Inventing the Abbotts

by Sue Miller

Overview

“Compelling. . . . What Miller offers . . . is a distinctive sensibility—a candid exploration of the frail and gritty truths about trying to love without harm or reprisal.”—Boston Globe

From Sue Miller, author of the bestselling THE GOOD MOTHER and FAMILY PICTURES, this collection of short stories, INVENTING THE ABBOTTS, explores the treacherously shifting ground of erotic and family relationships with deftness and depth.

The title story is about a young man who takes up successively with three daughters of the most fashionable family in town. In other stories, whose characters range from a young girl in the first blush of sexual curiosity to a stricken dowager whose seizures release a brutal and sometimes obscene candor, Sue Miller presents a compelling gallery of contemporary men and women with hungry hearts and dismayed consciences.

With keen sensitivity and penetrating insight, Inventing the Abbotts will strike a chord with readers everywhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062463494
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/08/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	588,399
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hometown:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

November 29, 1943

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Radcliffe College, 1964; M.A.T., Wesleyan U., 1965; Ed.M., Harvard U., 1975; M.A. Boston U., 1980

What People are Saying About This

Mary Lee Settle

Sue Miller has the courage and talent to write without tricks.

Hilma Wolitzer

She has a genius for understanding sexual behavior and for transforming it into art.

Editorial Reviews

In this moving and articulate collection of 11 stories, the author of The Good Mother describes individuals trying, but failing, to connect emotionally in a society where ``all the rules have changed.'' PW praised Miller's ``insight into character and gift for describing contemporary relationships.'' (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This collection follows the author's impressive debut, The Good Mother ( LJ 5/15/86). In the title story a young man tells the absorbing tale of his elder brother's involvement with three sisters of small-town social prominence. Other stories also reflect Miller's intense preoccupation with the delicacy of relationships among parents, children, wives and husbands, the married and divorced, lovers. ``The Quality of Life'' depicts emotional complexities within a family marked by separations and rivalries. ``Tyler and Brina,'' ``Travel,'' and ``Expensive Gifts'' all concern the tentative dependence and isolation of women, their strengths, the needines of their men. Readers of Miller's novel will again appreciate her fastidiousness and clarity, her sobering vision of the moral dilemmas of modern middle-class life. Mary Soete, San Diego P.L., Cal.

Library Journal