The Smiling Hill-Top, and Other California Sketches — Edition Insights

A Voice That Bounces

Sloane’s narrative voice is the book’s most consistent feature. She warns readers to "make allowance for the bounce of the ball," and the prose lives up to that promise. Sentences tumble forward with dashes and asides, as when she describes a frog in the fountain with "a volume of sound equal to Edouard de Reske in his prime." The tone is conversational but never slack; it carries the reader through catalogues of silverware, empty bottles, and old letters. The voice is that of a woman who has "thrown my extra wraps and bundles beside the road" and finds the act exhilarating.

Pace Shifts and Domestic Crises

The sketches vary their pace abruptly. A leisurely description of gardening may give way to a sudden crisis: the head of the family in pajamas at dawn chasing a skunk with a garden hose. Sloane lingers over the absurdity of the scene—"Oh, yes, there is plenty of adventure still left"—before returning to quieter observations. Elsewhere, the tempo slows for meditations on throwing away old letters: "No one ought to have a good time reading over old letters—there's always a tinge of sadness about them." These shifts in rhythm keep the reader alert, mirroring the unpredictability of life on a California hill-top.

Recurring Details and the Unencumbered Life

Certain details recur: the family’s two dogs, the two boys, the chauffeur pressed into service for odd jobs. Sloane returns again and again to the theme of shedding possessions—"I've rid myself of a lot of useless ideas"—and the pleasure of traveling light. The sketches are anchored by small, concrete objects: a cobwebby box of empty beer bottles, a frog in the fountain, a garter snake in Eden. These details ground the narrative in a specific place and time, even as the author’s tone remains light and self-mocking. The result is a portrait of a family learning to live with less, and finding freedom in the process.

The Landscape as Character

Sloane treats Southern California as a living presence, not a backdrop. She notes the absence of rain from May to October, the "horrid little shaky earthquakes," and the way visitors catch colds in February when "the roses aren't in bloom." The landscape is both generous and treacherous, offering quail and rabbits alongside rattlesnakes. The author’s tone is affectionate but unsentimental; she admits that the family’s reactions may be "too highly colored" because of their sudden transplant from a rigorous climate. The hill-top itself becomes a character, a place where the family has "taken root for all our days."

Sloane’s sketches reward a patient reader. The book is best approached not as a guide to California but as a series of personal essays, each one a snapshot of a family finding its footing in a new world. Pay attention to the asides and the sudden shifts in tone—they are where the real story lives. The author’s voice, at once brisk and confiding, makes even the smallest incident worth attending to.

That book made me think of another one, American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' — Text and Context, because both feel like letters from someone learning to see home as wonderfully strange. The way Sloane notices a lizard or a lazy afternoon stays with you quietly, long after you put it down.