Sue Miller Libri

Lottie Gardner è una scrittrice free lance sulla quarantina e in crisi. Dopo anni di incontri clandestini ha finalmente sposato Jack, ma il matrimonio tanto sognato sembra aver spento la passione. Così l'improvviso ricovero della madre in una casa di cura offre alla donna l'occasione che cercava per tornare a Cambridge, Massachusetts, la cittadina della sua adolescenza. Quell'estate arrivano anche Cameron, l'immaturo e scapestrato fratello di Lottie, ed Elizabeth, l'amica di vent'anni prima, anche lei in fuga da un matrimonio ormai esaurito. Basta un nulla per accendere la passione, mai sopita, tra Cameron ed Elizabeth, mentre Lottie viene assalita dai ricordi. Sarà un drammatico incidente a dare una svolta alle loro vite.

Catherine Hubbard decide di tornare nella casa della nonna Georgia, in Vermont, per cercare di riprendersi dal suo secondo divorzio. In quelle stanze piene di ricordi spera di lasciarsi alle spalle le preoccupazioni e i problemi. Catherine trova per caso i diari della nonna che le rivelano una donna molto diversa da quella che lei ha conosciuto. Le pagine ingiallite della memoria ripercorrono gli anni senza celare nulla: la passione mai sopita per Stewart, il suo primo, breve amore, e le incompremnsioni, i dubbi e i segreti che hanno segnato il suo lungo matrimonio. Catherine sente nascere un legame fortissimo con questa donna, così simile a lei, e decide di riprendere in mano la sua vita.

Catherine Hubbard is at a crossroad in her San Francisco life. She is twice divorced - although she knows public opinion only seems to allow for one marital mistake - and her three children are grown and scattered. Then news comes that she has inherited her grandmother Georgia's home in Vermont. Putting her teaching job on hold, Catherine travels east to the house where she has frequently taken refuge, as a child from her mother's bouts of dementia and eventual suicide and later from the wreckage of her first marriage. Catherine finds in Vermont not only the ghosts of her own past but those of Georgia's as well. Diaries from the attic emerged of a young woman who had lost her own mother in her teens, who had been condemned to a sanitorium for tuberculosis, and there harboured a secret passion for a fellow patient. As Catherine increasingly comprehends the woman she has only ever known as a grandmother, she begins to feel as if she is living in two worlds, her own and Georgia's as a 'buried stream' below. With unforgettable characters so vivid you can almost see and touch them, THE WORLD BELOW is story telling at its most magical.

This stunning collection of 28 stories brings readers a literary portrait of the American family from 1894 to today. A collection of works that captures the essence of American families from living together and apart to loving and letting go.Regret / Kate Chopin --The lombardy poplar / Mary Wilkins Freeman --The widow's might / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --Old Rogaum and his Theresa / Theodore Dreiser --The sorrows of gin / John Cheever --I stand here ironing / Tillie Olsen --Simple and Counsin F.D. Roosevelt Brown / Langston Hughes --The sky is gray / Ernest J. Gaines --My Coney Island uncle / Harvey Swados --My son the murderer / Bernard Malamud --Final dwarf / Henry Roth --And Sarah laughed / Joanne Greenberg --Wedding day / Roberta Silman --The legacy of Beau Kremel / Stephen Wolf --Kiswana Brown / Gloria Naylor --Tuesdays / Mary Hedin --Afloat / Ann Beattie --Winterblossom garden / David Low --Old things / Bobbie Ann Mason --Starlight / Marian Thurm --The writer in the family / E.L. Doctorow --The rich brother / Tobias Wolff --My legacy / Don Zacharia --Violation / Mary Gordon --Appropriate affect / Sue Miller --What I did for love / Lynne Sharon Schwartz --Still of some use / John Updike --Elephant / Raymond Carver

The eleven short stories in this collection concern the growing obsession of a young man, John, with the three pretty daughters of the Abbott family. But John's hand-to-mouth upbringing contrasts bitterly with the wealthy society life of the Abbotts, and to Alice, Eleanor and Pamela he will never be anything other than a "boy from the other side of the tracks".

At the age of 72, Lily Roberts becomes a national celebrity when she writes her spiritual memoirs. Her children, Alan and Clary, are disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on, Lily comes to live with Alan, and the bitterness threatens to upset their lives.

A compilation of twenty American short stories originally published in magazines and periodicals issued between January 2001 and January 2002, selected for inclusion by guest editor Sue Miller.