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Sue Miller is a truly feminist writer. By feminist I mean (for those of you who are strangely frightened by the word) that she has a deep and truly insightful understanding of the ways in which women's complicated hearts, souls, and minds work. In THE WORLD BELOW, as in her last book WHILE I WAS GONE or her masterful novels FAMILY PICTURES and THE GOOD MOTHER, she exhibits an even more finely honed ability to get under the skin of her characters.
Georgia Rice and her granddaughter Catherine Hubbard don't seem to have a lot in common --- Rice a matronly country doctor's wife, Hubbard a two-time divorcee in the midst of a mid-life crisis --- but in the valuable details of the lives that have shaped them they are very similar. Their marriages are something one wouldn't suspect from the outside, they still suffer the abandonments of their mothers while still girls, they both feel enormous guilt and harbor secrets about themselves that no one else knows. In THE WORLD BELOW it is the emotional and spiritual life below the surface that ties together these women from intensely separate generations, in a way that even their blood ties cannot bind them.
Georgia's journey begins with her time in a tuberculosis sanitarium. Catherine's journey begins where her grandmother's life lets off. Moving into Georgia's old home, Catherine finds, amidst her grandmother's effects, diaries accounting the strange and troubled past with which she was obviously conflicted her entire life. Somewhere in those pages, where revelations about her grandparents' marriage come at a quick and horrifying pace, Catherine begins to find some hope for her own future.
Miller is a remarkable writer; her ability to give you immense detail in quick and easy segments is a true gift. Her characters are drawn so masterfully that you will feel like you have met them before, in real life. Georgia, whose story is relayed to us bit by bit, is as perfect a literary creation as any character can be --- and Miller, because she takes her time to reveal little by little Georgia's haunted past, keeps the reader so completely involved that they won't be able to put this book down for a moment. I predict that a lot of people will be fairly bleary-eyed at work the day after embarking on this luscious, provocative reading experience.
THE WORLD BELOW is as complete a book as you can get, as good a book as you can find on bookshelves today. Sue Miller's latest is a complete triumph, the sort of book that will be passed on from person to person in a samba line of happy readers who wish to spread that joy. A hopeful story, THE WORLD BELOW is the perfect antidote to today's overwhelming malaise.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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