Water by Alyce Miller

I was busy all summer participating in a summer reading program at my library, but now I'm back. I just finished Alyce Miller's collection of nine stories titled Water. I'm not sure how to describe this most amazing book. Each story is intoxicating, placing the reader in various places and situations. I could not put the book down.

Miller captures very different people, ethnically, psychologically, and economically, and makes them completely believable. For example: one story follows a suburban wife who longs for a child; another is set in a tough neighborhood with violence. One of my favorites ("My Summer of Love") involves a teenage boy with counterculture parents who goes to spend the summer with his much different aunt who wears aprons, works in the garden, and wears clothes (his mother usually parades around in the nude, even when cooking). Highly recommended!