The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Conversations
200	18	29,213	(3.25)	26

Work details

Book details

Title	The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
Author	Rebecca Miller
Rating
Tags	novel, america, family, twins, marriage, early reviewer
Collections	Your library
Your review	I suspect I didn't get as much out of this book as I might have done because I read it not long after reading Graham Swift's Tomorrow. The two books have much in common: a female protagonist, boy/girl fraternal twins, a sense of mystery and history. However, Swift's book is significantly more engaging, fluid and satisfying. In Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller has created a character who fails to excite. She is shallow, and narrates her history (in the middle section of the novel) in such a superficial manner that we gain virtually no insight into her psyche. (Except that she displays the typical self-centredness of the cocaine user.) In fact, it is not clear what is the purpose of this first-person section. Was Miller sufficiently unconfident of her own narration (which characterises the first and last sections of the book) to carry it into this 'memoir'? One of the tests of a successful novel for me is whether I care about the characters at the end. I needed to know what happened to Graham Swift's characters. I couldn't care less about Pippa Lee.
Other authors 1
Publication	Canongate Books (2008), Paperback, 220 pages
Publication date	2008
ISBN	1847672450 / 9781847672452
LC classification
Dewey
Primary language eng	English
Secondary language	(blank)
Original language
Date acquired
Date started
Date finished
Summary 1	The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller (2008)
Comments
BCID	XXX-
Number of copies	1
Citation	MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, Wikipedia citation
Data source	amazon.co.uk