“Private Life” (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95) tells the story, from childhood to old age, of Margaret Early, nee Mayfield, raised in Missouri in the late 19th century and saved from spinsterhood by a late marriage at 27 to U.S. Navy Capt. Andrew Early. They settle on an island naval base near San Francisco where he grows more eccentric as she grows older and more bitter under the overbearing weight of her marriage.

Margaret lives through a lot of history, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the 1918 flu pandemic and two world wars. But readers expecting a literary historical novel — the sort that E.L. Doctorow writes — will be disappointed. These momentous events happen mostly offstage as Smiley focuses on Margaret’s thoughts and personal evolution over the decades. Much of this revolves on how she deals with her marriage to Andrew, whose once promising career as an astronomer is reduced to him being a glorified timekeeper for the Navy. He spends his days studying faraway stars and planets at a naval observatory, oblivious to the fact that he’s something of a gaseous entity himself.

Margaret, intelligent but passive, watches her life go by and ponders.

Andrew is actually a fascinating blowhard who takes it upon himself to rebut Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s one of many well-drawn characters in the book along with Margaret’s lifelong friend Dora, who is everything she is not: bold, rebellious and worldly.

But much of the novel’s drama, such as it is, plays out in Margaret’s head.

Smiley, who won a Pulitzer Prize, is a wonderful writer. The way she renders Margaret’s sudden epiphany that her longtime husband is a fool is powerful. And she perfectly captures the giddy freedom of what it would be like for a 19th-century woman to ride a bicycle for the first time, or what bitter winters felt like in the age of fireplaces, and even the sensual pleasure of flipping through a book.

These are writerly gems in a book that goes on a bit too long. Smiley creates a convincing, nuanced portrait of a woman’s life when women had few options. And Margaret is a sympathetic character, but she is too inert to consistently carry the novel.