The Story of My Father: A Memoir
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at
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| The Story of My Father: A Memoir |
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Product Description |
In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life. With compassion, self-scrutiny, and an urgency born of her own yearning to rescue her father's memory from the disorder and oblivion that marked his dying and death, Sue Miller takes us on an intensely personal journey that becomes, by virtue of her enormous gifts of observation, perception, and literary precision, a universal story of fathers and daughters.
James Nichols was a fourth-generation minister, a retired professor from Princeton Theological Seminary. Sue Miller brings her father brilliantly to life in these pages-his religious faith, his endless patience with his children, his gaiety and willingness to delight in the ridiculous, his singular gifts as a listener, and the rituals of church life that stayed with him through his final days. She recalls the bitter irony of watching him, a church historian, wrestle with a disease that inexorably lays waste to notions of time, history, and meaning. She recounts her struggle with doctors, her deep ambivalence about many of her own choices, and the difficulty of finding, continually, the humane and moral response to a disease whose special cruelty it is to dissolve particularities and to diminish, in so many ways, the humanity of those it strikes. She reflects, unforgettably, on the variable nature of memory, the paradox of trying to weave a truthful narrative from the threads of a dissolving life. And she offers stunning insight into her own life as both a daughter and a writer, two roles that swell together here in a poignant meditation on the consolations of storytelling.
With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her beloved and best-selling fiction, Sue Miller now gives us a rigorous, compassionate inventory of two lives, in a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons and daughters struggling-as we all eventually must-to make peace with their fathers and with themselves.
From the Hardcover edition. |
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Customer Reviews |
 Heartfelt |
| Review Date: September 28, 2003 |
| Reviewer: Jamie J. Bourgeois, Boston, MA United States |
| Ms. Miller did a wonderful job putting together the story of her father's illness and how it became intertwined with her life. I used to work with Alzheimer's and dementia patients and saw how difficult it was for families, not to mention the person suffering. Many families fall apart because they can not make sense of what is happening to their parent, but it was encouraging to see someone stick by and care for their parent. I think this memoir accurately portrays the slow loss all people involved go through. Its a great book for caretakers and anyone touched by this disease. |
Losing a father, finding a self
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| Review Date: July 10, 2003 |
| Reviewer: Jana P Porter, Little Compton, RI United States |
| I have not been so moved by a book since the death of my own father 10 years ago. Sue Miller's memoir of her father's last years with Alzheimer's Disease tells the reader more about her than about her father. Her ability to stay connected to the complexity of feelings she experienced, even when they overwhelmed her and she couldn't articulate them, is astounding. Most moving of all is her father's final gift to her - a much deeper understanding of herself, of him. and of their relationship. |
The Good Daughter
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| Review Date: June 14, 2003 |
| Reviewer: H. F. Corbin, ATLANTA, GA USA |
| Sue Miller has written a very thoughtful, loving account of her father's downward spiral with Alzheimer's disease. I found very informative her discussion of the history of the disease and the medical updates on it as described in Chapter 3. As the title implies, there is more to this memoir than just an account of Ms. Miller's father's final days with Alzheimer's. She discusses much of her father's and her family's lives. The relationship of her parents, at least as she remembers it, was intriguing. I would like to have known either or both of her parents. Also, I bought the book from having read the first few pages in a local bookstore about James Nichols'-- the name of Ms. Miller's father-- feelings about pacificism. This is a brilliant first chapter that make you want to read more. Ms. Miller writes clear, beautiful prose. Just as important as Mr. Nichols' story is also the story of Ms. Miller and her own frustrations, anger, love and all the other emotions that a child/caretaker feels as she watches the disintegration of a brilliant, scholarly and loving father. She attempts to be completely honest about her own feelings--it seems to be as honest as one can be in tackling such a painful and personal subject. Mr. Nichols was lucky to have such a loving daughter. We, the readers, are likewise fortunate that she has written what had to be a very difficult book for her to write. |
Brilliant
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| Review Date: April 18, 2003 |
| Reviewer: , |
| sue miller is one of our national treasures, and now she has given us a rich portrait of her family of origin. the fine details are all there, along with insightful medical information aboutAD and its tentacles of demise. a compelling memoir and a poignant tribute to her father; i found myself wishing he had been my father, so compassionate and alive the text. bravo, ms. miller. this is one for the permanent collection of any daughter or son of a complex man..... |
Extraordinary gift
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| Review Date: April 30, 2003 |
| Reviewer: Susanlb, Durham, NH USA |
| Sue Miller has given us all the most extraordinary gift in the form of this wonderful memoir. My father was an Episcopal priest and although he died at an early age from leukemia, I could certainly relate to her tender descriptions of the relationship they had. The most important thing about the book is her careful description of the evolution over many years of the loving relationship she and her father had at the end. I could not decide whether to smile or cry throughout this book, but it is simply a gem. The factual information about AD is very important for all of us, but the intimate view she gives us of her own family life is truly a gift, an extraordinary gift, for which I am grateful. |
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