Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm very pleased to have as my guest, Jane Smiley.

Her new book is Private Life.

It's published by Knopf.

The whole novel is seen through the eyes of a woman,

Margaret, trapped in a disastrous, nightmarish marriage to a self-centered scientist named Andrew.

Through her eyes, we watch American culture shape itself from the end of the Civil War

through World War I to the beginning of World War II.

There she is, living on Mare Island, the peninsula just northeast of San Francisco.

She's close to the heart of the San Francisco earthquake.

She watches the build-up to the World War from the U.S. Navy's shipyard.

But most importantly, through her eyes, we vibrantly see what a sexless marriage is like

with a self-absorbed, self-proclaimed genius who can't see another person's point of view.

Jane Smiley, what drew you after having written a book full of sex in Beverly Hills?

The book of no sex?

Yes.

Well, the seed was of the fact that my grandfather, who was the youngest of ten children, had four older sisters, many of whom

...