![]() ![]() ![]() What’s tinsel without the tree? Shredded tinfoil.” Langer were friends in that way that men are who get dragged into a friendship by their wives.” But she’s also capable of writing that “charm is like tinsel without the tree. Miller’s childhood friend coming to visit with her husband. Quindlen, ever the adept observer of human nature, rings true when describing Mrs. ![]() How Mimi slowly does just that, and the consequences that follow, form the low arc of this book. The dam’s inevitability, though, is one force that drives Mimi’s mother and her older brother, broken from Vietnam, to urge her to aim high, to leave. A plan to dam the creek for a recreational lake seems at first an imminent threat. We meet Mimi Miller as a child growing up in Miller Valley, the family history flowing across the land as surely as the ever-flooding creek. Understated almost to a fault, Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel pulls together themes of rural life, Vietnam, mental illness, eminent domain, abortion and ambition in prose that never shouts, yet still explores a family’s depths. When society’s volume seems cranked to 11, there’s something to be said about a quiet book. “Miller’s Valley” by Anna Quindlen Random House (257 pages, $28) ![]()
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