boyfriend; and Master Searles, the orphanage director.
Small World is divided into multiple stories that at the outset don’t seem to have a connection. Each story has its own protagonist and antagonist, some of whom cross over into other stories as the novel progresses, embedded into an intricate pattern of plots that near the end come together with all the descendants boarding the train in Oregon. The novel begins in 2019 with the beginning of the train’s journey, the Bergen’s descendant Walter being the train’s engineer. Thereafter, times and characters jump between the eighteen and twenty-first centuries. There are three sections in the novel: Golden, Fortunes, and Horizons. Within each of those are multiple subsections, each of which contains a piece of each character’s plot through a particular time period. These subsections are like pieces of a large puzzle laid out on a table to be assembled by the reader as the novel progresses. It’s an extraordinary device used by the author to create suspense and tension as the stories move forward and, on a macro level, to demonstrate how a family’s history, while often thought of chronologically, is understood emotionally and, frequently, subconsciously. Mistakes and tragedies are repeated in between jubilation and good fortune.
Readers of Small World will find it hard to put the book down. The author does a masterful job of revealing the stories’ elements in a fashion that creates anticipation. The settings for the stories are beautifully described, whether a ship’s hold, the streets of New York, the Iowa prairie, a view of the Pacific, or a raging snowstorm in the Northwest. The imagery makes the character’s emotions palpable. So many times the reader will weep for the world, as Nora Bergen does, and realize, as the author so shrewdly demonstrates, that in family history the end of one’s story is but the beginning of another.
This is a big sprawler, more wide than deep, but engaging. The novel follows a cast of strivers from the mid-19th century—Irish immigrant twins who make their way from New York to Chicago and points west, a Chinese immigrant who lands in San Francisco in search of gold, an escaped slave, and a Miwok girl in search of a life away from the Methodists who took her in after the Native massacre at Sutter's Mill—and their descendants in 2019. They're linked in ways large and small, most notably, and literally, by the railroad—expanding across the country in the 1850s, hurtling up the west coast in the 21st century. It's a fun shaggy tale that picks up—excuse me—steam as it goes, and while Evison doesn't tie up all the ends perfectly (maybe for the better), it's a satisfying, panoramic read.
I couldn't help but think about Robert Altman, the legendary American film director, as I read Jonathan Evisons's epic Small World, which I read courtesy of NetGalley and PenguinRandomHouse. Like Altman at his best, Evinson takes a collection of seemingly random and compelling personal stories and skillfully weaves them into a monumental saga of American exploration and growth. Evinson is a great story storyteller, and with Small World he is on top of his game.
Beginning in the 1800s and concluding more than 170 years later, we meet a handful of characters on their way west - all seeking some place to call home. Their stories may seem vaguely familiar, perhaps because they make up the iconic stories that have come to define us as a nation. Stories of triumph and tragedy; of heroes and villains, of the wealthy and needy; the hunters and the hunted. Evison ties these stories with those of their descendants through the construction of the transcontinental railroad.
Evison's multiple stories are a joy to read by themselves. When intertwined with the others, Evison's vision of a nation where we are all connected becomes clear. One reviewer referred to the novel as Dickensian in scope, and the description is appropriate. They are both terrific storytellers. I know it's trite, but i didn't want the book to end. Evisnon's writing is additive, compelling and cinematic. This is a great novel. Perfect for a a midwinter's read.
I have dogs on my lap at this moment and want to give this book a good full review. But here is my FB post:
Book friends! Stop what you are doing and grab/download a copy of Small World by Jonathan Evison. This is a most fantastic epic novel spanning 170 years of American history told through the point of view of 4 different families (12 main characters). Unlike other recent books with multiple characters spanning years (Cloud Cukoo Land🤦♀️) I found each character memorable and couldn’t wait to figure out how “small a world” it actually was. There were so many “huggable” moments where I wished I had a physical copy of the book to clutch to my chest. Eviston’s foreshadowing created an anxiousness to my “reading” that I am glad I listened to it as I am afraid my ferver to find out what was going to happen next would have caused me to read without comprehending. The audio is over 16 hours and when I realized I only had 4 hours left with these characters, I was disappointed. The fact that the book was only 16 hours (480 pages) would be my only complaint. I really wish I could have spent more time with many of the characters.
Now, just to wait for a Netflix series of this book to be commissioned!
I had very much looked forward to this book, and there is a lot to like. At the end of the day, I didn't feel particularly satisfied after 466 pages - it was a heavy, time-consuming meal but I leave the table feeling I wasn't fed enough, and feeling a bit underwhelmed and more than a little disappointed.
I would still recommend this book to a variety of people, but not without some caveats, the main one being, it's a book with A LOT of main characters, split up mostly between the 1850s and 2019. However, once you finish this book you don't get much of an ending for most of those characters considering the time you've been investing, almost 500 pages.
Many thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
I liked it. The writing is well done. Due to the numerous characters and the short chapters, it felt like some parts of the story lacked depth. However, I really liked each characters story and how they related to each other in the past and present. Worth the read.
Well this was just incredible. When words such a “sprawling, big hearted and epic” are used to describe a novel I know I’m going to be intrigued, but A SMALL WORLD exceeded my expectations. It is an intricately woven tapestry of an unforgettable group of individuals, seemingly unrelated but whose ancestors’ lives intersect beautifully on their journeys across America. Jonathan Evison’s lyrical prose lays bare the unique challenges facing each character as they struggle to pursue the American dream.
BEST BOOK OF 2022. Yes, I realize this is only January so there is plenty more to read this year, but I'm confident making this statement because this is one of the best books I've ever read. The plot, the storytelling, the editing ... everything came together perfectly to tell an amazing story that takes the reader back and forth between present day (2019) and the character's ancestors in the 1850s.
I enjoyed all of the characters in this book and how they tied together. I thought it was beautifully written. The ending though...I listened to this book, and it ended so abruptly that I thought Alexa stopped working. I was quite shocked and disappointed to realize it was actually the end of the book. Regardless, I loved the stories in this book, and I found the content to be interesting.
I hate to give this one only 2 stars -- but it left me disappointed and deflated. After spending 16 hours listening to this well-written, very descriptive 500 page book -- the ending just stopped. After following the lives of four sets of inter-related characters between 1840 and 2019 -- it just stopped. The story was good, the descriptions of the histories of the people's lives was intricate and compelling. But you never knew how their lives ended or kept going or -- anything!
I have read other books by Evison and loved them! And I had such high hopes for this one. But now, I'm just kind of mad....
Absolutely amazing! So many storylines but very easy to follow. We get the stories of several people who are all on the same train traveling through a snowstorm in the Pacific Northwest. Better yet, we learn of their ancestors - how they came to America, the struggles they faced. It made me wonder about my own ancestors. It must have been a huge undertaking for the author - whom to include, how to arrange the various stories so that the book flowed well from beginning to end. I’m going to recommend this book to so many people!
Edited: This is a novel about the United States - then (1800"s) and now. I enjoyed the story lines and the characters in the two time periods, and I felt that Jonathan Evison did a good job portraying the historical and physical settings. This book is not extremely deep or complex, but it paints an entertaining and tragic picture of the development of the western United States (immigrants from Ireland and China, slaves, Native Americans and the importance of the railroad) as well as a cross section of Americans today (a railroad worker on the day of his retirement, a Native American woman looking for her future, a teenage Black basketball player and his mother, an Asian American professional wife/mother and her family). The "today" characters are all descendants of the 1800's characters. It was a "good read".
A richly satisfying, Dickensian outing in which a large, diverse cast of characters is bound together by trains. The novel takes place in two time-lines: 1850s America in which nation-building is hastened by the Gold Rush and the drive west, and the rapidly expanding train lines are making the world smaller (as per the title); and the present day, when descendants of the first lot of characters find themselves taking a fateful Seattle-bound train trip one snowy day. The characters in the earlier timeline come from many backgrounds and are all up against it in a harsh world. There’s the Irish twins who arrived as children fleeing the potato famine and were immediately orphaned and separated; the Chinese man who inadvertently found himself caught up in the gold rush; the young Miwok woman whose people were enslaved and wiped out and where law-abiding indigenous people continue to be shot with impunity; the runaway slave who builds a life and a family but who can’t stop looking over his shoulder, fearful of recapture. And the modern-day characters, the descendants of the first lot, are no less diverse. The author advances the narrative in short, eventful chapters, so skilfully moving between past and present and among the various story lines. Even though there are so many characters, you do come to care for many (you’ll probably have favourites; I know I did), and, thanks to the author’s skill, it’s easy to keep it all straight.
Many came to America for a better life, but this novel looks unflinchingly at the hardships awaiting them, not to mention the great injustices for slaves and indigenous peoples. Open-hearted and generous to its characters. What a great yarn.
I have been a fan of Jonathan Evison since his first novel, All About Lulu, came out in 2008. I always fall for authors who have a unique and personal vision about life and the world.
Small World is his latest and his second big historical tome. It covers United States history from the Gold Rush onward, through the interconnected lives of Irish immigrants, Chinese railroad workers, Native Americans banished from their lands and runaway slaves.
It is a tangled yet intimate rendition of American nation building drawn down into the personal tragedies and triumphs of individual players in the tale.
At first, I was nonplussed by his writing style. It felt old-fashioned, like many of those novels I read from the mid-20th century. Then I recognized a Charles Dickens sensibility. I do not know by what alchemy Evison pulled it off but he did and landed in the 21st century.
I became so involved with his characters and so delighted with the connections he wove together. By the end I was teary eyed.
He shows how it was people who made America. The same people who are grappling today over rights, money and power; the same people who are struggling to make lives for themselves and their children.
Somehow the book does not judge but leads the reader to look at where America came from and at the dreams we've all had.
In a just world, which I doubt we'll ever have, Small World would be a huge bestseller.
(Note: I received an advanced reader copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley)
I am used to my sweeping historical fiction to progress linearly a la Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or any James Michener book, so Jonathan Evison’s Small World came as a different change of pace. His latest book ping pongs back and forth over time between two casts of various characters. One group is an assortment of men and women making their way to or around the Pacific coast and the northwest in the 1800s, the other is their ancestors in the present-day, many of whom find themselves all together on an Amtrak train heading to Seattle one winter’s evening.
Despite the chronological bouncing about, I never once got lost. Quite the opposite, I found myself absorbed in a story that serves as a sort of microcosm of the United States as a whole. Through the eyes of many of its characters, this book reveals a land that is often cruel, harsh, and at times outrageously unjust. However, Evision also shows a world where, in both past and the present there are also serendipitous connections, acts of kindness, and new bonds that can help people persevere in the face of hardship and tragedy.
It’s a shame that “Small World is not set to be published until winter of 2022 - I think it’s the perfect kind of historical fiction work to get lost in during anyone’s summer vacation.
Thanks to NetGalley for this advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review. Can I start with: I didn’t want this to end!
Ok, starting again. It’s the 1850s and we meet a Chinese immigrant, Irish immigrants (and orphaned twins), a runaway slave, and an Indian girl. These are the most marginalized groups of the era. But wait. Now it’s 2019 and we meet their descendants. How much has changed in nearly 170 years and how much more work do we need to do?
I loved this book. I was enthralled as we learned about the characters and how they intersected. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. Wanting to see this as a movie isn’t enough. I would hope to see this someday as a PBS series! There is just so much in this book to take in. It took a minute to sort it out in the beginning but once you have the characters down, you just want to lay back within the book and watch it all unfold.
This book is a warm blanket on a cold night. A dog on your lap and a cup of hot tea. There is so much to talk about that I put it on our book club list before I even finished. We will be doing this in our book club. So should you!
Loved this book! If you’re yearning for the next great American novel, by one of our best American writers, here it is. An epic, masterfully written saga spanning two hundred years—there’s multigenerational family history, family dynamics, completely compelling characters, tragedy and triumph, evocative descriptions and page turning suspense. Sad when it ended and couldn’t recommend it more.
The author took on quite an epic story to tell here and the outline of it is quite compelling. Unfortunately most of the characters were cliches. And the details from the 19th century seemed poorly researched and often rang false. The sections which took place in 2019 were better but unfortunately still mostly felt flat.