The Senator's Wife
by Sue Miller
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Book Reviews of The Senator's Wife
Book Review: This would make a good book club choice
Summary: 4 Stars
The Senator's Wife is about two women: Delia is the one who gives the book its name while newly-wed Meri is her new next-door neighbor. Delia's husband Tom was a prominent Democratic senator in the 1960s. The couple now live apart, but still maintain a relationship. The book is about the relationship between the two women as well as their individual marriages. The book is set in 1993/1994, although it has an oddly dated feel, as if it were set 10 years earlier.
Delia is the more likeable of the two women and for some time I felt that Meri wasn't adding much to the book other than another perspective on Delia, but ultimately their lives become entwined and common themes develop. Although Meri is a newly-wed, she is aged in her late 30s (presumably to make some events that occur later in the book more credible), and yet she has the naievity and self-absorption of a younger woman.
Even though I didn't particularly warm to either woman, I enjoyed this book very much and read it quickly. I could feel the tension building throughout and I wasn't sure how it would resolve itself. Some reviews that I had read talked about a twist at the end which I think is over-selling it, but it does build to a climax. However I also felt that the ending was over-explained and that Meri's motivations were spelled out in a way that didn't feel convincing (nor necessary). This would be a good choice for a book club as there's plenty to discuss.
This is the first book that I've read by Sue Miller, but her writing reminded me in many ways of Anne Tyler, whose writing I love.
Book Review: Sue Miller is the Doris Lessing of USA
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Senator's Wife" is not the best of Miller's novels, but they are all terrific. So good that I viscerally can remember every episode in "For Love" and even better her masterpiece, imo, "Family Pictures".
I also loved all her other novels and was truly excited to see "The Senator's Wife" arrive in bookstores this week. I admit that this is not as densely rich as say, "While I was Gone" which I consider her second masterpiece, a wonderful memorable story.
But she is aiming for something simpler and slower here and because she is such a great writer, I give her 5 stars even though it was slow going, though I read it in two days. I don't exactly know, yet, what she was aiming for here. Perhaps the slow simplicity that leads to a climax most unexpected. Or: character portraits of two marriages or of two women living side by side who affect each other and who we get to know from within.
But anything Sue Miller writes from her first "The Good Mother" on through to "Lost in the Forest" are superior to almost any other novelist writing today. I recommend that readers who do not know her work, which I bet are few, do not start with this latest book. Nonetheless after reading Miller, who I do not know personally and so I'm not biased in that way, one goes thru withdrawal pangs after finishing any fiction she has written. I think she has talent plus discipline and always tells a coherent story without any post modern tricks. She is just so good at stories, so read her asap.
Book Review: Great writing, horrible characters
Summary: 2 Stars
Sue Miller is a talented writer. She has a real knack for creating characters you can really feel. To me, this is more a strength of hers than plot development, but I never saw that as a weakness. The interesting characters were compelling enough, whatever they were doing. The problem with this book, I think, is the characters. Though she did her characteristically great job painting them for us, they are just unlikable - the whole lot of them. Is it possible to love a book or movie and dislike all of the players? I suppose it is, but it's really difficult, and in this case it just didn't work.
I saw the 2 main female characters, Delia and Meri, as weak and selfish. The 2 main males, Tom (the senator) and Meri's husband Nate, as narcissistic alpha-males practically spraying the furniture as they walked around. And though in the cases of Delia and Meri we really do get to know their interior lives, we almost wish we didn't.
It was a struggle to get to the end of this book, but I did it, only to discover the wonderful 'climax' (no pun intended) at the end. What a bizarre and tasteless conclusion. And this was somehow something Meri participates in 'out of love?' She thinks back on it fondly? I puzzled over this for a long time after reading it, trying to figure out how this seedy, greedy little exchange could have anything to do with love.
Maybe I'm missing something, but for me it was a lot of page-turning for a whole lot of nothing.
Book Review: All the wrong reasons (Spoiler Alert)
Summary: 1 Stars
I read this book for the worst possible reason. I saw a review of it in Entertainment Weekly that made a big deal about some "shocking" sex scene in it and was so intrigued that I got the book from the library and spent the entire time I was reading it waiting for this one scene. Of course, it was a let down. Not only that, but the interminable time spent leading up to that disappointing scene was wasted on a meanadering, nearly plot-less story of two unlikable women and their petty marital and pregnancy problems. Meri is a 36-year-old newlywed first-time mother who spends most of the book snooping on her neighbor and whining about how pregnancy is changing her body. Um . . . duh? Her neighbor is Delia Naughton, the elderly wife of a philandering former senator who should have left her husband decades ago and didn't have enough self-respect to do it. Eventually Meri does something "naughty" with the senator (queue the not remotely shocking "sex" scene) and destroys the friendship she had with Delia, but the book leads up to this moment as if it were D-Day when in fact it's just another boring moment in an intensely boring book.
This is the first book I've read by Sue Miller and it will absolutely be the last. The trials and tribulations of housewives hold little interest for me, and I can't imagine why anyone else would be interested either, so I definitlely don't recommend this book.
Book Review: The Price of Love
Summary: 4 Stars
Sue Miller's latest may not be her best, but it makes the reader think, and think hard. How much does a woman have to "pay" for love? Should she HAVE to pay? Why? And why not?
All these hard questions are explored, but as in true life, never really answered. The plot is seemingly simple: Two women, one a long-time senator's wife, Delia, and newly married unsure Meri, share two halves of a twin house. And two halves of a woman's life? Perhaps...
We learn Delia's story that is all too familiar: a political wife keeping the smile on her face during her husband's serial cheating. They never divorce, although they separate, but Delia NEVER separates from Tom, not truly, and therein lies her tragedy.
Meri, the product of a horrible childhood, is young, loves her job, and is relatively happy with her life, although neither she, nor we, knows if she really loves her professor husband Nathan, equally young. An unexpected pregnancy greatly complicates things, and Meri consciously and unconsciously looks to her neighbor Delia for guidance.
But Meri, much as the author wants us to sympathize, is truly not a nice person. She does things that I would not forgive. And Delia, who seems so supportive of, and kind to, Meri, is truly on her last nerve and couldn't care less.
It makes for interesting reading, and lots of thinking.