“Perestroika” was conceived in a more hopeful year, 2009, but Smiley was unsure about writing from the animals’ perspectives. “Instead, there are real issues, for the boy and the horse and dog, about their future.” “But I didn’t want a bad guy in it,” she says. Her Hollywood agent cautioned Smiley that the absence of a villain would kill any possible film deals. “It feels like a good time to be thinking about the things in this book, about kindness and trying to get by,” Smiley says. In an era beset by polarization and even violent tribalism, it feels like a gift to find a novel in which characters of different species - with different desires and instincts - come together to build a community.

While Smiley has spoken publicly of her disdain for the outgoing president and his party, the book is no “Animal Farm”-style allegory. This anecdote clarifies the inspiration for a German short-haired pointer named Frida, one of two heroines in Smiley’s latest book, “ Perestroika in Paris.” The novel has nothing to do with the Soviet thaw of the late ’80s it is built instead on the unlikely friendship between Frida and a racehorse named Perestroika. “My German short-haired pointer, who was incredibly graceful and lovely but would lay on the couch and look like she was in despair, would then stare at me from across the room and join in with the most beautiful howl.” “I used to sit and strum my banjo, which I don’t do very well, and my Jack Russell terrier would come running in and start barking and then do a little howling,” Smiley says on a phone call from Carmel Valley, where she relocated in 1996 after many years in Iowa. She laughs frequently and heartily as she shares stories of life chez Smiley. But she doesn’t take herself too seriously as a person. In other words, Smiley is a serious writer. Jane Smiley earned a Pulitzer Prize for recasting “King Lear” as a modern tragedy on an Iowa farm and a National Book Award nomination for “ Some Luck,” the first book in a century-spanning American trilogy. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Moo by jane smiley