HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Miller's Valley: A Novel by Anna…
Loading...

Miller's Valley: A Novel (edition 2016)

by Anna Quindlen (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
8135326,983 (3.85)22
Fiction. Literature. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ? In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself. Filled with insights that are the hallmark of Anna Quindlen??s bestsellers, Miller??s Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget.
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller??s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be ??a place where it??s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.?
Miller??s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, ??No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.? Miller??s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.
Praise for Miller's Valley
??Overwhelmingly moving . . . In this novel, where so much is about what vanishes, there is also a deep beating heart, of what also stays.???The New York Times Book Review 
??Stunning . . . The matriarchal theme [is] at the heart of Miller??s Valley. Miriam pushes her smart daughter to consider college, and other women??a teacher, a doctor, a benefactor??will raise Mimi up past the raging waters that swirl in her heart.???The Washington Post 
??Economical and yet elegant . . . [Anna Quindlen??s] storytelling and descriptive powers make Miller??s Valley compelling. . . . Miller??s Valley has a geography and fate all its own but its residents, realities, disappointments, joys and cycle of life feel familiar, in the best way possible.???Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
??A family story with humor, surprise, sorrow and mystery . . . Quindlen has created distinctive characters, none of whom seems like anyone you??ve met before in fiction.???The Columbus Dispatch
??A breathtakingly moving look at a family.???USA Today
??[Anna] Quindlen??s provocative novel will have you flipping through the pages of your own family history and memories even as you can??t stop reading about the Millers. . . . a coming-of-age story that reminds us that the past continues to wash over us even as we move away from the places and events that formed us.???Chicago Tribune
??Picking up a novel by Anna Quindlen means more than just meeting a new family??it??s like moving in and pretending they are yours. It??s a rare gift for a writer, and Quindlen does it to near perfection.???St. Louis Post-Dispatch
??Quindlen??s novel of a childhood examined by someone who literally can??t go home again i
… (more)
Member:elizbullard
Title:Miller's Valley: A Novel
Authors:Anna Quindlen (Author)
Info:Random House (2016), 272 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****
Tags:land condemnation; flooding; recluse; Pennsylvania; Vietnam War; community; college; coming of age; farming; nursing;

Work Information

Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 22 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 53 (next | show all)
Sad tone to this story of a smart girl in a small town in PA that's heading towards its end because the government plans to flood it to create a recreation area.

It was a slow start but by the end I was very sad to see it come to an end.
( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
Protagonist Mimi Miller reflects on her life growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania in the 1960’s. Miller’s Valley is a rural community targeted by the government to be flooded and turned into a reservoir, which involves invoking eminent domain and removing people from homes their families have lived in for generations. Mimi relates her life as she matures, makes mistakes, and takes charge at home when needed at a great personal cost.

It is a contemplative, slow-paced story where the characters take center stage, particularly Mimi and her family members. This novel explores what makes a place feel like home, mother-daughter relationships, and how external factors can significantly change lives. Mimi is a likeable character and it is easy to root for her. She is trying to find her place in the world, even as she loses her childhood home. I enjoyed it, but the flow was choppy, almost as if it were too heavily edited, and one of her significant relationships is given only cursory coverage.

If you appreciate quiet novels about people, family, community, or life in a small town, you may enjoy this one.
( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
I’m a fan of Anna Quindlen. She writes books that move fluidly through the story, with realism, a bit of suspense, and deft character development. I never think of deserting her work or close the book thinking I have wasted my time by reading her.

Miller’s Valley is about the displacement of a community in the interest of flooding the valley to extend the dam reservoir of the Roosevelt Dam. The story centers on the Miller family who have occupied the farm at the heart of the valley for hundreds of years. The youngest Miller is Mimi, and it is through her eyes that we see this complicated family and unravel their quirks and personalities.

Perhaps this novel is mostly about home. What makes a place a home? In what ways are you shaped by the place you are from? Is it something physical or something emotional? And, how much of home is about the people who share your life? Your family, friends, neighbors? Can you carry that with you, even if the place and the people exist no more?

If you are familiar with Quindlen, you will understand when I say she builds this novel around living--the stuff of ordinary days, people who could be your neighbors or your own family members--but she makes you feel how tenuous and fragile life can be and how easily success or failure can turn on a dime. I truly love that she doesn’t do any Perry Mason revelations at the end. Some questions in life are not answered, some mysteries are left unsolved, some people do not reveal all their secrets, but at the same time she never makes you feel there are loose ends that need tying. This is life, it can be marvelous, but it is always messy.

I thought this was Quindlen at her best, and her best is worth reading. ( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
I liked the characters, the stage, the atmosphere. But nothing really happens. And speaking about family secrets in the summary is pretty misleading, I think. In the end it's a book about a family. ( )
  mariu911 | Sep 6, 2021 |
I've lost track of how many Anna Quindlen novels I've read (Her NY Times columns were what first hooked me way back when.), but this is definitely my favorite since Blessings. Nice pace, good story, interesting characters, lovely writing. She works a few hot-button topics into the story but handles them with unflinching grace, and somehow avoids being preachy or making them the sole focus. She creates such a strong sense of place too. Good stuff. ( )
  CaitlinMcC | Jul 11, 2021 |
Showing 1-5 of 53 (next | show all)
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition. ---James Baldwin
Dedication
For my mother and father
Blessed forever in both
First words
It was a put-up job, and we all knew it by then.
Quotations
They decide what they want and then they try to make you believe you want it, too.
I always wondered if they wrote him off because his name was Elmer. The government people talked a lot about the future. Elmer was such an old guy's name, a piece of the past.
My mother was a person of stature in Miller's Valley. She'd lived there all her life. Her mother had raised her and her younger sister, Ruth, in a one-story three-room house at the edge of the valley with a pitted asphalt roof and a falling-down porch, and when she'd married my father and become a Miller she'd moved to his family's farm, right at the center of the valley, in its lowest place, where the fog lay thick as cotton candy on damp mornings.
The night was so quiet you could hear the wood doves comforting themselves with their own soft voices in the fields.
A deer ran through my headlights like a ghost, and I slowed down because, like my father always said, there's almost never just one.
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Fiction. Literature. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ? In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself. Filled with insights that are the hallmark of Anna Quindlen??s bestsellers, Miller??s Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget.
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller??s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be ??a place where it??s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.?
Miller??s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, ??No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.? Miller??s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.
Praise for Miller's Valley
??Overwhelmingly moving . . . In this novel, where so much is about what vanishes, there is also a deep beating heart, of what also stays.???The New York Times Book Review 
??Stunning . . . The matriarchal theme [is] at the heart of Miller??s Valley. Miriam pushes her smart daughter to consider college, and other women??a teacher, a doctor, a benefactor??will raise Mimi up past the raging waters that swirl in her heart.???The Washington Post 
??Economical and yet elegant . . . [Anna Quindlen??s] storytelling and descriptive powers make Miller??s Valley compelling. . . . Miller??s Valley has a geography and fate all its own but its residents, realities, disappointments, joys and cycle of life feel familiar, in the best way possible.???Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
??A family story with humor, surprise, sorrow and mystery . . . Quindlen has created distinctive characters, none of whom seems like anyone you??ve met before in fiction.???The Columbus Dispatch
??A breathtakingly moving look at a family.???USA Today
??[Anna] Quindlen??s provocative novel will have you flipping through the pages of your own family history and memories even as you can??t stop reading about the Millers. . . . a coming-of-age story that reminds us that the past continues to wash over us even as we move away from the places and events that formed us.???Chicago Tribune
??Picking up a novel by Anna Quindlen means more than just meeting a new family??it??s like moving in and pretending they are yours. It??s a rare gift for a writer, and Quindlen does it to near perfection.???St. Louis Post-Dispatch
??Quindlen??s novel of a childhood examined by someone who literally can??t go home again i

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.85)
0.5
1 2
1.5
2 4
2.5 2
3 40
3.5 28
4 103
4.5 13
5 31

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 204,495,059 books! | Top bar: Always visible