The Senator's Wife
by Sue Miller
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.85 You Save: $24.10 (97%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Senator's Wife
Book Review: Delia was not a martyr
Summary: 2 Stars
Having lived and worked in Washington, I was amazed at the number of readers who thought Delia was a martyr for this self-centered senator. In fact, she was an admirable opportunist. She figured out a way to have her man, have her own relationships and have Paris! Not that this would be everyone's choice - I mean, why get/stay married at all? But for Delia, who was somehow not just loyal to this man but adored him, it was a relationship that worked. I found that Miller's recitation of Delia's most quotidian moments - the little drink in the evening, accompanied by her favorite cheeses, etc. - was compelling in that it did not paint a portrait of a woman who was depressed, lonely and resentful. It painted her as making a life. She obviously dressed well, did her hair, wore red lipstick, etc., etc., and the reference to Paris was not coincidental. Many many European women are in marriages that resemble Delia's - even if their husbands are NOT in politics. [It was also why my Italian father inculcated in me the critical importance of "always having your own money." Delia obviously had access to the Senator's money, to live a life that she might not have chosen but which seemed to make her content.
As for Meri, I thought like many other readers that she was the ultimate self-centered opportunist, and a total baby. However, she too married a self-centered man. What we don't read about explicitly - but Miller deftly suggests - is that Meri's young professor husband also has his own ego-maniac issues as evidenced in his spending way too much time on campus and always has a lot of work to do on weekends that takes him away from Meri. Hmmm, wonder what HE was up to; Miller doesn't have to say this explicitly. If a follow-up book is called "The Professor's Wife" no spouse of any college professor would be surprised: the classroom is a "target-rich" environment for extramarital dalliances, as one of my MBA classmates asserts.
Finally, like many readers I found myself wondering toward the end of the book what was the point of the continued recitation of the daily lives of these people? I forced myself late in the evening to read the last 50 pages bleary-eyed because I couldn't stand the investment anymore! When it finally came and I read the explanation for the unfortunate turn of events, I was disappointed, but I also think it totally summed up the characters, and especially the character whose thoughts we read in the end. In any event, I too did not love this book, and if the setting had in fact been Washington itself we would have had many more juicy revelations, even with Delia in the same town as her philandering husband. It happens, that's how they live there, and that's the price they pay.
Book Review: "Isn't that what marriage is all about?...Staying in it while getting out in some way, too?"
Summary: 4 Stars
These are not the words of the unfaithful senator, but of the senator's wife, Delia.
Once again Sue Miller gives us a brilliantly written novel. When one reads Sue Miller one can see, smell, hear, taste as she describes. One is in the room, in the car with the characters, seeing their expressions, listening to their conversations. Miller has an uncanny understanding of human nature in all its ineptitude and messiness, as well as, in its amazing love and courage.
This is essentially the story of two women and their marriages: Delia, the senator's wife, who separates from, yet remains lovers and friends with her philandering husband, Tom, and Meri, a thirty-seven-year-old newly-married woman who moves in next door to Delia with her husband, Nathan.
(Spoiler Alert!) Delia's inability to give up her relationship with Tom is as destructive as Tom's inability to stop being unfaithful. Tom has a stroke, and Delia thinks he is finally hers now to take care of and keep all to herself. Yet Tom is still Tom even in his mostly incapacitated state. His lifelong weakness, combined with Meri's self-centered, ego-driven willingness, prove to be both Tom and Delia's final undoing. Delia finally says enough is enough, and she retreats, a broken old woman, to her daughter, Nancy, who, like so many others, could never understand her mother's devotion to her cad of a father in the first place. Nancy promptly places Tom in a nursing home. Meri lies to her husband about what took place that made Delia leave so abruptly, gets away with lying, and essentially lives happily ever after.
Many readers disliked the book because of the ending, and because it's difficult to become fond of or to respect these characters. Certainly one would have wished, at least, for all Meri's seeming love and admiration for Delia, that she would have been incapable of that betrayal. Yet, when one thinks carefully, such an ending wouldn't be in keeping with the Meri Miller has portrayed all along. Meri has always been promiscuous, sneaky, weak, love-starved, and self-centered. She is ever Meri, as Tom is ever Tom. One is glad that Delia, at least, finally has had enough and walks out, although, sadly, she does so much too late.
Miller doesn't ask us to like her characters, or to agree with them, or to condone their choices. She simply presents them as they are and forces the reader to deal with them. This, in my view, shows a great respect for her readership, as we are left to sort out our feelings about these characters and their choices long after we've finished the book.
Book Review: An Unconventional Look at Two Marriages
Summary: 5 Stars
*****
This is a beautiful novel, a lovely and unusual view of the complexities of marriage. A compelling and suspenseful read, the depths of the emotions of two women from two different generations and their respective marriages are explored. The marriages are very different on the surface, yet similar in other ways. For example, in both marriages, the women make adjustments for their children and accommodations for their husbands---how do these change them?
The author writes about the feelings of Delia and Meri in a way that is raw and authentic, a way that plumbs the shadow side of marriage and how a marriage can change over a lifetime.
People looking for a pat story, conventional and formulaic for our times---about betrayal, the inevitable divorce (of course), and the newly independent woman finding herself---will be disappointed. Instead, readers will find out how these women adapt and grow and even thrive through betrayal, neglect, and their various problems.
"The Senator's Wife" is a novel about love and courage and strength. It is not a spoiler that Delia's husband Tom is unfaithful, and the way she deals with this is, in my opinion, courageous, committed, and loving. Delia makes the choice that is right for her and so risks the disapproval and contempt of her children and apparently, of many reviewers here. Her subsequent choices are seen by some as controlling and shallow; I disagree and think that they are counter-cultural, brave, and authentic. Delia does exactly what she wants to do and this to me is what empowerment is all about. So much of the time when a woman makes a choice that varies with the culture's prevailing norms of marriage she is criticized and attacked, like Delia.
If you are interested in the intricacies of long-term marriages and are open-minded about a woman's right to choose even when it differs from what society mandates for her, I think you will love this book. It is not superficial, and the characters are not superficial, even the two main male characters. I was not disappointed in any aspect of the experience of enjoying this novel!
I will be reading more Sue Miller.
Highly recommended.
*****
Book Review: Liked very much, until ...
Summary: 3 Stars
On second thought, I change my star rating to 4-stars.
I'm a fan of Sue Miller. To those disappointed reviewers who said they will never read another, I say, your loss. At least give While You Were Gone a try.
But back to this book, I liked it very much until the shocker ending. While Meri was rather whiney and snoopish, I think she is a fully human character with human flaws and struggles, some of which most women can relate. I thought her pregnancy and new mother issues poignant. But a journalist and wife of professor - she doesn't read parenting books? Meri had her redeeming qualities and I thought she would come to grips by virtue of a deepening friendship with Delia. Boy, was I wrong. I felt that there were more basic questions about Meri's character that went unanswered. And then the ending completely wrecked my expectation of some kind of self-understanding, self-acceptance, redemption. Instead, we find an ugly, corrupt soul lurking beneath her otherwise benign exterior. And where was her mother? What was that story? We only hear vague accusations but no substance to allow us to judge whether Meri's flaws are somehow explainable. But mother made no appearance, even after a new baby. Even through the Christmas holiday. This piece left me hanging, especially after her act of betrayal. I wanted to know more. Still, I simply found the act of betrayal implausible.
Delia, I felt I understood better, though, with her charms, beauty, temperment and status as former senator's wife, one wonders that she would cling to such a shabby remnant of a marriage, particularly while letting her children down so.
And the most underdeveloped character award goes to Nathan. I never could figure out whether he was emotionally invested in his marriage or a self-involved cad. We know from the outside he was a prize, but not much more. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, based on little hints along the way, but it never did, and I was left perplexed.
So perplexed and disappointed in the end sums it up. I really liked it until then. It was disturbing and apparently one of those "tragedy of real life" endings. But not my cup of tea.
Book Review: Thoroughly Awful "Stand By Your Man" Dreck
Summary: 1 Stars
I'm amazed at the number of positive reviews of Sue Miller's new novel, "The Senator's Wife". Was no one else irritated as I was? Did no one else think that this novel about women, their lives, and the men who thwart their happiness, is merely a thinly veiled apologia for Hilary Clinton and other woman who stand by powerful men who abuse them with chronic infidelity? It is a portrait of an otherwise smart woman, Delia, who is stupid for "love". (If continually debasing yourself is "love".) Miller writes what can be classified as "feminist" literature...but I fail to see what is empowering about standing beside a cad. If he beat her but once no one would sympathize, but because the wounds of repeated and habitual humiliation are invisible, we do not question why these kinds of women "love" their abusers. A black eye or a fat lip would cause us to recoil, but a woman who maintains that it's no one's business what she puts up with from her husband is heroic? Not to me; these women are to be pitied not admired. Really, what man worth having would WANT a woman who so completely subjugates herself to him, mentally, physically and spiritually?
I kept hoping that Delia would have the scales fall from her eyes and stop her pathetic longing for this jerk of a man so selfish and cruel that he has no regard even for his own children, much less his wife, but I never expected such a thoroughly disturbing climax. One wise reviewer called it "vulgar" and that's the perfect word.
Oh, and there is another character in the book, Meri. She's a whiny, sneaky, and scattered woman who can only judge herself by what other's think of her; her husband, Delia, people at work, and ultimately really creepily and disgustingly by Tom...who she seems to think is a HERO!
I know that readers who equate sacrifice with sacrament and love the "stand by your man" genre will not agree with me here, but I felt I had to provide a voice of contrast. This novel made me sad for women who think these kinds of half-lives are acceptable.