Personal Velocity

by Rebecca Miller

Book Overview

A Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Rebecca Miller's powerful debut, Personal Velocity, is the basis for her Sundance Festival award-winning film by the same name. Acclaimed by The New York Times as "the work of a talented and highly visual writer," the vibrantly fresh and lustrous stories in Miller's collection explore the multifaceted lives of women in seven arresting portraits. From within the secret self of each character we see the surprising...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802139183
• ISBN13: 9780802139184
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Personal moments in seven women's lives

After watching the excellent movie by the same name I just had to read this book. I believe this is one of the few rare cases where a movie, based on a book, does not fall in standard and is a good addition to the written tale, sort of making it a fuller, richer experience. Only after reading the book do I understand what a good movie it was and how faithful to the book. The narration in the movie is actually a word by word reading of several parts of the story, usually these parts which reflect the character's thoughts or inner feelings ("she was embarrassed to be seen because she had recently grown breasts" - Delia).The movie is amazing, but it can be such only due to the tale it draws upon. These are seven stories of women in different ages, geographical regions and social status. These are stories of revelation - of a certain understanding that comes in a brief moment in time. The beauty of this book is first of all the amazing writing. On the one hand the accounts are very readable, condensed, using everyday language ("and, as was her custom, got up to go to the john"...Bryna) and on the other hand, somehow the way this language is put together, can sometimes make it sound like poetry ("She kept the two narratives distinct in her mind; they coexisted as if in twin universes separated by a vast field of space. The only trouble was that Greta was exhausted ... the fittings...the dinners, the bachelorette party, and the cold that Max had given her" - Greta). It does not matter who you read about, you are drawn to the story and to the insides of the heroine's mind and feelings until you can accept all her actions and remain totally unjudgemental. This is also true of unpleasant accounts, where the characters (Nancy is a good example) could not have won the reader's heart in any other setting.It was interesting to read how other reviewers interpreted or understood the stories and to see the diversity in the points this book is given. Since the views are not similar, I take it as a proof that this is a story that has you thinking about, analyzing, and reflecting. Not all is clear and your interpretation relies on your life understanding as well. The stories are indeed cut short as one reviewer commented, but I felt that what I read was enough to guess further and to make the point the author intended. The stories sort of give you a glimpse of our heroine's lives and how one event affects another. Bryna, which is able to avoid hate towards her mother in law (explaining to herself that the woman is mad), and actually reaches (at the end of a long hard day) a very intimate feeling and closeness to her husband and Nancy, whose future does not look promising, but the reader can understand that this is a lonely lost child. I enjoyed each and every one of the characters and could relate to all of them, which is the accomplishment of this great author.

finger on the pulse of each

Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity is poignant and insightful. The details of different women's psyche is in the way of a genius. I thoroughly enjoyed this book..she needs to write a novel..I was longing for the stories to go on.

Fascinating New Collection of Short Stories

I rarely read contemporary fiction, because it's almost always dissapointing. At [a store] last week I picked up this slim hardcover volume from a stack on the floor, attracted by the bright cover I suppose. I began reading and couldn't stop. It was as if I had stepped inside a world created by a female Raymond Carver -- a world of women of different ages and backgrounds and occupations, each of whom feels absolutely real, each of whom has her motivations stripped bare in a few phrases. Rebecca Miller's style is so direct and unsentimental that it's disorienting at first, but if one sticks with it and gets used to the cadences of her sentences, the result is very powerful. The unflattering, almost Swiftian descriptions of her characters' bodies may be hard to take for some readers, but I think they contribute to a deliberately naturalistic account of contemporary women's lives. My favorite story is that of Bryna, a wife who fantasizes about being profiled in Redbook Magazine. It's a deft little satire on the way in which glossy magazine accounts of celebrity infect the imaginations of American women. This understated collection is like an antidote to the ostentatiously sensitive prose of so many current trade writers. Yesterday I recommended _Personal Velocity_ to one of my undergraduate students. She had already started reading it and informed me that the author is Arthur Miller's daughter. Perhaps literary talent does run in the blood, because this is an impressive debut.

Survival

I always say I don't like short stories but maybe that's because not every author writes like Rebecca Miller. Her language is spare and precise and powerful. There are seven moving and disturbing stories about the lives of six women and one child. The stories are snapshots poised in time. Each character must decide how to survive and whether to change. Miller knows these women well. Highly recommended. (Ms. Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and the wife of actor Daniel Day Lewis. A movie is being made from several of the stories.)