Rating: 
Summary: The World Below
Review: This book was a disappointment for me. The idea of the grandmother's diary was good. In fact the whole book would have been better to focus the story on just the grandmother. I found the main character boring and causing the story to drag. Also I was disappointed to see the four letter (F) word used several times. It seemed out of place in this kind of story. I love to loan out my books and to recommend books to others. This will not be one of them. I will also be more selective in the future when buying books written by this lady because of the profanity. It really ruined the book for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Oprah's Book Club, here I come
Review: This book was an awful introspective of a woman looking for her past and her future and her grandmother's past - all at the same time. It was one of those generation jumping books that can never pick a time or place. Don't read it, trust me, it's just not worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: A dazzling story
Review: This is a wonderful story between two women at different periods in time. The first one, Georgia was sent to a sanatorium for her TB and found love there. The second one, Kathy, her granddaughter, comes to find peace within her own life as she learns more about her grandmother's life. Kathy, the daughter of a woman who has committed suicide when Kathy was only 15, have searched for acceptance and love ever since. Her grandmother was the only one who could provide it. And Georgia full of secrets herself tried to pass on wisdom to her granddaughter.It is a wonderfully written story ~~ one that is slow to move in the beginning but once you get immersed into the story, it does pick up. Georgia is an interesting woman taken away from the security of her home where she has been taking care of her sister, brother and father after her mother's death ~~ and began a long process to adulthood. She finds love twice and learned much from it. Kathy's story parallels her grandmother. She too lost her mother at about the same age Georgia did. And she has loved twice ~~ only to lose them through divorce. And she finds redemption in being a grandmother to a premature baby, Jessie, who fought for her life for months. In that fight, Kathy comes to realize that life is indeed a gift, no matter how bad the blows were dealt. It is an interesting book ~~ one that I am glad to have won in a contest. It is not my favorite book of the year, but it is a really good read. 3/4/02
Rating:
Summary: Should Have Ditched Cath
Review: This is one of those books that jumps back and forth between the present and the past, the lives of Georgia, the grandmother, and Cath, the granddaughter, not quite successfully. Sue Miller has a beautiful, subtle, understated writing style, and I found her portrayal of Georgia's life fascinating - a turn-of-the-century girl exhausting herself caring for her relatives, a doctor who deliberately exagerates her TB diagnoses her to put her in a sanitorium to get her away from that life, her love in the sanitorium and her marriage to the much older doctor, etc. But the book kept jumping bath to Cath, a fifty something modern divorcee who was incredibly whiny and boring. I wish the book had been solely about Georgia, and explored the themes of Georgia's life in depth - it would have been a masterpiece.
As it was, it got pretty confusing, and the parts about Cath were mind-numbing.
Rating:
Summary: It's worth reading, but not extraordinary!
Review: This is the first book I have read by Sue Miller, and while I don't think it would be my last, her next book needs to be stronger than World Below. It's the kind of story I like to read - Divorced mother, looking into her family's past, beautiful setting, good family relations (I especially liked the relationship between Cath & her daughter Fi!). A romantic read without all the gooey, sappy romance and love scenes!!! It started out pretty good and I continued turning the pages waiting for the story to kick in, but it never really seemed to get going. At times confusing, you couldn't be certain if you reading Cath's story of today, or Georgia's story of yesterday until you reached someone's name. It is a very conflicting read. I want to give it a lower rating because I feel it could have been so much better, but yet, parts are moving and beautifully written. The descriptions alone stand-out from other books I've recently read. If you like to have a scene described in great detail, Sue Miller does just that. I just didn't feel she completely told this story. Many things are left out there, incomplete - Is the reader supposed to use their imagination, or is there no finality to it? The story seems to move forward slowly and when the reader reaches the end, many questions still remain. I can also easily see this being a Made-For-TV-Movie - you know, the ones they show on Sunday nites?! It almost seems like it was written with a movie deal as the basic goal. I don't think this will be the last book I read by Sue Miller, but another book by this author must have a wonderful storyline and have some definition to it in order for me to give it a try.
Rating: 
Summary: BEAUITFUL READ AND WILL STAY WITH YOU AFTER YOU END IT!
Review: This was a lovely story ~ weaves several mother/daughter relationships. Takes you across the country (CA to VT) and embraces your heart with characters so real to the touch. I highly recommend this book and look forward to Miller's other books. I didn't want this one to end but when it did, it stayed with me and for that, I thank Miller.
Rating:
Summary: Emotional and introspective. . .
Review: This was the first book I read by Sue Miller. I thought the story started out slow and I wasn't sure where the story was going. The story surprisingly jumped back and forth from Georgia, the grandmother, to Cath, her granddaughter. I kept reading and was drawn into the personal lives of these two women. The book is an excellent read if you are savvy with emotions and introspective to life's complicated and mysterious circumstances. The details of Georgia's life are delicately sewn together throughout the entire book. The entwinement between the sanitarium and the bank account opened my heart and eyes to realize the weaving of my own present life. The book sends a message that love does prevail. The World Below read like a true story when learning about Cath's and Georgia's personal challenges and the decisions they were faced with. I look forward to reading more of Sue Miller's novels.
Rating:
Summary: The power of free will
Review: To me the main theme of this book is the amazing powerful drive for free will in relationships. The grace is the gift of the acknowledgement of independence or free will through a private bank account or a statement that "you were right, I was mistaken". This is a book about the delicate balance of loving and caring and meeting the needs of others while holding onto the core of freedom. It is about honoring family history and learning from it. It is well worth reading, I enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: The power of free will
Review: To me the main theme of this book is the amazing powerful drive for free will in relationships. The grace is the gift of the acknowledgement of independence or free will through a private bank account or a statement that "you were right, I was mistaken". This is a book about the delicate balance of loving and caring and meeting the needs of others while holding onto the core of freedom. It is about honoring family history and learning from it. It is well worth reading, I enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: What a knack for dealing with ordinary life
Review: What always amazes me is Sue Miller's knack of relaying another's story and making all sound so familiar. Cath, a mid-fifties woman twice divorced and wondering at the course of her life has a decision to make. A dying relative leaves her and her brother one of her childhood homes. She and her brother lived with her grandparents after the premature death of her mother. She had a strong bond with both her grandparents, so this long forgotten places beckons to one wondering about her future. Once there Cath finds some old diaries and begins to read them. Here Sue Miller intertwines pieces of Cath's past and that of her grandmother Georgia's. It was a different world when her grandmother was a girl and she is reminded of that in these diaries. She is also given an opportunity to see a side of a grandmother, she never imagined. However in her mid-50s somethings remembered fit in with new information gleaned from the diaries. Also for me personally when Sue Miller wrote of Georgia's stint in a TB sanatorium, it struck a nerve. My dad was a TB survivor of the WWII era and met my mother a girl from the town the sanatorium was in. As I have a disease to thank for my existance, this peculiar sanatorium life has often interested me. This book also gives me an opportunity to see the seriousness of the disease at the time. Unlike today's age of intervention and cure, then most patients were given rest and care in hopes their bodies would do the work of the cure.. Very different than today in many ways. As time goes on Georgia considers her life in earnest and her relationship with those living and dead in Vermont and comes to terms with what will be the next step in her life. What I found interesting here is how "events" both big and small are used as turning points in one's life. Do we need them as an excuse or as a marker of change? I never walk away from one of Sue Miller's book without wondering about my own life and neither will you.
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