The Senator's Wife (Vintage Contemporaries) by Sue Miller
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Book Reviews of The Senator's Wife (Vintage Contemporaries)
Book Review: Its a story about Marriage
Summary: 4 Stars
~I like sue miller and the way she can tell stories that slowly develop--it makes them feel real! This story tells the tale of two very different but intelligent women who want what is best for them and their commitment to their marriage and their growing family. The ending is a bit shocking but made me almost cringe for both women who are put in those awkward situations. It also gives you a realistic glimpse at why certain political marriages are what they are. Interesting read through a woman's perspective.Book Review: Interesting subject for a novel and well thought out plot
Summary: 3 Stars
I had never read a book by Sue Miller, but this title caught my eye. After always being the person screaming at the television to the wife of the cheating politician/celebrity/public figure for always standing by her cheating man, I HAD to read this book! I wanted to see if I can understand what would make a woman stand firmly by her man even through his countless infidelities.
In the novel, the senator's wife Delia, puts up with the senator's many affairs. She never seems to have time to really process or sort her emotions through. She ends up being the one who has to comfort her children who are outraged at her for staying with their father. She also ends up being the one who has to face the public and defend herself for standing by her husband and their marriage. This is the first time that I realized how hard it must be to be the wife of a public figure. The public usually forgets that she is also a victim of her husband's infidelities. The wife of a politician is never treated as a separate person, so her husband's mistakes and shortcomings are also projected onto her.
The novel is well thought out and plotted. It is told from two first person: the Senator's wife Delia and her new neighbor Meri, who is fascinated with the life the political couple. I knew from reading the reviews that the ending of the novel is disturbing but I was still surprised by it. I was surprised because the events leading to the ending was unexpected.
My biggest complaint about this story is that I did not think it needed to be told from both Meri and Delia's point of view. Their lives are not really related until later and Meri's prior life does not contribute to the plot. You empathize with Delia even if you do not understand her decision to stand by her husband because she has responsibilities such as her children and family and a public image to uphold. Meri on the other hand, has a very loving husband and a good 3marriage, which makes her actions at the end to be very strange and confusing. You don't really understand Meri's thoughts or actions and at the end, she is so unlikable that you really don't care. I would have much prefered a more detailed story told only from Delia's perspective.
The novel does not answer the reason a woman will stand by her philandering husband, but it does give an insider's look on the experiences of the wife of a cheating husband under the public eye.
Book Review: The vicissitudes of marriage....
Summary: 3 Stars
The vicissitudes of marriage....
In this novel, Sue Miller uses her delicate pen to bring to life the ups and down of the passionate, long-time marriage of Delia to Tom through an introduction by Meri, a newlywed neighbor.
If literary fiction is "about boring people doing nothing"--yet a story that enfolds you and takes you with it all the way through--Sue Miller has done an excellent job in keeping my interest. I could sympathize with Delia, I could understand her, even as, like her daughter, I wanted to shake her hard out of her devotion to a man who could not return it the same way.
The prose is mellifluous, yet it uses multi-images and repeated words to describe minute details that could use a lot less verbiage. At times, I wondered why Ms. Miller did not change the character's speech pattern and voice as she moved from one character's point-of-view to another's. The tone of the writing remained flat, distant, and while I could appreciate Ms. Miller's avoidance of dramatic prose to describe dramatic events, I could not find justification to her avoiding the most dramatic moments but to choose instead to tell them later, after the emotional storms dissipated. It was especially true at the end, when reality exploded in Delia's face.
Most importantly, I found the character of Meri and the non-story of her marriage to be as uninteresting as the flat voice in which it was told. If, as reviewers claim, Ms. Miller attempted to show the parallel between the two marriages--one old, one young--the comparison failed on me. I would have liked to see an editor cutting Meri's point-of-view out of the story even if the character might have been kept merely as a sidekick.
That said, it is rare for a book to hold my attention to the end. And that is Sue Miller's mysterious, unexplained gift.
Book Review: Unsympathetic characters make for irritated readers
Summary: 3 Stars
Sue Miller is a very good writer and the book kept my attention. I must say I read a lot of the other customer reviews and thought a lot about the book which I finished last night before writing mine. With only 50 pages left, I kept thinking, how is she going to end this?
I couldn't stand Meri and her easy way out at the end. In simplistic armchair psycho babble terms, I felt that Meri was looking for Delia for the nurturing she did not get in her childhood. I wanted to learn more about Meri's childhood, particularly her mother and did not. Enter Delia, who only gave Meri so much. Then at the end, we have the "breast," the ultimate symbol of mothering as the metaphor for nurturing. Meri says she did this exchange with Tom out of love....yes, love for herself....to gain back the sexuality she had lost during her pregnancy. In the end, Meri says she got more from Tom than she ever got from Delia. She betrayed Delia. She was so selfish, and self serving and it angered me that she got off so scott free....maybe, that was the parallel to politics....it happens all the time. There were a lot of mixed metaphors on different levels. Great book for a group because there is much to explore.
Book Review: Cold.
Summary: 3 Stars
Sue Miller is a terrific writer; and this book pulled me along. I was very interested in what would happen next, and sympathetic and caring about the main character and the mysterious wife next door. The unfolding of the story was very well crafted. The problem is that although the best fiction has morally ambigous situations, the narrative voice of the character (in order for me to care about the character) should have some sort of consciousness. I felt that the main character, who I had grown to care about, acted reprehensibly and irresponsibly at the end of the novel. Which is fine, and people make mistakes, but there was absolutely no resolution. She had a fine happily ever after, and we never hear about the elderly couple left in pitiable circumstances by her actions. The character seems to not even register any regret, even when reading the obituary of one of the people she hurt. I know modern fiction has its ambiguities, but the coldness at the end of this story left me empty and somewhat confused. It was hard for me to rectify the closeness Miller built between the reader and the main character with the selfish "soccer mom" that appears at the end.