The World Below: A Novel (Random House Large Print)

Rating:
Summary: What a Wonderful Story
Review: With this one book Sue Miller has become my favorite author. She has in this book "The World Below" created one of those rare books that makes you sad it's over. You know you will miss the character, for a loss for the place.

In the beginning of the book Ms Miller's main character talks about how here Grandmother Georgia could tell a good story, and what a gift that is. That is so true of this book. There are several stories lines going on in this book, wrapped around many lives, and happening in different times. Quite often a book like this can become confusing, but not here. Here it is seamless. Within a few pages you find out about George as a young woman falling in love while in a TB sanitarium, over laid with Granddaughter Cath's second failed marriage. All stories inter-connected, and yet never confused.

Ms Miller created character so real and so a live, that you can't help but feel sadness at a death or your heart race to find that Cath's daughter baby was born prematurely. True test for me, is if the character seem to come to life, and her's do. She even nails the small town real estate agent, pushy and yet neighborly enough to bring you soup when she hear your sick.

The true test for me came when Cath moved to her Grandmother's old house in Vermont. Would Ms Miller understand Vermont, or would she make it that hokey Hollywood place. The Vermont you will find in "The World Below" is real. When she tells you about the long ride from Barstow to Rutland, because that's where you have to go to shop, that's life here. There is a reference about Cath seeing the state in broad circle while she is covering the local high school football team's season, that is the way sports are in Vermont. The title of the book come from a fishing trip Cath took with her Grandfather when she was teen, I knew where the Lake was, knew what just by the description, and was glad to find that I was right, several chapters later.

Don't miss out on this book; it is a really good read.