Family Pictures - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575403217 ISBN 13: 9780575403215

Publisher: Indigo Paperbacks

Synopsis

Spanning forty years Family Pictures follows the conflict between husband and wife, over a beautiful autistic child. Randall is both angel and demon. His father, David, a coolly rational psychiatrist, wants him placed in an institution; his mother, Lainey, insists on keeping him at home. Yet it is not just David and Lainey who are struggling to come to terms with a difficult and unpredictable child; there are five other children in the family, each of them coping with the dramas and rifts surrounding them, each of them affected by Randall.

About this title

About the Author:

SALES POINTS From the author of the international bestseller The Good Mother Both The Good Mother and Family Pictures are being reissued with stylish new covers 'In tone it is absolutely flawless ... proof of her extraordinary talent' Anne Tyler 'A big, wonderful, deeply absorbing novel' Newsweek 'Profoundly honest, shapely, ambitious, engrossing, original and true' New York Times 'A remarkable tapestry which explores the love of parents and children with quite extraordinary depth and subtlety' She

From Publishers Weekly:

If Miller's new novel does not have the shock value of The Good Mother , it benefits from a deeper, more subtle conception of character and a sure sense of the complexities of family relationships. When their third child, Randall, is diagnosed as autistic in 1954, the happy marriage of Lainey and David Eberhardt begins to disintegrate. Subscribing to then-current medical theories, David, a psychiatrist, blames Randall's disease on Lainey. She retaliates with three subsequent pregnancies, "accidents" that result in the little girls whom their father sardonically calls "the last straws." Seguing among the points of view of various family members, the narrative poignantly illustrates the widening effects of a domestic tragedy. As the Eberhardts' marriage goes awry, the children are wounded by David's emotional withdrawal and eventual departure, Lainey's hysterical need to prove she is "a good mother," and the daily pain of living with and caring for a mentally impaired sibling with powerfully destructive urges. Miller again displays a perfect ear for the dialogue between parents and children. In depicting the contrast between the Eberhardts' responses to their son's affliction--David's scientific evaluation, Lainey's spiritual courage--she demonstrates the ways in which parenthood is a "kind of reckless courage . . . a possibility for anguish and pain, and yet a miracle." 125,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; BOMC main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indigo Paperbacks
• ISBN 10: 0575403217
• ISBN 13: 9780575403215
• Binding: Paperback