Rating: 
Summary: Wonderfully surprising!
Review: I was surprised at how much I loved this book. As I was reading it I was so involved with the characters I didn't even think to critique what I was reading. When I finished I realized how involved I was and how much it affected me. It caused me to reflect on my own grandmother's life and how much I wish she were still alive so I could ask her about her own life and learn the daily specifics of it. The writer does such an amazing job of showing the reader the granddaughter's point of view then telling the reader the entire story behind the diary entry. The switching back and forth from one point of view to the other just improved the story for me and made me feel excited about learning more once the full story was covered through Georgia. The writing reveals so much to the reader without being blunt and much insight seeps in without the reader's knowledge. My mother gave me this book and said she went out and found all of Sue Miller's books from the library after reading this because she loved it so much and I think I will do the same. Overall, a deeply reflective read while still entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Utterly disappointing
Review: It was obviously a mistake to read The World Below right after Miller's big hit While I Was Gone. I cannot percieve how the very same writer could possibly have produced these two works. There's a WORLD of difference between them. While I Was Gone was vivid, dynamic, absorbing, worth reading and remembering. The World Below is downright mediocre. Dull. Deadly slow. Not wanting to leave it unfinished out of my respect for Miller's earlier works, I forced myself almost unsuccessfully to skim-read it. I just couldn't wait to start a new book!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Great, Not Bad
Review: My first impression after reading this book was like many other reviewers: fair, not great. It seems I spent most of the book searching for the real story and I'm not convinced it ever came along. I enjoy multi-generational storytelling, but this approach seemed disjointed here and I was often confused as to which mother or daughter or timeframe she was describing. None of the characters were very engaging and mostly they all seemed distant from me as a reader. At the end, I wasn't sure what the main character Cath had resolved or what she wanted or what she was hoping to find in her journey to her grandparents' home and back. Essentially she was on some sort of journey but she never got there in any sense, and it seemed like nothing ever really happened overall.Sue Miller has some excellent books and I would definitely recommend "While I Was Gone". Though I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading "The World Below" since it had one mildly interesting story, that of Cath's grandmother Georgia, I certainly wouldn't be able to recommend the book overall.
Rating:
Summary: Not Great, Not Bad
Review: My first impression after reading this book was like many other reviewers: fair, not great. It seems I spent most of the book searching for the real story and I'm not convinced it ever came along. I enjoy multi-generational storytelling, but this approach seemed disjointed here and I was often confused as to which mother or daughter or timeframe she was describing. None of the characters were very engaging and mostly they all seemed distant from me as a reader. At the end, I wasn't sure what the main character Cath had resolved or what she wanted or what she was hoping to find in her journey to her grandparents' home and back. Essentially she was on some sort of journey but she never got there in any sense, and it seemed like nothing ever really happened overall. Sue Miller has some excellent books and I would definitely recommend "While I Was Gone". Though I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading "The World Below" since it had one mildly interesting story, that of Cath's grandmother Georgia, I certainly wouldn't be able to recommend the book overall.
Rating: 
Summary: The World Below
Review: Sue Miller knows characters. She knows how to build them so subtly that you feel like you knew them right from the start. That is what happens here with both Cath and her grandmother, Georgia. We learn about Georgia as a young woman, what she went thru in the sanitorium, her marriage, and her relationship with Cath. And we go through Cath's need to just get away from everything she knows in California and soak in her past in Vermont. Those looking for plot driven novels need not apply here. This is solely character driven and if you like these characters, you will fly through this one.
Rating:
Summary: Never disappointing
Review: Sue Miller writes about people we know. She writes about simple things we do like going to the grocery store, getting divorced, opening trunks in the attic and finding treasures. You think you should be bored when your reading her books. After all, the characters are mundane, suburban, real. But you're not bored. You're completely sucked into their stories, their lives, even their small not quite shocking at all revelations. And like Elizabeth Berg she says something so big in a story so simple that the impact is quite memorable. The World Below makes an impression. It makes a point. I like it when stories have a point.
Rating:
Summary: Just "Okay"
Review: THE WORLD BELOW lacks energy in its delivery. I have read everything Sue Miller has written and have enjoyed some of her books more than others. Her latest work is just okay. It's written well. It wasn't necessarily boring. It just didn't have the punch that I want in a book. I like stories that weave the past into the present as this does. Other authors have been masterful using this style. Again, Sue Miller did it all right, but it just wasn't great. It was "okay." Throughout the book I searched for the plot, the true storyline. Fifty-something Cath has returned to her grandparents' home in Vermont to see if she wants to live there as opposed to her home in San Francisco. She discovers diaries written by Georgia, her grandmother, and unlocks some secrets about her grandparents and their life together. As a young girl Georgia contracted TB and was sent to a sanitarium to recover. Although this is a big part of the story, it became grim and depressing to read about people coughing and vomiting and, in some cases, dying. I did enjoy Cath's daughters, Karen who is pregnant with her first child and spends the entire book in bed waiting for the baby to be born, and Fiona who might be the only spark of energy in the entire book. But we only get a glimpse of these two young women. It's not a bad book, and I finished it without a fight, but if it stays on my bookshelf, it won't be read again. She's done better.
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: 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.
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