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    Family Pictures: A Novel
    Family Pictures: A Novel
    Family Pictures: A Novel
    Audiobook17 hours

    Family Pictures: A Novel

    Written by Sue Miller

    Narrated by Vivienne Leheny

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    “Profoundly honest, shapely, ambitious, engrossing.”—New York Times Book Review

    From bestselling author Sue Miller comes a masterful novel about the life of a large family that is deeply bonded by the stranger in their midst—an autistic child.

    The whole world could not have broken the spirit and strength of the Eberhardt family of 1948. Lainey is a wonderful if slightly eccentric mother. David is a good father, sometimes sarcastic, always cool-tempered. Two wonderful children round out the perfect picture. Then the third child arrives—and life is never the same again. Over the next forty years, the Eberhardt family struggles to live with a flood tide of upheaval and heartbreak, love and betrayal, passion and pain...hoping they can someday heal their hearts. 

    Family Pictures is an unforgettable, insightful, and resounding novel of strength and resiliency against overwhelming circumstances.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 25, 2020
    ISBN9780062995025
    Author

    Sue Miller

    Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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    Reviews for Family Pictures

    4/5

    153 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The Eberhardt's are the picture perfect family - dad is a doctor, mum stays home to look after two lovely children - a girl and a boy. Then, Randall is born and Randall has a serious disability. Sue Miller traces the lives of this family and looks at it from the perspectives of each of its members over the course of four decades - joy and heartbreak, pain and pleasure, love and rejection - Miller details how this 'situation' affects the family as individuals and in the family dynamic.This author never disappoints and I would definitely recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Whatever the world could throw at the Eberhardt family, circumstances could not have broken their strength or spirit. In 1948, the Eberhardts were the picture perfect family - Lainey is the wonderful, if slightly eccentric mother, David is a good father - sometimes sarcastic, always cool-tempered. Two wonderful and loving children - Lydia and Macklin - complete the family portrait. The lives of the Eberhardt family couldn't possibly get any better; until the birth of their third child, Randall. The subsequent discovery that their youngest son has certain unexpected challenges, highlights strains that will ultimately deeply affect their marriage. Over the next forty years, the Eberhardts struggle to survive a flood tide of upheaval and heartbreak, love and betrayal, passion and pain...hoping they can someday heal their hearts.I absolutely loved this book. In my opinion, reading it was just like observing family dynamics - up close and personal - and experiencing their trials and tribulations first hand. I give this book an A+! and will certainly be looking for more to read by this author in the future.
    • 5/5
      Highly eclectic novel told from the perspectives of every member of a family except for the son who turns out to be the axle around which everyone turns--the autistic son.
    • 4/5
      I'm left breathless by Sue Miller's ability to tell a story from many different viewpoints - female, male, very young, very old - reflecting attitudes of five different decades. This covers the timelines of several members of one family whose scars radiate out over many years from the autism of one brother. I don't think this is a spoiler, but the final pages detail an idyllic evening just before the birth of the autistic child. We see the family, still small, as yet unwounded, ready to welcome the new child. We the readers have been privy to the years of guilt and consequences, and the poignancy is razor-sharp and achingly beautiful.
    • 4/5
      Once again Miller feeds our voyeuristic hunger. Up close and personal is a barely adequate phrase when describing her family sagas. This time there is no one looming disaster on the horizon. It’s more the disintegration of a family over time. Partly it is because of the roles each of them were forced into. Most obvious is Mack; the ‘good’ son. The healthy son. The hope. He cracked under the pressure and while he didn’t completely fail in the grand scheme of things, he failed to be the shining example of perfect manhood that his father wanted. Lainey seemed more removed from his life than David. Out of the six siblings, only Mack, Nina and Randall are the focus; Mary, Sarah and Lydia are in the periphery.As a family they are very close in the sense that they are involved with the surface of each other’s lives. They are each, however, adept and successful at hiding a secret life. Mack smokes pot and becomes disaffected with what his parents want from him. Nina is briefly promiscuous as she embarks on a creative life. David has numerous affairs with neighborhood women as he tries to distance himself from his defective son and the system that supports him.Then ending was a little surreal and I think it was a fiction within a fiction. For a book with essentially no plot, it was a fair way to tie things up.
    • 4/5
      Story of the ups and downs of 40 years in the life of the Eberhardt family of Chicago told mainly through the eyes of fourth (out of 6) child Nina, Mac (#2), and mom Lainey, and dad David, who is a psychiatrist. Their lives are shaped by the fact that the third child Randall is severely autistic and not much is known about that in the '50s and '60s. The author also places the characters very realistically in the social and political times of the different eras they live through during the course of the book. Great writing, lots of detail, and the reader becomes very invested in what happens to each one of the family members
    • 5/5
      Loved this book, second book I read by Miller - set me up as a fan for ever. She wrote about sitting out on the lawn on summer nights hearing the hum of adults talking and seeing the little red lights of their ciggaretts waving in the dark. Beaver Street
    • 1/5
      Hated this book...can not believe i pushed myself through it. i have enough family drama on my own, certainly did not need to read about another family. i truly could not find a purpose for this book.