Family Pictures: A Novel - Hardcover

Miller, Sue

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060163976 ISBN 13: 9780060163976

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1990

Synopsis

The discovery that their third child, Randall, is autistic brings into being strains that will deeply affect the marriage of David and Lainey Eberhardt

About this title

About the Author:

Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0060163976
• ISBN 13: 9780060163976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 389