Personal Velocity Review

Personal Velocityby Rebecca Miller (daughter of Arthur Miller) is one of the worst works of fiction I've ever read. I can't imagine why this book was published. The only good thing I can say about this book is that it does not take long to read.

Miller provides a collection of seven very short stories of women of the modern world, or that seems to be what she has in mind. Calling these "stories" is a stretch. They are basically very random sketches lacking in depth. The stories weigh in heavily with name dropping and tedious descriptions of clothing. None of the characters seem real or even likable in any way.

In terms of the mini plots, every character has "issues," and that is putting it mildly.

Greta knows that she is leaving her husband when she looks down at his cheap and sensible shoes. That is her ah-hah moment. Her first clue should have been that she was having an affair with another man the week she was getting ready for her wedding.

Another character is with an abusive man. She goes to the shelter which she doesn't like and calls someone from way back in elementary school days who allows her to move across country and live in her garage apartment. This act of kindness comes from a time when the main character took on the bullies who pulled the non-friend's pants down. Since the lead had a hippie father who owned goats, she was an outcast and began sleeping with the guys at age 12.

Paula is walking along and the man beside her that she picked up at a bar gets killed by a car. They had just switched places to put him closer to the sidewalk. Her reaction is to pick up a 15-year-old hitchhiker and go see her parent's. She apparently wanted to tell her Mom that she was pregnant but was going to get an abortion - after she headed home to her boyfriend who said it was fine to bring the hitchhiker home. But, the kid stole her car and drove off, so she had to take the bus or something.

All of the female characters in this book are nuts. They do totally random things for no reason. And, the stories drop off right in mid thought after a couple of random sexual encounters.

The author does attempt to contrast rich and poor or so it seems. Rich is better, of course, and not earned. Characters get opportunities dropped in their laps and all seem to be art or writing gigs. Poor women are ghastly sad shadows lacking in brains and talent. And, the few female kids are freaks. One locks her friend in the closet and goes into her room to read a magazine. The elderly - oh my. One old woman gets mad because her daughter in law sits in her favorite chair, so she wipes feces all over the bathroom. Why do such things happen? Who knows?

Miller did not capture the spirit of the women in her book. Rich and poor, young and old, all her characters are freaks and not in an interesting or even campy way. The book reads like notes written in anticipation of writing a real book. Sentences are choppy. Details are mundane and do not advance the plot(s). Stories (if there really are any) drop off in mid-thought. All seven women are flat, and their stories are tedious. It's impossible to even hate the characters. They are so off the mark that it becomes eye rollingly dull to plow through the book even though it takes only a couple of hours to read.

I wouldn't recommend Personal Velocity to anyone and don't plan to pass it along. Time could be much better spent doing something else - anything else.