Personal Velocity Book

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 pre-packaged by a designer label to battered, homeless survivors whose lives are held together only by their own emotional stamina. Cookery book editor Greta dumps her husband for fame and pointy alligator flats, artist Louisa squeezes out her lovers faster than tubes of paint 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 HolmesRead More