What do you think?
Rate this book
Miracle Girl
When a series of visions and spontaneous healings begins occurring in Hudson City, a dying industrial city in upstate New York, John Quinn investigates claims that a beautiful Vietnamese-American hearing-impaired girl is performing miracles. Reprint.
- GenresFiction
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
1 person is currently reading
27 people want to read
About the author
Keith Scribner
5 books49 followersKeith Scribner’s fourth novel, Old Newgate Road, will be released by Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House) on January 8, 2019. His three previous novels are The Oregon Experiment, Miracle Girl, and The GoodLife, which was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Daily Beast, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, Quarterly West, The North Atlantic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton) and Sudden Stories: The MAMMOTH Book of Miniscule Fiction. He received both Pushcart and O’Henry Prize Honorable Mentions for his short story, “Paradise in a Cup” (TriQuarterly, #121).
Scribner received his BA from Vassar College and MFA from the University of Montana. He was awarded Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux Fellowships in Fiction at Stanford University, where he went on to teach in the Creative Writing Program as a Jones Lecturer. He currently lives in Oregon with his wife, the poet Jennifer Richter, and their children. He teaches in Oregon State University’s MFA program.
His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Daily Beast, TriQuarterly, American Short Fiction, Quarterly West, The North Atlantic Review, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun, and the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton) and Sudden Stories: The MAMMOTH Book of Miniscule Fiction. He received both Pushcart and O’Henry Prize Honorable Mentions for his short story, “Paradise in a Cup” (TriQuarterly, #121).
Scribner received his BA from Vassar College and MFA from the University of Montana. He was awarded Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux Fellowships in Fiction at Stanford University, where he went on to teach in the Creative Writing Program as a Jones Lecturer. He currently lives in Oregon with his wife, the poet Jennifer Richter, and their children. He teaches in Oregon State University’s MFA program.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 9, 2007
Made it to page 59.
March 22, 2020
Spoilers, I suppose, in merely summarizing this stupid thing.
It's not really about a "Miracle Girl," rather the unsurprising effects of such a person (who *is* a character in the story, but sadly horribly underdeveloped) in a city. And the effects. And the effects. They're all the same effects, but hey, why delve deeper when crappy writing suffices?
No, it's about one self-absorbed, boring guy who does the same thing repeatedly while unrealistically fantasizing about the good times in his relationship while fruitlessly running about town accomplishing pretty much nothing.
That happens 95 percent of the story. Did I mention repeatedly? And when we FINALLY get to spend some time with the Miracle Girl ... well, it's about the main character's reaction to her.
In this one character of the book we are forced to endure there is no development. It's all about him -- and who cares about him? Not me.
It's not really about a "Miracle Girl," rather the unsurprising effects of such a person (who *is* a character in the story, but sadly horribly underdeveloped) in a city. And the effects. And the effects. They're all the same effects, but hey, why delve deeper when crappy writing suffices?
No, it's about one self-absorbed, boring guy who does the same thing repeatedly while unrealistically fantasizing about the good times in his relationship while fruitlessly running about town accomplishing pretty much nothing.
That happens 95 percent of the story. Did I mention repeatedly? And when we FINALLY get to spend some time with the Miracle Girl ... well, it's about the main character's reaction to her.
In this one character of the book we are forced to endure there is no development. It's all about him -- and who cares about him? Not me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 2, 2025
I didn’t like it much. It didn’t peak my interest till the last few chapters. A man without much of a life meets the person the masses are calling the miracle girl. And although miracles of hearing being restored are happening, no one is thanking God. They think it’s the Virgin Mary through the girl.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews