The World Below

I saw Georgia as a strong, rather fixed person, a person who has needed to be authoritative and in charge from a very early age, and has lost, to a degree, the ability consciously to register certain feelings on that account—though they are there, and surface from time to time. John I saw, and wanted to draw, as more open, more flexible. I wanted to have him growing and learning and asking questions all his life. This kind of questioning, his openness to it, endeared him to me as a character. Was Cath wrong to feel content?

It was certainly part of who she was that she saw and understood a serene domestic surface as enough—so disordered was her early life in her own family, and so troubled her first marriage. So what about marital happiness and contentment? Is ritual an ingredient for marital happiness? May bind them, in a variety of ways. Memory is another theme in the book—its reliability, its emergence, what it offers us. Samuel sees memory as hopelessly subjective and self-serving.

Cath, however, believes in the truth of her memory. Probably Samuel is less bothered— it seems clear he would wish to continue to be involved with Cath, in spite of what he sees as her stubbornness. But for Cath, his absolutism is fatal to the possibility of a romance between them, partly because she sees it as connected to his age, to a kind of rigidity born of age; and also perhaps partly because she connects it to an attitude toward women born of the period Samuel grew up in and was part of. I thought of myself as pushing the reader to think a little about the differences and similarities between Cath, as a "modern" woman, and Georgia, as an "old-fashioned" one, when confronted with this kind of assertiveness on the part of the older man each is involved with.

• Questions?.
• Baudelaire: Juego de triunfos (Spanish Edition).
• rejacketed.
• Sampson on the Farm (Sampson the Kitten).
• 7 Tage Sport (Abnehmen und Fett verlieren 1) (German Edition).
• Defying Decrepitude.
• .

And perhaps, too, to think of the differences between John and Samuel. On the other hand, Cath implicity learns a great deal about memory from talking with Samuel; and perhaps part of her being able to imagine the passages in the book about her grandparents is as a result of thinking with Samuel about history and its meaning, the imaginative entry we need to make into it to understand it.

You make numerous references to books the characters read or are given—Willa Cather and Edith Wharton are both mentioned several times.

• KIRKUS REVIEW.
• Sam Silver: Undercover Pirate: Kidnapped: Book 3?
• Womens Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics;
• More books from this author: Wesley King.
• Sports Illustrated Book of the Apocalypse: Two Decades of Sports Absurdity.

What ties or connections might be seen? Except, of course, with the dreaded Ethan Frome.

A World Below

What does it say about Georgia that she loved Song of the Lark? I hoped that it would suggest that she was thinking of the possibility of a more expansive life for herself, that this experience in the san had opened her to the notion of a life lived on terms different from the ones she has understood up until now to be the necessary ones. As for Ethan Frome—well, maybe all that needs to be said is that I dislike that book intensely. The World Below seems a very natural progression from your last book, While I Was Gone, which was also about memory and marital happiness, but this book is more introspec-tive, quieter in content.

In your body of work six novels, one book of short stories —where does this book sit with you? If someone loved The World Below, which of your books would you have them read next? Or perhaps The Distinguished Guest. Both of them have less "action," more dwelling in thought. I understand that after finishing The World Below, you finished a memoir of your father that you had been working on for years. Did writing The World Below give you any clues or help in finishing that book?

The World Below

I think it was rather the reverse: In part with the sense that I had of learning about my father, changing in my thinking about him, long after his death. Any new novels on the horizon? I am beginning to make notes. I hope truly to launch myself this summer the summer of Buy the Audiobook Download: Apple Audible downpour eMusic audiobooks.

The World Below by Sue Miller | www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Books

Also by Sue Miller. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Related Links Contact us about speaking engagements with Sue Miller. Looking for More Great Reads?

Navigation menu

Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now. But in this novel Miller's special gift to readers is her rendering of Georgia's life, particularly the two love stories that mark it. Miller portrays the feverish period in the san—the intrigues, the romances, the very romance of taking a cure—vividly and sensuously.

Surely her research was rigorous. Likewise, Miller captures the early, fragile years of Georgia's marriage with great poignancy, ever dividing our sympathies between Georgia and her husband. In the Holbrookes, Miller has created a marriage that survives despite its fault lines, a marriage that seems both modern and old-fashioned: Perhaps that's why this novel is so satisfying.

Miller's many, many mostly female fans will relish this dip into the past, released in a ,copy first printing. A city author tour, advertising on Oprah and word-of-mouth should attract plenty of new readers, too. View Full Version of PW.

See a Problem?

More By and About This Author. Discover what to read next. The Best Books of