Miller's Valley: a Novel

by Anna Quindlen

Paperback, 2017

Status

Available

Call number

FIC J Qui

Publication

Random House

Pages

263

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â?˘ 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 Quindlenâ??s bestsellers, Millerâ??s Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget. For generations the Millers have lived in Millerâ??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 â??a place where itâ??s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.â? Millerâ??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, â??No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.â? Millerâ??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 Valleyâ??Overwhelmingly moving . . . In this novel, where so much is about what vanishes, there is also a deep beating heart, of what also stays.â?â??The New York Times Book Review  â??Stunning . . . The matriarchal theme [is] at the heart of Millerâ??s Valley. Miriam pushes her smart daughter to consider college, and other womenâ??a teacher, a doctor, a benefactorâ??will raise Mimi up past the raging waters that swirl in her heart.â?â??The Washington Post  â??Economical and yet elegant . . . [Anna Quindlenâ??s] storytelling and descriptive powers make Millerâ??s Valley compelling. . . . Millerâ??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.â?â??Pittsburgh Post-Gazette â??A family story with humor, surprise, sorrow and mystery . . . Quindlen has created distinctive characters, none of whom seems like anyone youâ??ve met before in fiction.â?â??The Columbus Dispatch â??A breathtakingly moving look at a family.â?â??USA Today â??[Anna] Quindlenâ??s provocative novel will have you flipping through the pages of your own family history and memories even as you canâ??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.â?â??Chicago Tribune â??Picking up a novel by Anna Quindlen means more than just meeting a new familyâ??itâ??s like moving in and pretending they are yours. Itâ??s a rare gift for a writer, and Quindlen does it to near perfection.â?â??St. Louis Post-Dispatch â??Quindlenâ??s novel of a childhood examined by someone who literally canâ??t go home again i… (more)

Collection

Barcode

2068

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2016-04-05

Physical description

263 p.; 8 inches

ISBN

9780812985900

User reviews

LibraryThing member Alphawoman
A touching book about a family and the meaning of home. I particularly enjoyed the straightforward style, the character development which made you know and understand each person, the soothing cadence of the story's progression.

You came to understand the below the surface tension between the
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sisters and the unreasonable love a mother can have for her wild child.

I liked the way we were given no clear reasons for the family dynamics. The mysteries were left mysteries to ponder.

This is the first book by Anne Quindlen I have read. It will not be the last. A master storyteller of the things we all have in common.
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LibraryThing member karconner
NOTE: I received a free copy of this book from Random House.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from Anna Quindlen. To me, it is a quiet book- one that is not packed with action and twists and turns but instead a subtle development of characters that kept me connected and interested. Having grown up in
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a small mountain town near the coalfields of WV and worked next to a mine, the quiet nature of Miller's valley with the underlying tension of the water felt familiar.

I enjoyed seeing Mimi grow up and come to understand the virtues and faults of humans. The letter I received with this novel called it an "intimate" novel, and I wholeheartedly agree. I learned to like and dislike characters as I discovered their personalities. I felt as if Mimi had been my childhood friend, and I felt as if I knew Miller's Valley personally.
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LibraryThing member LivelyLady
Wonderful story of the life of Mimi, first as a young girl being raised on a farm in a valley and then as she grows up. Nothing stays the same. Such good character development! I didn't want the book to end. I think it is Anna Quindlen at her best. Maybe she has gotten wiser with age....just like
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the main character!
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LibraryThing member dissed1
Miller’s Valley, by Anna Quindlen, is a quiet gem, exploring family relations, attachment to home and the ways in which life actually doesn’t change us, as much as we might like to think. I enjoyed reading this novel immensely. It felt like Quindlen understood where her characters were coming
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from and that they were solidly based in reality. Her handling of the human experience, especially when we feel threatened, is deft. As a reader, I never questioned the motivations of any of Quindlen’s characters. They respond to and revolve around one another like every family you’ve ever met. Additionally, the plotting is strong. Throughout, the reader fears the eventual flooding of the valley, forgetting to keep an eye out for dangers more imminent, that provide the dramatic twists in the story. At the conclusion, one is left with a luminous, somewhat haunting image. One that satisfies and offers insight into what is important in life and the choices we make. Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member Loried
I liked, but did not love, Miller's Valley. As with the book Cascade, I was intrigued by the idea of a town being flooded, but, once again, I wish there was more about the flooding and its implications. I thought this was an interesting family saga with some interesting events representative of the
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time-frame, but the ending was not very satisfying, with some of the big mysteries left unresolved. Maybe that's what real life is all about, but I would have liked more. I found the end of the book rushed and leaving me wanting more. Since the book is relatively short, I think the author could have gone into more detail about Mimi's adult life.

I think there are many issues raised in the book that would make it a good choice for a book discussion group.
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LibraryThing member froxgirl
The policy of drowning towns to create reservoirs is pretty common here in Massachusetts, where a handful of towns were emptied to create the Quabbin Reservoir a long time ago. I always found the concept very creepy, and might not have picked up Anna Quindlen's latest if I had known that was the
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theme. But, happily, it's really not - the novel centers on yet another family in crisis and on the protagonist, Mimi Miller, who seems capable of going under as well.

The characters - Mimi's brother with their white hats and black hats; her agoraphobic aunt; her stern mother and loving father - are not unusual. But there are some that stand out, especially Mimi's boyfriend Steve and Quindlen's vivid portrayal of their sexual enthrallment. And most of details of small town life - of coincidence, bad luck, and the futility of hard work, do keep the reader's interest.

Not one of her best, though - try Black and Blue, one of the most memorable novels ever and a pioneer in the outing of domestic violence.
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LibraryThing member witchyrichy
Miller's Valley is a coming-of-age story set in a fictional Pennsylvania town set to be flooded as part of a dam project. Mary Margaret (Mimi) Miller has lived in the valley her whole life, helping her father with the farming and selling corn by the road. She comes from generations of Millers who
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have lived similar lives. The story takes us from the 1960s through the present, and Quindlen's eye for details had me nodding along with everything from Jean Nate bath oil to patent leather shoes.

The outside world impacts the story. The Vietnam War looms large as she struggles to cope with a brother scarred by his experiences. But it is the world of Miller's Valley that comes to life in this carefully crafted novel. Mim walks a careful line between her mother and her mother's sister Ruth who refuses to leave her house. As many of us do, she learns about friends and lovers through both joy and heartache. Life events come, as they often do, without fanfare, forcing changes in our paths but helping us grow and learn as well.

It is a quiet book. What we might mistake for nostalgia is often overturned by the characters themselves. Mimi's mother, for instance, surprises Mimi (and us) with her ideas about the past and the future. There are powerful lessons to be learned in the seemingly every day events.

Highly recommended....
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LibraryThing member Kris_Anderson
Miller’s Valley by Anna Quindlen is told from Mary Margaret’s (Mimi) point of view. Mimi is a young girl growing up in Miller’s Valley where the government wants to move everyone out the valley (where it floods the homes when it rains) and flood it creating a reservoir. We get to see how Mimi
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grew up, her family, and her home life (the book starts when she is eleven years old). Mimi’s Aunt Ruth lives in a cottage behind the main farmhouse. Aunt Ruth never leaves her cottage. She does not do cooking and expects meals to be brought to her. She also has to have someone do the shopping. Mimi’s mother, Miriam is a nurse and her father, Buddy runs the family farm. Her brother, Tommy goes off to fight in the Vietnam War and returns a different man. We get to see Mimi grow up in Miller’s Valley, live her life, go to school, get married, and then, ultimately, come back to Miller’s Valley.

I thought Miller’s Valley would be more than the life of one girl growing up in a small town. I found Miller’s Valley to be boring. The story is told in the first-person perspective (which I really dislike). It was more like reading a diary than a novel. I had a very hard time staying awake to read it. There is no depth to the book. The book is simple and easy to read, but there is no spark. This book does not leave with any impression when you are done reading it (except glad it is over). I give Miller’s Valley 2.5 out of 5 stars.

I received a complimentary copy of Miller’s Valley from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of the novel.
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LibraryThing member burnit99
Anna Quindlen has long been one of my favorite writers. I also love her nonfiction and essays, and I miss her weekly contribution to Newsweek. This novel covers Mimi Miller and her family, who have lived and farmed in Miller's Valley for many generations. Now, however, the spectre of the valley's
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eventual obliteration looms in the future as various government authorities slowly plan to flood the valley for a recreational paradise. Mimi's mother is the family matriarch who struggles to maintain her family through her son's transformation after Vietnam, her husband's transformation after a stroke, her sister's transformation into a homebound agoraphobe after an unknown trauma, and the ever-growing spectre of her home being wiped from the face of the earth. Mimi herself is an intelligent young woman with hidden strengths who comes to realize that home and family may spring from a single location, but do not disappear even though the starting point may cease to exist.
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LibraryThing member SheTreadsSoftly
Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen is a highly recommended family drama.

Mimi (Mary Margaret) Miller tells the story of her family's life in Miller's Valley in rural Pennsylvania. Her family has lived in the valley for generations. She says of her hometown: "When I got older I realized that the
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majority of people in Miller’s Valley were the most discontented kind of Americans, working people whose situations hadn’t risen or fallen over generations, but who still carried a little bit of those streets-paved-with-gold illusions and so were always annoyed that the streets were paved with tar. If they were paved at all."

After the prologue, her narration begins when she is eleven. She sells corn by the side of the road in the summer and eavesdrops via the heat vent on her parent's discussions. Mimi knows that the government is trying to buy up the farms in the valley before declaring eminent domain in order to build the dam they have been planning. She is a bright girl who is interested in science and she knows that there is more going on than the scientists are telling people. Her mother, a nurse, is a practical no-nonsense woman who realizes that it is inevitable that they will eventually have to leave while her father wants to stay on his family's land no matter what. In the opening we know that Mimi's mother says about flooding the valley, “Let them,” she said. “Let the water cover the whole damn place.”

Miller's Valley is about the inevitability of eminent domain, but primarily about Mimi's role in her family and her life. In the novel she is looking back at her life, family, and friends during the 1960's and 70's. Mimi's two older brothers are polar opposites. Edward, the oldest, is a good student who leaves town, goes to college, and marries. Her brother Tommy is a charming underachiever who is their mother's favorite, but a decided prodigal. He enlists and returns a changed man. Her Aunt Ruth, her mother's sister, is an agoraphobic who lives in a nearby house on the property whose inability to leave the house raises the constant ire of her mother. Mimi has a serious relationship with a questionable boyfriend and shoulders more than her fair share of responsibilities at a cost to her.

The writing is insightful as Mimi observes the people around her. There are family secrets, uneven friendships, and questionable loyalties as Mimi navigates her way through to adulthood. At the end of the book Mimi sums up her life to date, neatly covering decades, making Miller's Valley a sort of memoir about Mimi's coming of age during that time.

The writing is quite good and Quindlen has some keen insights into human behavior as she negotiates Mimi recollections and actions during this troubled time of maturation, turmoil, and questions. Not everything has a resolution, much like life itself. but there is a sense of satisfaction that the story has been told.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Random House for review purposes.
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LibraryThing member kdabra4
It's been two years since reading a novel by the extraordinary Anna Quindlen. I have turned to her non-fiction works to satisfy my Quindlen cravings in between publications of her novels. So reading Miller's Valley, I kept thinking, Where does she come up with these great story lines and wonderful
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characterizations? I think most authors learn to "write what you know;" so if that is true, how does this city girl/journalist/novelist know about life on a farm, the engineering of a dam that the government would one day want to redirect, and the medical profession? How does she make me feel like those who populate her stories are real people, when of course they are not? She continues to amaze me every time she puts pen to paper. This one does not disappoint.
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LibraryThing member nyiper
Anna Quindlen's books are always something I want to read and once again, this one was NOT a disappointment!
LibraryThing member shazjhb
Amazing how many books a person can write and still write a good book.
LibraryThing member Neftzger
Anna Quindland's latest novel takes place in a small Pennsylvania town during the time of the Vietnam war. The setting is perfect for a story about the struggle for identity, survival and love. When a predatory government employee comes to town and begins convincing the residents to sell their
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land, Mimi's family digs in for the fight as Mimi learns the true meaning of "home" and how love can't save anyone who doesn't want salvation.

Note: I was given a free ARC of this title by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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LibraryThing member lostinalibrary
Miller’s Valley is a beautifully written and moving coming-of-age story by author Anna Quindlan. It begins in the 1960s and continues up to the present. Most of the story takes place in Miller’s Valley a small fictional Pennsylvania town which floods on a regular basis. The government wants to
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drown the town and turn it into a reservoir and it has been encouraging the landowners to leave by offering alternative housing nearby but many of the inhabitants refuse to go including the family of the narrator Mimi Miller, eleven at the beginning of the story. Her mother is a nurse and her father is a farmer and handyman. She also has two brothers Ed who is ambitious and hardworking with a small family of his own and Tommy, charismatic but restless and with no sense of purpose. Eventually, he joins the marines but, instead of giving him that purpose, he comes back even more unsettled although now a father from a one-night-stand. And then there is her agarophobic Aunt Ruth who lives in her own house behind the Millers’.

Mimi knows of the government’s plans to flood the only home she has ever known and one she can’t imagine leaving and she, like the rest of the town, wants her mother to speak up against the plan:

‘Everyone was waiting for her to say that they couldn’t just disappear our lives, put a smooth dark ceiling of water over everything as though we had never plowed, played, married, died, lived in Miller’s Valley.”

But her mother grew up when women had few options and she wants more for Mimi – she wants her to leave. As time passes and more people go including Donald, her best friend and the boy next door, Mimi seems to cling even more to the valley until her teacher offers her the one option she can't refuse.

Miller’s Valley is a book about family and our attachment to home, about love and the promises of youth. Most of the book is taken up with Mimi’s childhood and teen years until she goes away to university with the rest of her story summed up in a few pages and I can’t think of a more accurate description of life – childhood and teen years passing slowly as we wait anxiously for summer and then for adulthood and then the next years pass in a blur of marriage, jobs, children, grandkids or variations on these things until we finally reach those golden years so impossible to imagine in our youth and things begin to slow down once more and we look back to a period when life was full of endless time and possibilities.

In this novel, Quindlan creates a portrait of a family that could easily be ours perhaps not in the details but in the struggles and hopes. This is that rare book full of family love, lore, and secrets that resonates because we can relate, we know these people, and because it is such a true portrait, Quindlan makes us care deeply about the outcome.
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LibraryThing member Beamis12
A quiet novel, but a meaningful one and a timely one. Eminent domain had been in the news a month or so ago and is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Miller's Valley, a small town said to have a failing dam, wanted for a recreational area after it is flooded, swimming boating etc. Except it
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has been in the Miller family for generations and Mimi is not sure she wants to leave it, she knows her father does not want to leave their farm, even if her mother sees it as inevitable.

Mimi is our narrator and she is quite young when the story begins. Hers is a story of small town life, of family, of a black sheep brother, a aunt who cannot leave her small house on their property, of friends and schools, and plans for the future. Of plans that are temporarily thwarted by fate, and changes that happen whether we want them to or not.

A family novel, what Quindlen does so well, a story powerfully and simply told. We follow Mimi throughout her life and she is a wonderful guide. The last chapter puts the story in perspective and really pulls the book together. This family could be any family, dealing with life's struggles and the changes they require. Well done.

ARC from Netgalley.
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LibraryThing member hubblegal
I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book as I have always admired Ms. Quindlen’s work. This one didn’t disappoint in any way. It’s the story of Mimi (Meems) Miller, her family, her friends and lovers and their lives in Miller Valley. And it’s about that beautiful valley, a character
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in its own right, filled with ancestral homes and decades of memories, whose days are numbered.

Ms. Quindlen really knows how to get to the heart of her readers. I loved these characters, especially Mimi, and laughed and cried my way through this book. No, this isn’t an action packed book and no, there are no shocking twists and turns (though there was quite a surprise towards the end with regard to Aunt Ruth). It’s a simple book about life and family and love, but I think that simplicity is deceptive. Ms. Quindlen is a master at weaving her story into your heart. There are far too many books that, although I’ve enjoyed reading them, are forgotten within weeks after closing their pages. However, I remember each and every Quindlen book that I’ve read, even though many, many years have passed since their reading, and I know “Miller’s Valley” will be one of those that will remain with me. I feel like I should give Mimi a call to see how she’s doing as she’s now a part of my life.

Highly recommended.

This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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LibraryThing member Cariola
I enjoyed Miller's Crossing well enough, but it seemed a lot like other coming-of-age stories that I've read, most recently Tess Hadley's Clever Girl. Mimi Miller's family has owned and worked a dairy farm in the valley for generations, but now a developer wants to buy out all the residents and
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flood the valley to create a recreation zone. Mimi's mother is a nurse, her father a hardworking farming and fix-it man; one older brother, Ed, has left town for marriage and a business career, and the other, Tommy, his mother's favorite and a chick magnet--well, Tommy seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Her mother's never-married sister, Ruth, who suffers from agoraphobia, lives in a smaller house on the property. As for Mimi, she's at a crossroads. Her best friend, Donald, moved away when his mother remarried, and her other sort-of friend, LaRhonda, found Jesus and sorority life simultaneously (neither of which agrees with Mimi). As the end of high school looms, Mimi has to make a decision: to go away to college, to marry considerably her older boyfriend, or to stay home and help with the family farm.

Quindlen has created fairly interesting characters, even though the situation sounds familiar. She does throw in a number of rather unexpected turns towards the end. In one way, these seemed stuck in, but in another, they echo Mimi's maturing understanding of life, of others, and of herself. While I wasn't stunned by this Miller's Valley, it kept my interest. Recommended for those who enjoy coming-of-age stories.
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LibraryThing member MaggieG13
3.5 stars I enjoyed this book. Mary Margaret Miller narrates her story which is centered around the state’s decision to permanently flood the farmland of Miller’s Valley. During the time since the government built a dam and redirected the river, the valley was flooding every few years anyway.
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Every flood would drive a few more families away, those who were not willing to rebuild and wait for the next flood.

Mary Margaret, known as Mimi to her family and friend, has two older brothers, Eddie and Tommy. Eddie is a scholar and responsible person and Tommy is not. Mimi is very close to her father Buddy, a farmer who also works as a fix-it man to bring in extra money. He can fix anything. People just dropped their broken items off at his workshop on the farm with a note such as “Making whoosh sound” if he were out in the fields. Mom Miriam is an RN who works the evening shift at the hospital. It is her income which keeps the family going. She is a solid, stable, no-nonsense person with a very good instinct for judging human character. Aunt Ruth, Miriam’s younger sister, lives in the cottage in the back of the Miller home and never leaves it. Mimi takes her dinner meal to her, Miriam does her shopping and delivers Ruth’s groceries to her cottage.

Mimi’s best friend LaRhonda is the only child of the owner of a successful diner in town. She is spoiled and pampered as well as willful. But Mimi feels she is a BFF. Her sleepovers at LaRhonda’s are a welcome diversion.

Ms. Quindlen has created an interesting cast of characters in this story. They are so well written that the reader may feel that she/he is eavesdropping. The dynamics of Miller family life are very relatable, as are the dynamics of the friendship between LaRhonda and Mimi. We see how all these people develop over the years. In my opinion the author does a particularly excellent job with the girls’ friendship, Mimi’s interaction with her mother and with her siblings, particularly Tommy.

I put this book down once for a short while. From about chapter 3, I was vested in these characters, particularly Mimi and Buddy. I learned to love some of the others later. Likely the reader will feel they have the story figured out because we all know that when the state decides to change the topography of an area, it will happen. But, Mimi’s life takes a couple of surprising turns and at the end, when she is cleaning out Aunt Ruth’s cottage and her own family home for the last time, Ruth drops a bomb from the grave so to speak.

An interesting examination of the psychology of family and its inherent power struggles, as well as those of friendship and community. Definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys human dynamics. This is not an action story or a thriller.
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LibraryThing member karieh
The first novel I read of Anna Quindlen’s was “Every Last One”. That book, the part in the book where everything changed forever just kneecapped me. I didn’t see it coming and the power of not only the actions but of the raw emotion was just astounding. Then I read “Still Life with
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Breadcrumbs” – which was a much quieter novel – but still was very powerful and a lovely book to read.

“Miller’s Valley” did not have as much of an effect on me as either of those books. The story is good, the writing is well done, but there isn’t the same depth of either emotion or beauty that made those books stand out.

Mary Margaret, or Mimi, Miller is the main character. The life she lives with her brothers, parents aunt on their farm seems a simple one, yet their home, the very existence of their hometown, is under a cloud of uncertainty. For what seems like her entire childhood, there is the looming threat that their valley will be flooded – either by Mother Nature or, more likely, by the government.

As much as it is discussed, and as much as her life seems surrounded by this possibility, Mimi seems to care very little about what might happen. She doesn’t seem to have a great range or depth of emotions, really. She works hard, she takes care of her aunt, her father, her nephew – she gets nearly perfect grades – but the reader never gets to the heart of her. What drives her? She seems as if she wants to move on, to leave her past behind – but she also seems unsure as to what a new life would be like.

There are times when “Miller’s Valley” has a moment of incredible tenderness – a line that catches me and that I have to savor, but not nearly as many as I would have liked.

“My father thought for a moment. When my father was thinking it was like an aerobic exercise, like he was putting his whole body to the test.”

And about the family farm: “A whole year passed in front of me on the farm. The cornstalks with yellow edges that means summer was over as the classroom was getting ready to close around you. The pumpkins of October that squatted where the yellow flowers sprouted on the vines in August. The mornings when you could hear the cattle complaining like a bunch of old men with tobacco throats and you knew, you just knew, that is was February and their water toughs were frozen solid and you were going to have to go out there with an old shovel and beat a hole into the ice until it fell apart like a broken window.”

The few times I felt like I was truly seeing into Mimi’s soul were mostly when she was with or thinking about her brother Tommy, the black sheep of the family, Even though he is her older brother, Mimi takes after her mother in neither understanding nor being able to let go of the dream they have of him. “He sucked on a cigarette like it was oxygen. He had a skull tattooed on the back of his hand. Every time I looked at him something inside me felt jagged, like I’d swallowed a razor blade and just had to hold really still so it wouldn’t move around and slice my insides up.”

THAT is the Anna Quindlen that can take my breath away – stop me for a moment because her words put me so deeply inside the soul of a character that I forget who I am and what I am doing.

That is what I wanted more from in “Miller’s Valley”.
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LibraryThing member susan0316
I have read all of Anna Quindlen's books and every time I read one, I say that its the best one yet. I think that this time....this book is the best one yet FOR SURE. From the first page, I was caught up in the coming of age story of Mimi. She lives on a farm in Miller's Valley with her two older
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brothers and parents. From the very first, we learn that the government plans to flood the valley for a recreation area and that plays a huge part in the story but the story is so much more than that. Its all about family dynamics - a brother in Vietnam, Mimi's first love, her plans for college, her friends and so much more. I loved the story but more than that I loved the main characters - they felt like people that I know in my day to day life - especially Mimi and her mother. During the book, I laughed with them and cried with them and now that the book is over, I miss them. This is a fantastic book - one that I won't soon forget. (I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review)
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LibraryThing member marciablnc
I thought this was a sad story all the way through. Sisters didn't get along. The aunt wouldn't leave her house. The son' Tommy, was troubled. This was not my kind of a story. It was a sad ending with the valley being flooded.
LibraryThing member bblum
I read this lovely book while on safari in the Serengeti. Quindlen always writes good characters in everyday life and in this book Mimi comes of age learning about herself, the flooding of her valley home and ultimately family secrets. A good read.
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
I have read many books by Anna Quindlen and was a loyal reader when she was at Newsweek. This was the least impressive of all of her novels. The story told from a 1st person perspective looking book 50 years was about living in a flood prone area targeted by the government for flooding. This
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required relocating the residents. This is the background for the book. It has the usual cast of characters such as the stubborn mom, hardworking Dad who won't leave the home, bad boy brother. Mimi, the lead character is almost too perfect. The book does a good job of showing the changing culture that occurred in the late 60's and early 70's. The take on abortion was well done. However, the book was flat. I do have trouble with 1st person narrative and lots of characters. It only works if the narrator is a complex interesting character. Mimi wasn't quite there. I recommend reading earlier fiction by Quindlen before you consider this one.
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LibraryThing member RodRaglin
Miller's Valley entertaining and satisfying despite the incongruity of the ending

Mary Margaret Miller is a young girl growing up on a farm in Miller's Valley, a small community in rural America in the 1960's.

There's nothing unusual about her family or her life: she has two older brothers - one's
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away at college, the other is a lovable rogue, her father works the farm, her mother is a nurse at the local hospital, an aunt lives in a small cottage on the farm.

The only thing that makes Miller's Valley different from thousands of similar rural hamlets is the government has plans to raise a nearby dam and flood the valley displacing the few families who live there.

This a theme that runs throughout the book looming over the lives of the Miller family though never really effecting them since there is no set timeline for the flooding.

Through the point of view of Mary Margaret the reader comes to know a loving and, more or less, functioning family, their friends and neighbours living in middle America during this period.

Quindlen is such a fine writer I was immediately drawn in. Her gift is that she makes the reader feel like they know, have known, or know someone just like her characters. Her prose is so seamless you don't realize you're reading a book - more like experiencing it.

Unlike some of Quindlen's work that can leave you with PTSD (Every Last One, One True Thing, Black and Blue) nothing really dramatic happens in Miller's Valley. There's regular love, life and death but it's not agonizing, unimaginably violent or pathologically cruel. It's just your run of the mill stuff - strokes, abortions, infidelity, drug abuse - but it's balanced with love and real caring.

Sound boring? It's not. Every time I sat down to read it was like catching up with a friend.

I had no idea how Miller's Valley would end and apparently neither did the author, because what she implies in the last few pages is incongruous to the story that has come before. I simply could not believe it.

Despite the rather bizarre ending, Miller's Valley is a satisfying and entertaining read.
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Rating

½ (223 ratings; 3.9)

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FIC J Qui
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