Family Pictures

i really like her writing. there often isn't much that happens, except for life. this is just the story of a family, through the years. infidelity, miscarriage, and a diagnosis that at the time was handled much differently than now. (this was originally published in 1990 but most of the action takes place in the 50s and 60s.) i know there's not much to it, but i still seem to really enjoy her.

Once again Miller feeds our voyeuristic hunger. Up close and personal is a barely adequate phrase when describing her family sagas. This time there is no one looming disaster on the horizon. It’s more the disintegration of a family over time. Partly it is because of the roles each of them were forced into. Most obvious is Mack; the ‘good’ son. The healthy son. The hope. He cracked under the pressure and while he didn’t completely fail in the grand scheme of things, he failed to be the shining example of perfect manhood that his father wanted. Lainey seemed more removed from his life than David. Out of the six siblings, only Mack, Nina and Randall are the focus; Mary, Sarah and Lydia are in the periphery.

As a family they are very show more close in the sense that they are involved with the surface of each other’s lives. They are each, however, adept and successful at hiding a secret life. Mack smokes pot and becomes disaffected with what his parents want from him. Nina is briefly promiscuous as she embarks on a creative life. David has numerous affairs with neighborhood women as he tries to distance himself from his defective son and the system that supports him.

Then ending was a little surreal and I think it was a fiction within a fiction. For a book with essentially no plot, it was a fair way to tie things up. show less

Story of the ups and downs of 40 years in the life of the Eberhardt family of Chicago told mainly through the eyes of fourth (out of 6) child Nina, Mac (#2), and mom Lainey, and dad David, who is a psychiatrist. Their lives are shaped by the fact that the third child Randall is severely autistic and not much is known about that in the '50s and '60s. The author also places the characters very realistically in the social and political times of the different eras they live through during the course of the book. Great writing, lots of detail, and the reader becomes very invested in what happens to each one of the family members

I'm left breathless by Sue Miller's ability to tell a story from many different viewpoints - female, male, very young, very old - reflecting attitudes of five different decades. This covers the timelines of several members of one family whose scars radiate out over many years from the autism of one brother. I don't think this is a spoiler, but the final pages detail an idyllic evening just before the birth of the autistic child. We see the family, still small, as yet unwounded, ready to welcome the new child. We the readers have been privy to the years of guilt and consequences, and the poignancy is razor-sharp and achingly beautiful.

I loved The Good Mother and especially While I Was Gone, both by Sue Miller. I did not love this one as much and I have been trying to understand why.

The story is about a family more than about an individual. Yes, there is a main character - Nina - but her life is surrounded by the lives of her parents and siblings, and several chapters are from these other points of view. For a while I wondered if we'd ever get back to Nina, because I missed her.

The controlling force in the story is Nina's older brother Randall. Nina was the fourth child, Randall the third. Randall had neurological problems. They settled on calling him autistic but it sounds like more than that. Never mind. The label is not important. What is important is how his show more disability affected his parents and by extension his siblings.

In getting to the seat of it all, Miller weaves back and forth in time. Sometimes I felt we were thrown from one age to another, then back again, like a carnival ride. She takes in Nina's parents and their parents in her survey, which helps to provide a basis for the action.

Randall's parents felt very differently about Randall. It appeared to Lainey, his mother, that her husband David blamed her for the defects in this child. In response to this belief, Lainey goes on to have three more children - "perfect" - as a way of sorts of proving that she had nothing to do with it. Nina always felt out of it, different, because of this distinction, and her father jokingly referred to the three youngest as "the extras", the "unexpected guests", the "surprise party", the "little pitchers of health".

Her father was a psychiatrist. It appears that he took his profession seriously, extending his listening manner to his family. Which contrasted with Lainey's more excitable nature. At times I was irritated by David's steady, controlled manner, and at others by Lainey's uncontrolled outbursts or her attempts at joking everyone out of a funk. I did not become fond of either.

Nor did I become especially fond of Nina's older brother Mack, older than Randall but often seen as a kind of twin, the "perfect" twin. He felt pressured to perform at full volume for a while, until he threw it all away, again a response to the existence of Randall.

We don't get into the minds of the younger sisters to any great degree. We do meet Liddie, the eldest, and recognize that she uses her talent, her voice, to move her farther and farther away from her family and from forming any family of her own.

It's a compelling portrait of a family challenged by the one who is least aware of the others. For some reason, though, I never really felt sucked into it. Towards the end I could hardly wait for the last page, which differs from how I have felt when reading Miller's other books - that I would be sad to leave them behind. show less

Nina is the fourth daughter of a family of six children. The third child, Randall, is autistic and difficult to live with. The family life revolves around Randall to a large extent. We meet the family in the 1960s and through 20 plus years. At times we are in the action, at others Nina is looking back on her family life, trying to make sense of it as her own life is in a state of change. Sue Miller is exploring relationships within a complex family and manages this successfully to a large extent but occasionally I felt she was over-analysing and this became clumsy. I like the story and the characters very much and she includes plenty of excellent material and images of families, siblings. There is plenty of heartfelt feeling and opening show more up but also secrets and hiding behind routine. Generally a good read. show less

Whatever the world could throw at the Eberhardt family, circumstances could not have broken their strength or spirit. In 1948, the Eberhardts were the picture perfect family - Lainey is the wonderful, if slightly eccentric mother, David is a good father - sometimes sarcastic, always cool-tempered. Two wonderful and loving children - Lydia and Macklin - complete the family portrait.

The lives of the Eberhardt family couldn't possibly get any better; until the birth of their third child, Randall. The subsequent discovery that their youngest son has certain unexpected challenges, highlights strains that will ultimately deeply affect their marriage. Over the next forty years, the Eberhardts struggle to survive a flood tide of upheaval and show more heartbreak, love and betrayal, passion and pain...hoping they can someday heal their hearts.

I absolutely loved this book. In my opinion, reading it was just like observing family dynamics - up close and personal - and experiencing their trials and tribulations first hand. I give this book an A+! and will certainly be looking for more to read by this author in the future. show less