Personal Velocity - Softcover

Miller, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802139183 ISBN 13: 9780802139184

Publisher: Grove Press, 2002

Synopsis

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 shape of her life created as she hurtles through it. Modern and diverse, these women of different classes and ages struggle with sexuality, fate, motherhood, infidelity, desperation, and an overriding will to survive. We meet Greta, a cookbook editor who is chosen by Tavi, the hottest writer of his generation, to edit his new book. The book becomes a best-seller and Greta is propelled out of her marriage by her own ambition and success. The story, however, ends with a poignant flashback to the moment when one morning Greta realizes that ambition has grabbed her as she looks down at her kind, lackluster husband's wing-tip shoes. She suddenly knows she is leaving him and that their marriage is effectively over. Other characters include Paula, a pregnant twenty-one-year-old, who is on the run from the horror of a man who was hit by a car and died walking her home from a club the night before; Delia, an abused, working-class wife who goes into hiding with her children; and Louisa, a painter who moves rapidly from one lover to the next, acting out a self-perpetuating drama over which she has no control. Edgy, fearless, and beautifully spare, Personal Velocity marks the emergence of a singular new voice in American fiction. "Personal Velocity ... remind[s] us that good material is everywhere. [Miller is] a wonderful writer." -- Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World "Rebecca Miller's debut story collection is a series of eye-opening portraits of women ... humane, always honest and always entertaining." -- Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times "Personal Velocity is a gutsy, striking debut." -- David Daley, The Hartford Courant "Each story is crafted with a cunning and precision that explores and often explodes the lives of Miller's subjects...." -- Laura Anderson, American-Statesman "Miller tackles her topics, and ours, with wisdom, sophistication, and guts." -- Glamour "If I were still teaching high school English, I'd order class sets of Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity." -- Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes

About this title

Review:

Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity offers a wry take on work, sex, and relationships in the lives of seven people in search of what it means to be a 21st-century woman. Sharp and intimate, these stories are a capsule wardrobe of contemporary American femininity, from off-the-peg urban identities prepackaged by a designer label to battered, homeless survivors whose lives are held together only by their own emotional stamina. Greta, a cookbook editor, dumps her husband for fame and pointy alligator flats; Louisa, an artist, squeezes out her lovers faster than paint from a tube; and pregnant Paula picks up a young hitchhiker on a rainy night.

Miller brings a clear and unsentimental eye to her characters, and pleasing brevity of style and compressed drama to her prose. Flawed and admirable, terrified and fearless, cavalier and overanxious by turns--the vagaries of personality are encompassed in this poised debut. Many a reader may catch a fleeting glimpse of her own contradictory reflections in Miller's intense snapshots of modern women. --Rachel Holmes, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Rebecca Miller is a filmmaker. Her feature film, Angela, released in 1996, won the Filmmakers Trophy and the Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the IFT Gotham Prize. Personal Velocity is her first book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0802139183
• ISBN 13: 9780802139184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192