As the daughter of Arthur, the work of Rebecca Miller has inevitably been
on the receiving end of some considerable critical attention. However,
the filial expectation that this involves has clearly not been detrimental
to her creative career, as her triple-award-winning film, Angela, will
testify. Having now turned her considerable talents to producing this set
of short stories, the concision and style developed as a film-maker stands
Miller in good stead in her portrayal of the numerous complex characters
that colour Personal Velocity.
Running to a mere 178 pages long, the portraits painted by Miller are
more like snapshots, capturing important moments in the lives of women at a
cross-roads. Working within such a dense framework Miller has a poet's
ability to always choose exactly the right word or phrase, the atmosphere
she creates not suffering in the least for her brevity. She clearly has
little tolerance for verbiage or the profligate, careless use of words of
so many of her contemporaries in the genre of short stories. The word
'spare' does not do justice to her sensitivity and the richness of the
stories she weaves around her characters.
Greta is a successful women far excelling her husband who seems to lack
the ceaseless ambition of his partner. Suddenly Greta decides that she is
going to leave her sluggish husband, neither because of his unshakeable
grip on the status quo nor because of her ambition. Shamefully it is
because he wears cheap shoes! Delia is in the process of casting off her
violent relationship as she attempts to reclaim her own power through a
more sexual kind of domination over men. While Paula tries to repay a debt
owed to fate by caring for a homeless boy, she is planning to abort her
unborn child.
A story that is particularly striking is that of Bryna in which the main
character, a farmer's wife, is enveloped in her own fantasy world in
which she constantly gives interviews to imagined magazines. This all
seems an innocent, if tragic, way of relieving the tedium of her life
until the emotional problems which the fantasy is designed to mask begin
to surface. One is tempted to read into these intense and eclectic stories
a little bit of autobiography on the author's part. Miller excels at
portraying her characters' fears and vulnerabilities with a particularly
personal edge. However, this can mainly be put down to her formidable
style and ability, although the character of the publisher, renowned for
'trimming the fat' off manuscripts, might serve to illustrate how Miller
would like her own work to be regarded.
Personal Velocity, is an intense collection and at times can seem
exhausting for such a short work. Miller's film influence means that she
tends to concentrate on creating external realities and atmosphere, rather
neglecting a potentially major source of tension and drama - the interior
lives of the diverse women she depicts. This is not to detract from
Miller's obvious talent and distinctive authorial voice, often tough and
unrelenting. Rebecca Miller is an author who deserves to be read and
judged in her own right and not simply as the product of a famous father.
Reviewed by Michael Redman
