Rating: 
Summary: Tender and Depressing
Review: "Time does not pass in a clock's ticking; oh no! It goes like gusts of wind past the north corner of a house. Stay in the sun on the south side and you never know a wind is blowing, but breast around the north corner, and it will jerk your breath from out of your ribs. It is blowing, but you don't notice it; always time is passing, but you don't notice it . . ."The passage of time is what makes this book a pleasant read, and utterly depressing. There are few resolutions to the catastophies that occur throughout the story, leaving you with a sunken feeling of the depressing events and little to get you out of it. With much birthing and deathing, there are few rejoiceful passages in the book. However, the rewards of this read include watching time give Cean a new lease on life (though permamently hardened by the toils of her life in the rural Georgia (Georgy)) and Margot temporary happiness in her mid-life (though eventually hardend by the events that unfold before her). The book suffers from a lack of depth in certain aspects of the story. Just as you are feeling pulled in by the characters, the author jumps ahead a year in time and instead of developing the story lists the children that were born to a character in the interim. In addition, you can only see glimpses of Miller's ability to write poignant passages (as the one above)- most of the words are much more straight forward and anxious. However, if you read past some of the low points, you will get to the ending that is more clever than the rest of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Tender and Depressing
Review: "Time does not pass in a clock's ticking; oh no! It goes like gusts of wind past the north corner of a house. Stay in the sun on the south side and you never know a wind is blowing, but breast around the north corner, and it will jerk your breath from out of your ribs. It is blowing, but you don't notice it; always time is passing, but you don't notice it . . ." The passage of time is what makes this book a pleasant read, and utterly depressing. There are few resolutions to the catastophies that occur throughout the story, leaving you with a sunken feeling of the depressing events and little to get you out of it. With much birthing and deathing, there are few rejoiceful passages in the book. However, the rewards of this read include watching time give Cean a new lease on life (though permamently hardened by the toils of her life in the rural Georgia (Georgy)) and Margot temporary happiness in her mid-life (though eventually hardend by the events that unfold before her). The book suffers from a lack of depth in certain aspects of the story. Just as you are feeling pulled in by the characters, the author jumps ahead a year in time and instead of developing the story lists the children that were born to a character in the interim. In addition, you can only see glimpses of Miller's ability to write poignant passages (as the one above)- most of the words are much more straight forward and anxious. However, if you read past some of the low points, you will get to the ending that is more clever than the rest of the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Book I've Ever Read
Review: Apparently Margaret Mitchell's favorite author was Caroline Miller. The reader can tell that Mitchell tried to be Miller, but the talent and skill is amazing. I was totally absorbed.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Painful
Review: Beautiful and painful, this winner of the 1934 Pulitzer Prize, has the power to bring forth memories of things which one has never experienced. Though set among the Georgia country folk of the mid-nineteenth century, the universality of hope and despair and hope resurging victorious, of character and motive and temptation and struggle against self and circumstance will speak to anyone willing to stop and listen and absorb from those who though dead "yet speaketh". Going far deeper than a mere period piece (though the historicity is fascinating of itself), Lamb in His Bosom evoked in me, at some level, sympathy, understanding and even degrees of identification with the bared souls of each of the major characters. This book is not for the faint of heart or those who confine their swimming to safe and shallow waters, but for those who are willing to dive deep into the pool of sense and emotion, of depths of contemplation which Lamb in His Bosom provides, you may be profoundly affected and saddened ... yet wonderfully pleased by what you discover.
Rating:
Summary: The Southern Heart
Review: Caroline Miller's Lamb In His Bosom is a truly beautiful read. The unforgettable characters, the story line, the beautiful prose and dialect, all these make it the perfect book about the South and Southerners.
The book is set in Georgia about twenty years before the War Between the States, and eventually leads up to the War. The story revolves around the life and thoughts of Cean Smith (nee Carver), and how she manages as a young wife and mother in the Georgia backwoods. Her life is marked by hard work, love for her husband, and birthing, raising, and burying her babies.
I was first struck by the dialect. The more I read, the more I recognized my own mother's speech patterns and idioms. I should have expected as much, seeing as she was born and raised in a Kentucky holler, in a situation not far removed from that of Lamb's Cean and Lonzo. From the book's excellent afterward (which describes Miller's research technique), as well as from numerous contemporaneous reviews, the dialect in Lamb is probably the best record available of pre-War Between the States Southern speech, and the book therefore has historical value. Attempts by authors to portray "Southern-speak" usually come off as irritating, even insulting, poor imitations of a "Hee-Haw" script. But Miller makes the dialect not only effective, she makes it beautiful and even honorable.
The story line has several elements to commend the book. First is the utter believablity of the situations. There is nothing outrageous about the vicissitudes encountered by these characters. The power of the story is contained in large measure in the very plainess of life in the setting. Life for these folks is a few years of hard toil to scratch out an existence that is punctuated by brief moments of happiness and made joyful by enduring family ties and precious generational memories. Most prevalent in the story is the ubiquitous presence of death, which spares neither the elderly, the middle-aged, and especially the children and babies. The story made me remember the grave yards at my Alma Mater in southern Virginia, where the grave markers tell a story of a time when families had more deceased children than most people today have living relatives. And in this is the Southern heart most eloquently displayed in Lamb, for every passing is, of course, cause for mourning, but is also occasion to remember the blessing that death has become, as it is the Door that leads to the long hoped for encounter with the Great Maker, Redeemer, and Disposer of All. In Lamb, dread death is not feared as it gives way to Blessed Transfiguration.
Lamb In His Bosom has a rightful place in the Southern Canon. The story is unique; it has no real plot sublety or intricacy; it has none of disturbing Gothicity of O'Connor, none of the flagellation of Faulkner, none of the contrived humor of Welty. This in NO WAY is a diminution of those great Southern writers. Rather, it is a confirmation of the Southern Character and Ethos of seeing God and nature as good and living in close connection to both even in the face of hardship and death, loving our living, and honoring our dead. Lamb In His Bosom deserves to read, carefully and quietly. It is a book that is beautifully simple and simply beautiful, just like the South and Southerners.
Rating:
Summary: LAMB IN HIS BOSSOM WONDERFUL
Review: I JUST LOVE THIS LAMB IN HIS BOSSOM,CAROLINE MILLER IS THE BEST.TO BAD SHE IS GONE,AND CAN NO LONGER WRITE THESE WONDERFUL BOOKS.
Rating:
Summary: Lamb in his Bosom
Review: I read this book years ago... as a college project to read classic, but little known writers. It was often called "THE POOR MAN'S GONE WITH THE WIND". It has the flavor of the recent book, COLD MOUNTAIN because it does not romantize the South or the Civil War. The writing is very descriptive and the pity is that Caroline Miller never wrote another book.
Rating:
Summary: Lamb in his Bosom
Review: I read this book years ago... as a college project to read classic, but little known writers. It was often called "THE POOR MAN'S GONE WITH THE WIND". It has the flavor of the recent book, COLD MOUNTAIN because it does not romantize the South or the Civil War. The writing is very descriptive and the pity is that Caroline Miller never wrote another book.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most beautiful books I've ever read.
Review: Lamb in His Bosom has been sitting in a place of honour on my bookshelf for 10 years. Every so often I read a few pages just to remind myself what beautifully-written prose really is.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most beautiful books I've ever read.
Review: Lamb in His Bosom has been sitting in a place of honour on my bookshelf for 10 years. Every so often I read a few pages just to remind myself what beautuflly written prose is.
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