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Big World Mary Miller 9780974954189 Books

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Big World Mary Miller 9780974954189 Books

I’ve now read both of Miller’s story collections (this and “Always Happy Hour”) and both collections often feel like a series of unconnected stories featuring the same basic female character (and a battery of sad, pathetic, often delusional, usually happy-to-be-where-he-is men), which might sound like a criticism, but in fact this basic female character consistently captures something central to existence or at least existence as a large swath of us experience it (not in terms of details, but tone), a sense that we’re all kind of backing into our lives, finding ourselves in a place we might not have imagined without the imagination (or inclination) to figure out a way out of it. Sex is pervasive for Miller’s characters, but strangely unimportant; her characters sleep with men and sometimes women easily and often, and though there’s not a sense that the sex is bad, it’s not really good either. It just is and her characters typically don’t make much of it and don’t feel traumatized by it. It’s true most of her characters seem existentially lost in some way, they are typically young, attractive to varying degrees, and they’ve drifted into situations with men and in life that maybe they couldn’t have imagined, but they are not typically looking for ways out. And there’s a vein of sly humor running through all the stories, the title story of this collection, “Big World,” is a good example. It’s the story of a mid to late 20s young woman, very pretty by all accounts (several characters comment on it), who drifts into a sexual relationship with her boss and with, it seems, a good part of the staff of the restaurant where she’s a lousy waitress whose job seems to be slicing lemons (because she’s bad at everything else), the joke being that whatever this is, it’s the opposite of a big world. Highly recommended.


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Big World Mary Miller 9780974954189 Books Reviews

Read this book now. Drop everything else. Miller's hopeless characters and bleak settings will make your nervously smile and crave cigarettes, whiskey, and cheap hotel rooms. The hilarious indifference of the narrator shines a light down on the darkness of the subject matter which deals a lot with death and bad/mediocre/awkward relationships. Mary Miller says it best herself, "I tried not to hold it against God. It wasn't God's fault that all the sick people in the world latched onto him."
i was reading this book while sitting alone in a japanese restaurant in atlanta. i was there on business and hadn't been to the city in years (or that izakaya ever). from a nearby table someone asked me how i like the book since one of her best friends was the author. my reaction was that i loved it so much that i wished i could spend a weekend with mary miller making a lot of bad decisions. the writing is filled with suddeness and, to me, remarkable narrative fractures they made me stop to read whole sections repeatedly. the women that populate these stories are human and self-aware to such a degree that the sometimes brutal world they inhabit becomes lovely.
I discovered MMs work at the Literary Death Match, an off-site event at this year's AWP Chicago writer's conference. The editor of Hobart, Aaron Burch, read from BIG WORLD. And after that it was all over for me. I got the collection and LOVED it. Keep an eye out for her other work. In fact, SEEK it out. Other similar voices that I have recently discovered, would include Mary Gaitskill (BAD BEHAVIOR), Holly Goddard Jones (GIRL TROUBLE) and Amelia Gray (AM/PM).
I could say that Mary Miller's Big World is a wonderful collection, which it is, and that the stories in it remind me of how I feel when reading stories by Charles Baxter (or Bobbie Ann Mason), and they are all excellent because Baxter (and Mason) seems to ONLY write excellent stories. I could say that if I taught a writing class, which is a wildly hilarious idea (the thought of me teaching anything!), I would add stories from Big World into the curriculum because they encompass everything one should want a short story to have, which is to say they are truthful, funny and sad, and many other things also. I could say a lot about this book, really, but I won't. What I WILL say is that I recommend Big World to people who like reading strong writing about flawed (yet remarkably interesting) characters, and I recommend it highly because that's how this book rolls.
I was required to purchase this book for a class at The University of Mississippi. The book is kind of the typical collection of short stories that professors at Ole Miss like. Stories about the typical southern struggle that many people from this area can relate to, along with common moral ambiguity that is also prevalent in the South (such as drug selling teachers, staying with abusive spouses, and having affairs). This isn't a book I'd recommend to friends of mine, because it's not my style and most of them wouldn't enjoy it either. It's not badly written, it's just a genera I'm not interested in.
I read a lot of short story collections and I'm delighted if half are even enjoyable. Mary Miller only had one story to me that even fell a little flat, FULL... the rest, esp. (LEAK, BIG WORLD, NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST -- just superb) were page turning, funny, insightful.

She doesn't fancy footwork you with excess, she's concise and makes you think on most every page.

Can't wait to see her next effort.

Highest praise from me!

thanks
MM
One of the best collections out there! Don't miss this one! Miller is a force and so much damn fun!
I’ve now read both of Miller’s story collections (this and “Always Happy Hour”) and both collections often feel like a series of unconnected stories featuring the same basic female character (and a battery of sad, pathetic, often delusional, usually happy-to-be-where-he-is men), which might sound like a criticism, but in fact this basic female character consistently captures something central to existence or at least existence as a large swath of us experience it (not in terms of details, but tone), a sense that we’re all kind of backing into our lives, finding ourselves in a place we might not have imagined without the imagination (or inclination) to figure out a way out of it. Sex is pervasive for Miller’s characters, but strangely unimportant; her characters sleep with men and sometimes women easily and often, and though there’s not a sense that the sex is bad, it’s not really good either. It just is and her characters typically don’t make much of it and don’t feel traumatized by it. It’s true most of her characters seem existentially lost in some way, they are typically young, attractive to varying degrees, and they’ve drifted into situations with men and in life that maybe they couldn’t have imagined, but they are not typically looking for ways out. And there’s a vein of sly humor running through all the stories, the title story of this collection, “Big World,” is a good example. It’s the story of a mid to late 20s young woman, very pretty by all accounts (several characters comment on it), who drifts into a sexual relationship with her boss and with, it seems, a good part of the staff of the restaurant where she’s a lousy waitress whose job seems to be slicing lemons (because she’s bad at everything else), the joke being that whatever this is, it’s the opposite of a big world. Highly recommended.