On Your Own by Jonathan Miller

On Your Own, Jonathan Miller's story collection, follows the kind of people you know, but reveals the thoughts and feelings they might never tell you.

These characters – young brothers, struggling husbands and wives, aging bachelors, restless office workers – maneuver through the worlds of childhood, sports, marriage, alcohol, sex, the workplace, and longing for connection, under Miller's honest gaze. His clean, straightforward writing does not rely on extravagant plots (though significant surprises occur); he finds a quiet richness in events that can and do happen to all of us every day.

Like the sun providing a rare glimpse down the clear water of a well, the clarity of prose in On Your Own allows us to witness people as their deeper realizations become known.

On Your Own by Jonathan Miller was published in June 2015.

On Your Own is a collection of short stories and vignettes that capture ordinary lives of ordinary people. The author has managed to do what other short-story authors often fail at; he has created characters that are well-rounded and charismatic within just a few short pages.

Some of his characters feature in more than one story, and my favourites were the two young brothers Nate and Fitz; a lovable pair who are on a journey through life discovering, making mistakes and connecting. Their tales are often funny and warm, their characters are realistic and I cared about them.

On the whole, this collection looks at the the darker side of life and there is a sense of unease within most of the characters, but the author adds some humorous situations to lighten the load.

Jonathan Miller writes confidently, the stories are easy to read and flow beautifully from one to another. I do think that the author has great potential and if I believe that he has written a full length novel, I would be very interested in reading it.

My thanks to the author who sent my copy for review.




Jonathan William Miller was born in Owenton, Kentucky in the United States on July 7, 1968, and has lived most of his life in Central Kentucky. 
He is the youngest of three sons of a Baptist minister father and a schoolteacher mother. 
He attended public schools in Nicholasville and graduated from the University of Kentucky, majoring in journalism. 
After college, he worked at various newspapers as a reporter, sportswriter and website developer and producer in Texas, Arkansas and Kentucky. 
In the mid-1990s he began writing serious fiction. 
In addition to short stories, he has written a novel, a screenplay and poetry.

Follow him on Twitter @jomill


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