This is one of the first book I won on Goodreads Giveaways, and I was really excited about it--until I realized that the average review was only 3 stars. I hesitated to read the book because of the lukewarm reviews. For some reason, I decided to pick the book up this week, and I can honestly say ...
This is a hard one to say. It is one of those books that creeps up slowly on you as you get to know the characters. The introspective voices of the characters are sometimes painful to hear, albeit real human emotions, doubts and concerns. I've always liked to read Sue Miller's books and alway...
Endings are hard on people. They're even harder on novels. By the time readers arrive at the end of a story, they've built up an emotional and intellectual investment. They've earned - or think they've earned - a certain expertise about the plot, the tone, and the characters in between the covers...
Certainly you'd imagine there's little entertainment value in reading about a divorce. With all its attendant negativity and emotion, the subject of divorce is complicated, messy, often disturbing; it's not primary on my list of things to read about, let alone experience first-hand. Sue Miller,...
This is the novelist Sue Miller's account of her father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease and his eventual death. But it is also about Miller's relationship with him before he became ill, and about her relationship with her mother, who predeceased him by many years (she died of a heart attack ...
I really enjoyed the book this second time around. And as I read it, I found that they were certain things about the story that were familiar though it took a while to get to that point. There were only a couple of things about it that I wasn't crazy about but the rest of it makes up for it. I lo...
I found "The Distinguished Guest" later than many, and just read it this year. I actually bought it in 2006, during a time when my own mother was languishing with Alzheimers, and found I couldn't get into it. This year, while cleaning out bookshelves, I found it again, and this time sat down to r...
I full-up admit that I wanted to read this book because the summary said the middle child in a grief-stricken family embarks upon a journey to figure out who she is and what she means to the greater world via sexual exploration with a much older man. This Lolita topic is something that always piq...
They’re all outside – her ex-husband, their son, the wife who’s replaced her, and the baby – sitting on the pretty deck behind Derek’s condo. They are all behaving wonderfully, their mild, pleasant voices floating out over the lawn, spiked now and then with polite laughter. Lottie has coffee, the...
Perched there, looking at her parents’ heads from behind, she was suddenly remembering exactly how this had felt when she was young. Alfie and Sylvia were talking about which of the summer people had arrived, and as she listened to the familiar names, the quickly sketched updates, she could have ...
The baby unable to be turned. The mother, finally incapable of any control at all, given over simply to screaming. Then the ether, the cutting, and the rich metallic smell of blood and amniotic fluids. The child, limp, too still and grayish at first, then, with the shock of air, squalling into pu...
It was the morning after her last half day of work—a half day, for what would have been the point of staying for the planning meeting when she wasn't planning anything? She read the return address. It was the crib. Meri had ordered it from one of the many baby catalogs that had been arriving in t...