Personal Velocity [Paperback]

Rebecca Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2002

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

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Reading this slim collection is a bit like watching the Lifetime channel with the sound off: recognizable character types are identifiable by their physical appearance and habitats and the dramas they play out are presented with little elucidation. In the seven sketches in this debut, contemporary women (and one girl) from various backgrounds tussle with work, relationships and identity. Representing the affluent are frustrated and insecure Julianne, married to a much older famous poet; troubled nine-year-old Nancy, who contends with a dissatisfied socialite mother and a father who barely notices her presence; and Greta, a young editor in New York whose newfound success is incompatible with her marriage. Then there is flaky artist Louisa, tumbling from one affair to the next; and Paula , pregnant and in denial, who tries to help a young hitchhiker on a rainy night. Rounding out the group is working-class Delia, an abused wife who relies on her sexuality, and Bryna, a farmer's wife who likes to imagine herself being interviewed for Redbook (and who has brief walk-ons as a cleaning woman in two of the other stories). Miller does know something about the people in these worlds (she is particularly tuned into the shorthand, insider chat of rich bohemians), but the affectless prose not to mention the author's penchant for describing her characters' breasts and buttocks doesn't allow for much character development or resolution, and often reads like flat reportage. Some grit and a few moments of poignancy are in evidence, but the collection provides little insight into the unique inner workings of seven very different women. Agent, Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency. (Sept.)Forecast: Miller, a director and the daughter of Arthur Miller and photographer Inge Morath, received critical raves in 1996 for her indie film, Angela. Look for strong initial presence with a first printing of 35,000, a major ad campaign and 13-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (September 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802139183
• ISBN-13: 978-0802139184
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,102,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rebecca Miller is a writer and filmmaker whose films include "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee", "The Ballad of Jack and Rose", "Personal Velocity", and "Angela". You can find her blog, and more about her books and films at www.rebecca-miller.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quick, fast read but..., June 22, 2006

By 

Susan K. Schoonover "Sue Yingling" (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Personal Velocity (Paperback)

This book is a quick and easy read. However I feel her characterizations of the working class people are stereotypical and incompletely realized. She does much better with her portraits of those who lead more privileged lives. I have to agree with other reviewers in that her stories just stop as if she doesn't really know how to end them. I can't help wondering if this book would have gotten less attention if Ms. Miller did not have a very famous father (Arthur Miller) and husband (Daniel Day Lewis).

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating New Collection of Short Stories, December 20, 2001

By 

Jaclyn Geller (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Personal Velocity (Hardcover)

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.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Survival, November 26, 2001

By 

"ann_holt" (Clarklake, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Personal Velocity (Hardcover)

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.)