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Book Reviewed by:A stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care - a rich and gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together again.
For nearly two decades, since the publication of her iconic first novel,
The Good Mother, Sue Miller has distinguished herself as one of our most
elegant and widely celebrated chroniclers of family life, with a singular gift
for laying bare the interior lives of her characters. In each of her novels,
Miller has written with exquisite precision about the experience of grace in
daily life–the sudden, epiphanic recognition of the extraordinary amid the
ordinary–as well as the sharp and unexpected motions of the human heart away
from it, toward an unruly netherworld of upheaval and desire. But never before
have Miller’s powers been keener or more transfixing than they are in Lost in
the Forest, a novel set in the vineyards of Northern California that tells
the story of a young girl who, in the wake of a tragic accident, seeks solace in
a damaging love affair with a much older man.
Eva, a divorced and happily remarried mother of three, runs a small bookstore in
a town north of San Francisco. When her second husband, John, is killed in a car
accident, her family’s fragile peace is once again overtaken by loss. Emily, the
eldest, must grapple with newfound independence and responsibility. Theo, the
youngest, can only begin to fathom his father’s death. But for Daisy, the middle
child, John’s absence opens up a world of bewilderment, exposing her at the
onset of adolescence to the chaos and instability that hover just beyond the
safety of parental love. In her sorrow, Daisy embarks on a harrowing sexual
odyssey, a journey that will cast her even farther out onto the harsh promontory
of adulthood and lost hope.
With astonishing sensuality and immediacy, Lost in the Forest moves
through the most intimate realms of domestic life, from grief and sex to
adolescence and marriage. It is a stunning, kaleidoscopic evocation of a family
in crisis, written with delicacy and masterful care. For her lifelong fans and
those just discovering Sue Miller for the first time, here is a rich and
gorgeously layered tale of a family breaking apart and coming back together
again: Sue Miller at her inimitable best.
Emily telephoned, his older daughter. "Can you come get us?" she said. "It's
an emergency."
As usual, she didn't greet him, she didn't say hello at the start of the
call. And also as usual, this bothered him, he felt a familiar pull of
irritation at her voice, her tone. But even as he was listening to her, he was
focused on steering the truck around the sharp curves in the narrow road, around
several small heaps of rock that had slid down the steep hillside: he was
feeling the pleasure he always took in the way the slanted afternoon light
played on the yellowed grass and reddened leaves left in the vineyards, in the
way the air smelled. He kept his voice neutral as he responded. "When? Now?"
In the background, behind her, Mark could hear someone give a sudden whoop.
Festivities, he thought. As ever. Eva's face rose in his mind--his ex-wife. At
the least excuse, there was a gathering at her house: to celebrate a
...
I know this sounds like pretty standard stuff but as I've said before (and will likely say again!) it's not what you tell, it's the way you tell it. In Miller's hands other people's lives are surprisingly interesting!..continued
Full Review
(296 words)
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Sue Miller was born in Chicago in 1943, the second of four children. She describes herself as 'a reader, a painter, an inventor of solitary projects, the quiet child in a fairly boisterous family'. When she was 16 she went to Radcliffe College, Harvard. She says that she was 'simply too young to have done this... overwhelmed, I stumbled unhappily around Harvard for four years'. She graduated at the age of 20 and was married 2 months later. She worked at a variety of jobs while supporting her husband through medical school and finding as much time as she could to write. Their son, Ben, was born in ...
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