All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton A Novel

"Smiley has a lot of fun spinning her goofy, quick-draw characters around the patient Lidie...The cleverness that Smiley brings to bear on her story, the marvelous facility of her writing...--these seem to portend a deepening, even to beg for one. But...whatever possibilities there were for the novel to gain moral purchase are lost when Lidie abandons her always weak hold on principles....Lidie completes her adventures in a state of world-weariness flecked with self-pity."Smiley, Jane is the author of 'All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton A Novel', published 1999 under ISBN 9780449910832 and ISBN 0449910830.