Inventing the Abbotts and Other Stories

the long version

The fascinating stories featured in Inventing the Abbotts explore the treacherously shifting ground of erotic and family relationships. In the title story, a young man takes up successively with three daughters of the most fashionable family in town. Others concern a young girl in the first blush of sexual curiosity, and a stricken dowager whose seizures release a brutal and sometimes obscene candor. In one story after another, Sue Miller presents a remarkable gallery of characters, offering insight into contemporary men and women with their hungry hearts and dismayed consciences.