Accismus

Finding herself divorced for the second time, Catherine Hubbard quits her job as a schoolteacher in San Francisco, and returns to her grandmother Georgia’s long-abandoned Vermont house to lick her wounds. Cath, whose mother killed herself, grew up at her grandparents’, and she has fond memories of their idyllic marriage and peaceful, uncomplicated lives. Holed up in the old house, Cath reads through Georgia’s old diaries and discovers that the roots of her grandparents’ relationship were not as innocent and simple as she had assumed. Georgia had a secret that so defined her and her options in her own time, that it is positively infuriating and heartbreaking to read in our time, and the perceived simplicity of her life was a result of the smothering narrowness of her options. As Georgia’s story unfolds, Cath learns that peace and placidity are only achieved through stern determination.

If you wonder how Cath feels or what she thinks about any of this, she will tell you: in great detail and in great length until there is not a single shade of thought or emotion left for you to intuit. This narrator explains, explains, explains. In The World Below, Sue Miller leaves no chance for even the most obtuse reader to miss a single aspect of her point, and as a result, the book exhausted me. I felt like I had been forced to listen to a very loquacious person tell me a five-minute story over several hours. While Georgia’s story is interesting, the majority of the novel is Cath nattering on and on about herself, until you begin to wonder why you ever made friends with this woman and when you’ll ever be able to get off the phone. The novel is rich, with an impressive structure, artful parallels and careful details; unfortunately, Miller’s narrator won’t shut up long enough for the reader to appreciate them.