Jo 2007-08-30

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

This deeply moving Sue Miler novel, traces the life of a large family over 4 decades. This book deals with it all: autism, alcoholism, drug abuse, infidelity, teenage angst, I couldn't put this book down. Depressing at times, this novel was a spellbinding read.

Fuzzy Lizard 2007-07-09

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

"Family Pictures" started off promising, but went downhill quickly. Too many words, but no action. Too many scenes in the book that had nothing to do with anything. Many times I was ready to put this book down and not finish it. What kept me reading was I wanted to know what happens to the Randall. I scanned the second half of the book.
Not one of Sue Miller's better books.

Kathleen Klussendorf 2007-02-12

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Family Pictures was my first introduction to Sue Miller. Coming from a family that had a severely autistic son, and watching my parent's marriage disintegrate, I can tell you that Sue Miller nails the dynamics pretty well. Bruno Bettelheim's placement of blame on the mother, mentioned in the book, destroyed my mother just as it did Lainey. I had a little trouble with the scene changes that others have mentioned in their reviews, but it did little to diminish the punch packed by Miller's portrait.

D. Metcalfe 2006-11-07

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

I read a lot of books, though this is the first one of Miller's I've read. Even if a book isn't that great I read them to the end. Several times I almost quit reading this one, but kept on with it hoping to find some point to it. It didn't have to have a happy ending, or even a resolution, but when I finished reading it I felt like I'd been dragged through muck. It wasn't just unpleasant and depressing, it was also dreary and pointless. I wish I could get back the time I spent on it, even more I wish I'd never read it.

Ellie---Penny Dreadful---Reasoner 2005-08-19

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

This book follows a Chicago family from just after WWII to the Reagan era, thru the Baby Boom years, Vietnam, the `70's and into the relative peace of the decade in which it concludes. A once tranquil Catholic family of six children is slowly undermined when the second son is born autistic. This is a story of people trying to cope and grab a share of normality while faced with a challenge that imposes abnormality onto them. The father, a psychologist, becomes increasingly distant from his wife and children; the mother, once the very model of a charismatic homemaker of the middle century, becomes a case study in smothering overprotectiveness; the oldest son feels neglected and rebels so deeply he leaves Harvard and goes to Vietnam; the main character, one of the middle daughters, spirals into drugs and a countercultural lifestyle. No one in this tale of creeping disintegration is left alone by life, or comes out unscathed.