The Senator's Wife
by Sue Miller
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Book Reviews of The Senator's Wife
Book Review: Very good read!
Summary: 5 Stars
I find Sue Miller to be a gifted writer whose elegance of phrasing and story development is consistently brilliant. This book was, for me, a delight to read and very much in keeping with that standard. In reading some of the reviews, one would think that the standard for a worthy book should include the development of only highly evolved, heroic characters. I found the main characters in this book to be deeply flawed but compassionately drawn...and realistic. I found Delia to be a compelling character whose inner life was beautifully explored for the reader in these pages. Real women ARE like Delia! Some struggle and attach in ways that are not always politically correct (pardon the pun). I love the way Sue Miller writes dialogue: efficient and real. One feels as though present to an actual conversation. In this book I found that I marked at least ten pages which contained lines which deeply touched me and I found beautiful....for instance, when Delia watches her grown son, Evan, during a brief visit home: "And yet the love she felt for him was unchanged, was based on who he'd been and who he still was to her. This is how it is with your children, she thought. You hold all the versions of them there ever were simultaneously in your heart."
I loved this book. I thank Sue Miller for the visit into another woman's life via such beautiful craft and skill in writing.
Book Review: Good Idea, Bad Ending
Summary: 3 Stars
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I like Sue Miller's writing and the topic (why does a political wife stay with a philandering husband?) is interesting. The title character, Delia Naughton, is interesting if opaque. So what's the problem?
It's the other heroine of the book, Meri. She starts off seeming ungrounded and unanchored. Midway through the book she turns creepy. By the end of the book she's so self-absorbed she takes part in one of the biggest trainwreck moments I've read in a long, long time. Yet in the epilogue she's happy as a clam, justifying her actions as "an act of love."
I kept hoping that Meri's husband would start cheating on her and we'd have Delia and Meri providing a generational mirror of how women react to infidelity. That would have been a cliche but Miller might have made it interesting. It also would have forced Meri to deal with her marriage in terms of something other than sex and passive-agressive withdrawal.
Weirdly, the most self-aware person in the book seems to be the Senator himself. He admits that he's not capable of staying faithful to his wife even when he wants to be. Delia convinces herself she's faced this about her husband but, tragically, she has not.
Book Review: Unsatisfying read
Summary: 2 Stars
I've never read Sue Miller. This had a lot of potential, an intriguing subject matter. She writes well, a little too wordy at times, but with a few changes, this could have been a great novel. A couple of lines had some merit: "young people should be indecisive of what they want, since they don't know anything." and of course, the one about life teaching you that you can get used to anything... still this work fell short for me. The writing was odd at times. In the same paragraph she will make a profound statement using a classy or big word, then say something crude and unexpected in the next. It just didn't gel.
The two main characters, a young bride and older woman, both had some redeeming qualities, but they were overshadowed by their flaws and shallowness. Flaws are not necessarily a bad thing, if the writing allows you to feel empathy or create interest in the character. Both women in this novel were frustrating to read about, and I couldn't find myself caring enough about any of the characters, men or women, to say I really enjoyed the read.
Even though I kept reading to the end, I thought it was dragged out and the ending unsatisfying. I was hoping to recommend it to my book club but won't.
Book Review: Stand By Your Man or Stand Up For Yourself?
Summary: 2 Stars
It doesn't take a literati to decipher that the message here is this: despite what your husband/significant other may do to embarrass both you and himself, it's best to keep that dirty laundry in the washing machine of marriage. Delia Naughton, 'The Senator's Wife', is an educated, sophisticated woman. So, why on earth would she allow her husband's philandering to carry on? Unlike Hillary Clinton, she didn't have political aspirations; she didn't need to use her husband Tom like Mrs. Clinton implemented Bill.
Then there's the issue of her young married neighbors, Meri and Nathan. Nathan is completely enthralled with the idea of living next door to a Senator, while Meri subconsciously begrudges the life that Delia Naughton lives, both in the public eye and behind closed doors. Perhaps that is what leads Meri to execute her wiles over Tom, however, that is surreptitiously the point that Delia takes a stand - finally.
While I wasn't one to really be intrigued by the plot, Miller's deft use of language was reward enough to warrior through this one. If you hoped to gain a bit of insight into a political marriage, this may whet your appetite. If you are looking for a page-turner, this one isn't it.
Book Review: Characters are complex, not evil
Summary: 4 Stars
Unlike many readers, I found the ending merely sad, not shocking or a sign of Meri's moral bankruptcy. Meri is far from perfect, and what she does at the end is clearly not noble or ethical. But she has lacked love all her life -- her husband seems too self-absorbed to love her -- and she honestly believes that she did it for love. It is sad that such a gesture can cause such harm, but it did, and Meri will have to live with the consequences.
Sue Miller knows how to delineate characters and how to write dialogue. But she has a very annoying, constant writer's habit -- what I would call the fading-away comma phrase. Just in the online excerpt, we see: "this is a coup, an achievement," "the profiles, the three-quarter angles," "a great change, a beginning," "they can find a way to keep talking about all this, a way of shaping their marriage to suit them both." Those last phrases trail away and make the sentences seem precious and affected. On occasion, it's fine, but Miller does it constantly. What about, for example, "the profiles and the three-quarter angles." Or what does "an achievement" add that was not already present in "a coup"?