Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing is Right!
Review: This author is a master of detail... detail to the extremes that is. Much like the fashion of Mr. Stephen King, Sue Miller babbles lengths of pages over the the most infinitesimal details. She disects family life to the core; not only sexual relationships but smells! Of all things! At least one dozen times has she descibed smells throughout the book, and in the most innappropriate places as well...
Rating: 
Summary: up, down and all around
Review: This book of sue miller's is around 200 pages too long. Quite a let down after I had read 'While I was Gone', Family Pictures is frequently rambling, getting lost in the thoughts of character after character: like your over-voluble friend, it takes ages to get to the point.
And as a result, you can sometimes guess what's coming before the prose itself manages to blurt it out. At other times she just misses on the immense possibiltiies of some characters: with Liddie, the 'sexy' sister, the eldest daughter, and with Sarah, the talented violinist.Its quite a pity because the book begins so well. Ten pages in the father is watching his son in the parade, realising only then that his two year old child isn't 'normal': that scene is managed so well, so beautifully. But Sue Miller keeps losing that touch over and over again in sections, and sometimes, she simply gets over-sentimental. If she had managed to rein herself in a bit, this would have been a beautiful book.
Rating: 
Summary: I LOVED THIS BOOK
Review: This book stuns me with it's detail--Miller writes like someone taking a photograph. I feel absolutely THERE when reading it, and feel as if I know every single character personally. Miller has the uncanny ability to create an almost 'voyeuristic' atmosphere in her books. I can't help but feel these characters are living and breathing. One of my all time favourites. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating: 
Summary: very real
Review: This book tells the story more of the family with the autistic child than the autistic child himself. I thought it was wonderful and it really made me feel the impact of having an autistic child in the imediate family.
Rating:
Summary: very real
Review: This book tells the story more of the family with the autistic child than the autistic child himself. I thought it was wonderful and it really made me feel the impact of having an autistic child in the imediate family.
Rating:
Summary: One of My All-time Favorites
Review: This is a great American novel, and one of my lifetime favorites. It is the story of how one family was forever changed because of a handicapped child, and how the entire family had to revolve around the needs of this child and his mother's selfless devotion to him, even at the expense of her marriage. She simply couldn't stop giving more of herself to him than to anyone else. This is a truly splendid book, and anyone who thinks there is trashy material in it is nuts.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great...
Review: This is the first book I've read by Sue Miller. It was interesting and moving at times, but I often found myself asking, "when is this book going to be over?". I think Sue Miller writes beautifully but I just couldn't really get into the characters, particularly Nina. I felt as though the book jumped around so much (many different years) that it was confusing at times to figure out how old everyone was in a given chapter, and what had already happened to them. I believe this book could have been shortened (cut out many of the parts about Mack and Nina in their teen years). This book dragged a bit. All in all, it was a decent book, but I certainly wouldn't rate it as great.
Rating:
Summary: Family Pictures offers us just what its title says
Review: This is the second novel of Sue Miller's I've read (following "While I Was Gone"), and again I'm amazed at just how REAL her characters seem. Some of the criticisms this book has received focus on the choronology, the way that Miller jumps around from one character the next with little warning. I can see this is true, but I don't find the way she jumps around confusing at all. The book is called Family Pictures, after all ... and that's just what she gives us: different snapshots of family members at various points in their lives. I was touched by the inate love Mack has for his brother; by the way that Nina seems adrift, separate from her family; and by Lainey's desperate need to show the children she loves them. These were the aspects that touched me personally, but there were also specific scenese I found to be amazing. Most notably, the scene in which Mack returns from work on Christmas Eve and goes to church, but slips out before the family discovers him. There was a magic about this scene, and I found myself wishing that they would know he had joined them. Sue Miller writes from the heart, and this novel never bored me, despite its length.
Rating:
Summary: Great Family Stuff
Review: This story so represents family life, disfunctional as we most are. I couldn't put it down. I love Sue Miller.
| 
