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The World Below
Unavailable
The World Below
Unavailable
The World Below
Audiobook10 hours

The World Below

Written by Richard Webber

Narrated by Judith Ivey

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

From the author of While I Was Gone, a stunning new novel that showcases Sue Miller's singular gift for exposing the nerves that lie hidden in marriages and families, and the hopes and regrets that lie buried in the hearts of women.

Maine, 1919. Georgia Rice, who has cared for her father and two siblings since her mother's death, is diagnosed, at nineteen, with tuberculosis and sent away to a sanitarium. Freed from the burdens of caretaking, she discovers a nearly lost world of youth and possibility, and meets the doomed young man who will become her lover.

Vermont, the present. On the heels of a divorce, Catherine Hubbard, Georgia's granddaughter, takes up residence in Georgia's old house. Sorting through her own affairs, Cath stumbles upon the true story of Georgia's life and marriage, and of the misunderstanding upon which she built a lasting love.

With the tales of these two women--one a country doctor's wife with a haunting past, the other a twice-divorced San Francisco schoolteacher casting about at midlife for answers to her future--Miller offers us a novel of astonishing richness and emotional depth. Linked by bitter disappointments, compromise, and powerful grace, the lives of Georgia and Cath begin to seem remarkably similar, despite their distinctly different times: two young girls, generations apart, motherless at nearly the same age, thrust into early adulthood, struggling with confusing bonds of attachment and guilt; both of them in marriages that are not what they seem, forced to make choices that call into question the very nature of intimacy, faithfulness, betrayal, and love. Marvelously written, expertly told, The World Below captures the shadowy half-truths of the visible world, and the beauty and sorrow submerged beneath the surfaces of our lives--the lost world of the past, our lost hopes for the future. A tour de force from one of our most beloved storytellers.


From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 2, 2001
ISBN9780739300169
Unavailable
The World Below
Author

Richard Webber

Richard Webber writes regulary about TV in his job as a journalist and writer. He contributes to a host of newspapers and magazines, including TV Quick, Daily Express, Sunday Express and the Sunday Telegraph and is the author of over a dozen books celebrating classic comedy.

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Reviews for The World Below

Rating: 3.572139388557214 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

201 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After Cath's divorce, she retreats to her Grandmother's old Vermont house. Sorting through this old childhood home, she stumbles upon Georgia's diaries and find out her grandparent's world was not what she believed it was. There was a whole different world below, ergo the title of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Good intentions can change another person's life, but this change may not always be welcome. When the mother of two girls dies, their grandmother arrives to take them back to her rural home. Their father refuses the offer; privately, the girls laugh at the notion of living with their backwoods relative. But she was right. Caring for their widowed father would prove to be a great sacrifice. They probably would have been better off with the freedom their grandmother's care could have provided.Years later, when the elder daughter becomes ill, her doctor sends her away to a sanatorium for her health. When she returns, the two marry. After several decades together she discovers that she wasn't really sick enough to warrant the sanatorium. Her husband sent her because he thought it would be best, because he thought she needed to escape the life she had taking care of her father.She is not grateful for his intervention. She liked the life she had. The doctor's well intended gesture had changed her life forever.Years later, the doctor will do the same for his grand-daughter by sending her to Paris to live with her aunt. There she will discover a side of the grandmother who has raised her that she never suspected. Sue Miller writes about the ways relationships can be complicated by simple acts and by dramatic ones. Sometimes these are one in the same. In The World Below some characters reveal their past lives, others are discovered, but no one is who we think they are, not entirely. Everyone has a history. Discovering it can be painful, revealing it can be cruel.Ms. Miller understands the complexities of people and the relationship they form. She understands that even happy families struggle to maintain their relationships. Her work proves Tolstoy wrong, happy families are not all alike. You just have to look a bit harder, get to know them intimately. Families are complex things. For love to survive, some things must be revealed, some things are best kept secret.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Really interesting exploration of past and present lives of two women, one of whom is filling in the blanks of her past. Well, written. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book. It told an interesting story with bits of history and culture that were new to me and fascinating. Also, Sue Miller surely has a way with words; her writing is smooth and engaging. I could, however, have done without the gratuitous self-sex scene at the beginning of the book. I think I understand why she included it, but it was unnecessary, bordering on tasteless, and really out of place. Otherwise the book was an enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a compelling novel about a woman who returns to the home of her deceased grandparents to recapture she once knew there following a divorce. She remembers her grandmother through her diaries and her own memories. The grandmother's story of being hospitalized in a sanitorium for tb patients and her subsequent marriage to her doctor. The diaries reveal details of her grandmother's life previously unknown to the woman. It is a story within a story and told in Sue Miller's signature excellent style.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book is the story of a grandmother and her adult granddaughter. The grandmother's story was fabulous, while the granddaughter's story was a yawner.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A book about a younger generation discovering things from the older generation that brings to light the complexities that make up a family. Catherine discovers who her Grandmother really was through her diaries. Catherine is going through an odd stage in her life having just going through the trauma of yet other failed marriage. You can't help but start to think about some of the things that have happened in your own life when you read this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Two parallel stories of two women two generations apart. The grandmother's story is entirely absorbing. The grand-daughter's story spends a lot of time (maybe too much time) on that overly-worn divorced-woman-trying-to-find-herself path, however the pre-mature birth of the newest member of the family keeps it from becoming completely trite. The submerged town as an interesting allegory to the whole.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book tells the stories of Georgia Rice and her granddaughter, Catherine Hubbard, mainly through the eyes of Catherine. Catherine has just gone through her second divorce. At about the same time, she has inherited her grandparents' house in Vermont. As she is feeling a bit lost, Catherine decides to head east and live there for at least a while. While snooping around in the attic, she comes across her grandmother's diaries. She discovers that her grandparents' love was real, but it was not as easy and uncomplicated as she had always assumed. There had been misgivings on both sides early in the marriage which lingered for a time below the surface, but these were ultimately reconciled. This was the "world below" the surface, referred to in the title. Eventually, Catherine seems to derive some satisfaction from coming to recognize that most marriages are multi-layered and complicated, not just her two failed ones. Ultimately, she goes home to San Francisco to be near one of her daughters who has just given birth to her first child. I thought the ending was very weak and although I enjoyed reading much of this book, something seemed to be missing in the character of Catherine. I can't say for sure what it was. I found myself looking forward to all of the sections about the grandparents and being a little bored when the story would get back to Catherine. The bottom line...... I wouldn't run out and buy this, but if you already own it, it's worth a read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Often times I had to put down this book, not because it was boring, but because I had to pause to think about what it said. The depth of exploration of nuance and innuendo in the passages is astounding. A superbly well-written probe at the past and at family.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I keept waiting for something exciting to happen. I ususally like her books.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sue Miller is an author that I have read over the years. This book was written 20 years ago and although I enjoyed it, I did not find it as engaging as her most recent novels. It was a story about Cath, a 52 year old twice divorced mother of 3 adult children who lives and teaches in San Francisco. She and her brother have inherited her grandmother's Vermont home. Cath had a very strong relationship with Georgia(her grandmother) and lived with her as a teenager following the suicide of her mother. So we see that Cath has had a complicated life. She always had the vision of her grandmother having a solid marriage and life with her grandfather who was 20 years older. Cath goes back to Vermont to spend time at the house and uncovers her grandmother's diaries. The book goes back and forth between the present and the past. This was a solid well written book but it took on too much so that it was hard to get a complete picture of either Cath or Georgia. It was not a page turner but for a reader of other Sue Miller books you may want to give this a try. If you have never read Sue Miller than I suggest her last book(The Arsonist(2014)).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The World Below by Sue Miller; (4 1/2*)The World Below was nearly perfection for me. I was unable to put it down. It is a multigenerational story about of the women in a family, namely the grandmother and granddaughter. But all of the rest of them do come into the story with their important bits as well.While the book may be short on plot it is full of small rich moments which make the reader sit up and take note. So many identifiable moments in a life are gorgeously painted in the exquisite language of this book. The honesty with which failed relationships are described, new relationships are considered, children's hurts are borne, parents mistakes are repeated; all are beautifully illustrated in Miller's simple tale of two generations of women looking at their lives. Her small ephipanies are delivered so subtly and unadorned that sometimes the reader does not know what has hit him. This is quite a lovely thing to find in a quiet book.I was especially taken with the love story of Georgia, the grandmother, and her doctor husband. If I had one criticism of the book it would be to say that I found the story of Georgia and Seward's romance at the sanitorium rather flat. I felt no passion in their relationship and thought the book would have been better without it. On the other hand I found Georgia's and her husband's relationship to be tender, painful, very real and beautiful. Once again Sue Miller has taken me away and outside of myself. A beautifully written book, as I find all of Miller's to be.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderful story told by a 52-year-old woman about her grandmother.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book. It told an interesting story with bits of history and culture that were new to me and fascinating. Also, Sue Miller surely has a way with words; her writing is smooth and engaging. I could, however, have done without the gratuitous self-sex scene at the beginning of the book. I think I understand why she included it, but it was unnecessary, bordering on tasteless, and really out of place. Otherwise the book was an enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sue Miller’s 7th novel - The World Below - begins in Maine in the early part of the twentieth century with Georgia Rice. Georgia’s mother has recently died from cancer, and Georgia - being the eldest child of three siblings - steps into the role of caring for her father and younger brother and sister. But an unexpected diagnosis of tuberculosis sends her to a sanitarium which will change her life in unexpected ways.Fast forward to the present day where the reader is introduced to Georgia’s 50-something year old granddaughter, Catherine Hubbard who has returned to her grandparent’s home to start over again after a recent divorce. Catherine discovers her grandmother’s diaries, and begins to piece together Georgia’s life.She discovers her own life has paralleled her grandmother’s in inexplicable ways. We learn (through flash backs) that Catherine’s mother, mentally ill and fragile, dies when Catherine is only a teenager, and Catherine briefly goes to live with her grandparents - who are now living in Vermont. During this time in her life, she senses a deep undercurrent of old resentments and misunderstandings which lie beneath the surface of her grandparent’s marriage. Later, as an adult, Catherine starts her own family … and suffers through two painful divorces, leaving her to wonder what her future will bring.The World Below is a multi-layered, non-linear novel which slips back and forth between the generations. It is a novel about the subtle power struggles within a marriage, the loss of childhood innocence, the re-discovery of self as one moves through the years, and the tenuous hold we have on the past.I must admit to the novel being slow going for me and a little confusing (with all the flash backs and change in point of view) at the start; but as I made my way through Georgia and Catherine’s lives, their stories began to interest me, and I was slowly pulled into the story. Miller writes with great depth and understanding of her characters - who are filled with the human flaws we all share. Her writing is honest and searing, forcing the reader to examine her own life while sharing the lives of the characters. I have enjoyed Miller’s previous books, and this was no exception.Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A lyrical, touching intertwined tale of two generations of women and their loves, romances, and regrets. In Maine, 1919, Georgia Rice, who has taken care of her father and siblings and household since the death of her mother, is diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent off to a sanitorium, where she engages in a romance with another patient, doomed to early death. In the present Vermont, Catherine Hubbard, Georgia’s granddaughter, moves into Georgia’s old house in an attempt to sort out her own life and romances. Both women become motherless at the same age, struggle in their marriages, and work hard to understand their roles as mothers.