The Senator's Wife
by Sue Miller
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Book Reviews of The Senator's Wife
Book Review: The Master of My Own Destiny?
Summary: 5 Stars
I was surprised to read the review by Connie Schultz, the wife of a senator, who said "There are so many assumptions about marriages like mine. What might Miller's be?"
Miller does not write about events; she writes about our responses to events. Miller does not tell us what we should do; she merely tells us what she thinks someone might do.
The measure of Miller's talent is not in whether or not she reflects who you or I are, but in her ability to illuminate human behavior. And if her illumination is full and bright, we might actually see something from which we can learn.
I think "The Senator's Wife" is one of the best of Miller's works, challenged only by "Lost in the Forest."
The first event of the book is the purchasing of half of a duplex by Meri and her husband Nathan. The other half is owned by Senator Tom Naughton and his wife Delia. We quickly learn that Nathan is controlled and controlling, Meri is unsure of the marriage or her direction in life. From Meri;s point-of-view we first are introduced to Delia Naughton, the perfect senator's wife. What we see in this section is the readjustment of the lives of Meri, Nathan, and Delia to the presence of one another. There are the little things like the awareness each household has of the other on the other side of the dividing wall. There is the relative importance (iconic and emotional) that each person has in the psyche of the others. And even the absent senator, Tom, becomes a presence in the course of the story.
It is no spoiler to say that Tom is a philanderer; this is made clear early on. Nor is the story really about Tom. Nowhere is his charisma shown except in the response of a few characters to him. Tom is who Tom is -- and that is core to the story. It is how the others see him, accept their own perceptions or reject them, respond both intellectually and emotionally to who Tom is that illuminates who they are.
It is disappointing that Connie Schultz and so many readers measure the book against their own experiences. For myself, the book was an experience. The characters were in essence true to themselves, including the very human condition of not always really knowing themselves or responding the way they (and we) thought they would respond. Certainly there is no harm in a reader asking him- or herself "would I do that?" But when the answer is "no", the next questions should be "would anyone do that" and "why would they do that." Miller plays fair with her answers to those questions.
The question most people will probably focus on is, would anyone act like Delia after she is forced to acknowledge her husband's infidelity? To me, Delia was absolutely consistent as a character. And part of that consistency was her own failure to completely understand her own emotions or her motivations. The event that leads to this insight on the part of the reader (although not completely on the part of Delia) is the only really contrived event of the book. It is contrived not because it is impossible but because it leads to too many character insights at the same time. Far better the event took place without the climax and that instead the final climax comes at the end of another less potent event. Life forces conincidence upon us far more than one has reason to expect, but readers detest it.
All of the above being said, it is important to point out that this is anything but a one-theme book. It is rich with characters and relationships. Delia's relationship with her three children and particularly with her controlling daughter Nancy is important and true. What aging mother -- living alone for any reason -- is not aware of the possibility for conflict with a controlling child who only has "her best interests" at heart? And there is Susan's relationship with her husband Nathan that is as telling in its anticlimax and how that is achieved as any of the more dramatic scenes.
I liked all the characters, finding myself shifting loyalties at various times only to end up caring for all of them again. The greatest gift of Miller's writing is the ambiguities she allows to stay in the text -- it is up to us to look for the deepest truths and answers within ourselves.
Book Review: In Defense of Monica Lewinsky?
Summary: 3 Stars
Not Her Best
There is always a seductive aspect to Sue Miller's novels and this one is no different. Intimacies are obsessively detailed until they embed the reader in the complicated emotional lives of her characters. She's a very engaging writer and there are many good moments of emotional tension and sexual jealousy and deception in The Senator's Wife.
But that trait, in so many of Miller's women, which borders on the slatternly looms large in this story; and the questionable moral choices made are less understandable here than in her other work. Some characters' willingness to gratify their own sexual need at the expense of their own and others' emotional bonds are not so much ethically ambiguous as pathological.
The story parallels two couples living as neighbors in a New England town. Meri and Nathan are in their 30s, newlywed. Delia and Tom are in their 70s, he a former well-known U.S. Senator. Set in the early `90s, this story also parallels the Clinton presidency in several ways. Tom--a charismatic, liberal, womanizing politician whose wife never divorced him despite repeated humiliations--suffers a terrible setback in 1994. Delia, the senator's wife, is a strong character in her own right. She has lived separately from Tom for many years and has an independent life, but is still his lover and friend. She chooses to help him after his setback. Meri is the Monica Lewinsky character. In Meri's case, her background is one of poverty and maternal neglect. Thus damaged, she occasionally steals, often lies, and has thoroughly snooped through Delia's private papers. She has few, if any, inner resources and seems only able to define herself through male sexual desire; she only feels whole in the gaze of male attention. She is also portrayed as a bright, educated journalist who is married to Nathan, a more attractive, "patrician" and honest person than she. I found her character implausible, unsympathetic and annoying. Ultimately Meri plays a sexual "game" with Tom as they both indulge a need to feed their desperate egos through sexual dalliance. Meri lies about her role and suffers no consequences to her family although others are hurt.
The problem with all this is that it appears Miller wants us to exonerate Meri and to agree with her delusion that, really, what she did was "out of love". And that Delia, who "prides herself" on being forgiving, is actually an unforgiving person because she only wants to live with Tom if he cannot be his old self--that Delia is emasculating Tom by wanting fidelity in return for her care and commitment. In other words, the story's moral ambiguity slips into negative judgment of the honorable Delia and exoneration of the damaged Meri and reprobate Tom who help each other restore their flagging self-esteem through sexual games. It's as if an alcoholic who had a history of DUIs, and had even maimed a pedestrian or two, was feeling depressed not drinking, so another alcoholic who also needed a lift brought a bottle of scotch to him for the two of them to drink. They felt restored and lively as they drank, though some people got hurt, but opening that bottle of scotch was an act of love, we are expected to believe.
If The Senator's Wife is supposed to be a defense of Monica Lewinsky or Meri, I don't believe it works. In addition, there were some errors and unpolished, mundane prose in this book which would not usually occur in a work by someone of Miller's stature. The text seemed to need another run-through, but perhaps it was rushed to publication in order to coincide with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Book Review: Multilayered and thought-provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
Meri is newly married to college professor Nathan. They relocate when he snags an excellent new job in the east, though she has mixed feeling about the move. Although pleased for her husband, she is losing a job she enjoys and an apartment she loves. Nathan decides that they will buy an attached house that is above their means --- mostly, Meri believes, because he discovers that his hero, ex-senator Tom Naughton, lives next door. She begins to wonder, not for the first time, what place she holds in their partnership.
Meri is somewhat mollified when she meets the senator's wife, Delia, an elderly yet vibrant woman who welcomes Meri into her home and shows Meri around the city while still keeping Meri at an arm's distance. Meri and Nathan are bewildered to find that Tom Naughton is nowhere to be seen; Delia off-handedly remarks that he will be home for a visit eventually. Meanwhile, Meri has found a job for an hour-long newsmagazine airing on a local radio station. She adores the work and is good at it.
Meri's story alternates with Delia's, as Delia muses on her long marriage to Tom and the reason for their living separately: Tom is chronically unable to stop his string of affairs. Yet Delia loves him, and welcomes him into her life and her bed intermittently, an attitude that divides her family --- especially after Tom's affair with a young friend of one of their children.
Meri is not happy to discover that she is pregnant. Her condition causes her to reconsider her relationship with her parents. Will she resort to the unloving, and sometimes physically abusive, manner of parenting she experienced growing up? As her body changes, so does her marriage. Nathan works longer hours, and is distracted by his job and the book he is writing. Meri's own work is disrupted when one of her co-workers chastises her for getting pregnant, making Meri wonder about the future of the job she so enjoys. And Meri's rather nebulous growing friendship with Delia is interrupted when the older woman leaves to spend time in Paris.
Delia has asked Meri to tend her houseplants and bring in her mail while she is away. Meri spends longer and longer periods of time in Delia's house, which feels more welcoming than her own. She also finds herself growing increasingly fascinated with Delia. Eventually, Meri cannot resist prying into the most private corners of Delia's home and her life. She regrets her lapse of moral judgment nearly as soon as she begins it, yet she continues. When Delia returns, Meri is uncomfortable with what she knows about Delia's personal life. She is even more uneasy when she meets Delia's husband. And something else perturbs her: her failure to confide in Nathan about what she has done.
As always, Sue Miller's descriptions of women's relationships and emotions feel dead-on and relatable. The subtle yet definite feeling of lives on a collision course makes THE SENATOR'S WIFE a riveting page-turner. As in real life, these people are not one-note, and so they are delightfully unpredictable. As the intertwined lives of Meri and Delia twist in a startling yet (in retrospect) inevitable climax, the reader is left pondering intent, regret, forgiveness, the nature of marriage, motherhood and the ability of people to change, making this multilayered and thought-provoking novel a satisfying read long after the book is finished.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)
Book Review: A tale of two wives
Summary: 4 Stars
The Senator's Wife is really about two wives who live next door to each other in a duplex for about a year - a year that turns out to be pivotal for them both. It's a story about marriage and motherhood at different stages, and it reinforces the truism that no one really knows what goes on in a relationship except the people in it.
Meri meets Delia Naughton on the shared front porch of a duplex; she and her husband Nathan are about to buy one side of it, and Delia has been living on the other side for over thirty years. Meri, who tends to be drawn toward maternal figures, is fascinated by Delia, while Nathan is fascinated by Delia's husband, retired senator Tom Naughton, who never seems to be around. Delia has an open, yet reserved, way about her that makes Meri very curious, and when Delia goes to Paris for a couple of months, Meri's house-sitting gives her a chance to...well, snoop. What she learns makes her feel strange about her neighbors, especially when Tom Naughton eventually turns up at Delia's. Meri feels strange about a lot of things that year. A Midwest native, she has relocated to the East Coast for her husband's new faculty position, become a homeowner, found a new job, and unexpectedly gotten pregnant.
I'm not necessarily drawn to maternal figures, but I am somewhat intrigued by vital older women myself, and I shared Meri's fascination with Delia. After a number of infidelities on Tom's part, she's adapted quite well to living on her own in the house they shared, and in her own apartment in Paris for four months each year. But while she can't really live with Tom, she can't quite live without him either; and despite his affairs, he really can't let his wife go. The relationship they've maintained for over twenty years - to no one's knowledge but their own - seems to work fairly well for them both...until Tom suffers a stroke. When Delia decides it's up to her to assume the responsibility of caring for him, she brings him back home to stay.
Sue Miller's writing is almost stream-of-consciousness in places, as she spends a lot of time inside both Delia's and Meri's heads. This is a novel of domestic drama, but not melodrama. While the details may vary, a lot of what makes up the story in The Senator's Wife are things that happen every day - moments of marital intimacy and conflict; pregnancy, childbirth, and the difficult adjustments and sometime ambivalence of new motherhood (which I think Miller nails quite well); the mix of awkwardness and enjoyment in getting to know new people and places; and the challenges of aging and illness. The climax of the novel is not something that happens every day, but it makes sense in context, although I admit I was a bit dismayed by it. I was also a bit uncomfortable with how sexually charged the story was. As a writer whose novels tend to be character-driven and relationship-based, Miller has never shied away from sex as a theme or topic. I don't think she used it inappropriately or gratuitously here, but I just felt that she made direct reference to it more than was strictly necessary to serve the story; implication would have served just fine in a number of instances, in my opinion.
I've read most of Sue Miller's novels, and I think I'd place this one in the upper ranks, although Family Pictures remains my favorite. The Senator's Wife was absorbing reading - thoughtfully written, with characters and situations that I'm still thinking about.
Book Review: "You can get used to anything. It's one of the most necessary things life teaches us."
Summary: 4 Stars
The newly-married woman. The senator's wife. A generation of differences. In 1993, when Meri Fowler and her husband, Nathan, move into the other half of a stately home owned by Delia Naughton, wife of former senator Tom Naughton, a Washington mover and shaker and beltway roué who now visits his wife only sporadically, Meri is fascinated by the older Delia. Without examining her reasons, Meri hopes for an intimacy that seems always out of reach, especially as Delia travels frequently to visit her grown children and to a secluded Paris apartment. It is Nathan who is curious about the senator, hoping in vain for a meeting, which fails to occur but for a brief time one holiday. Life settles into routine until Meri learns she is pregnant, her world suddenly shifting from an engaging job at a local radio station to the tunnel-vision of new motherhood, all-consuming days of feeding, changing, feeding, sleeplessness a further strain on a once carefree marriage.
But Delia is the centerpiece of Miller's engaging novel, a self-contained woman who has learned at last to make peace with an untrustworthy husband and the shattering of a dream, his peccadilloes finally driving a wedge into their marriage. Delia survives, healing with time and circumstance, the façade of gentility intact. And Delia's natural generosity toward Meri is not significant, at least to the senator's wife, caught up in her own emotions as the ground shifts once more in her relationship with Tom, a long-hoped for contretemps shimmering on the horizon. It is Miller's juxtaposition of the lives of these two women that drives the story, Delia's long journey through a marriage that has challenged her on every level, Meri the unwitting, if randomly destructive catalyst: "It was as if she dropped out of time, out of its press and obligation, out of its failings. Her failings."
The nature of marriage and motherhood, the needs of women at various stages of their lives, the roles of spouses and abrupt, devastating betrayals are themes Miller knows well, describes persuasively. The Naughton's painful marriage is a revelation, an explanation of the generational drift in then and now, women who committed themselves to marriage and children, their husband's careers dominating their lives. In the self-absorbed world of her youth and new motherhood, Meri is shockingly unaware of the consequences of her actions; but even youth is a chimera- Meri is thirty-six, not some naïve young married with a new baby. Meri hasn't earned her curiosity, her intrusiveness and Delia has spent a lifetime protecting her privacy. How can Meri begin to comprehend the dignity of such as Delia, the hard-won rewards of devotion? Marriages are impossible to predict, let alone happy endings. Miller's precise manipulation of human frailty, the small, important counterpoints and misunderstandings that beleaguer her characters are compelling. Luan Gaines/ 2008