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Sue Miller The Senator's Wife (Vintage Contemporaries)
Vintage 0307276694 / 9780307276698 PAPERBACK Very Good
0307276694 From Publishers Weekly nBestselling author Miller (The Good Mother; When I Was Gone) returns with a rich, emotionally urgent novel of two women at opposite stages of life who face parallel dilemmas. Meri, the young, sexy wife of a charismatic professor, occupies one wing of a New England house with her husband. An unexpected pregnancy forces her to reassess her marriage and her childhood of neglect. Delia, her elegant neighbor in the opposite wing, is the long-suffering wife of a notoriously philandering retired senator. The couple have stayed together for his career and still share an occasional, deeply intense tryst. The women's routines continue on either side of the wall that divides their homes, and the two begin to flit back and forth across the porch and into each others physical and psychological spaces. A steady tension builds to a bruising denouement. The clash, predicated on Delia's husband's compulsive behavior and on Meri's lack of boundaries, feels too preordained. But Miller's incisive portrait of the complex inner lives of her characters and her sharp manner of taking them through conflicts make for an intense read. (Jan.) nCopyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. n nFrom The Washington Post n n nReviewed by Connie Schultz n nIt was probably inevitable that Sue Miller, a gifted storyteller, would eventually unleash her talents on the topic of political marriage. As Miller explained recently in an interview with NPR's Linda Wertheimer, she has long been intrigued by the dynamics of such marriages, particularly those in which a wife's loyalty seems to outlast her husband's worthiness. Politics breeds the sacrificial wife who abandons her dreams for those of her husband but then suffers public humiliation when the honorable member fails to keep his in his pants. n nWhat, Miller wonders, makes these wives stay put in marriages that diminish them? n nIt's a good question, but it remains unanswered in an otherwise compelling tale of the marital complexities and disappointments in Miller's latest novel, The Senator's Wife. n nFirst, a disclosure: I am a U.S. senator's wife. I am fairly new to the role, and it is neither my vocation nor occupation, but it bears mentioning. It also explains why I could not pass up the chance to read this book. There are so many assumptions about marriages like mine. What might Miller's be? n nThis is the tale of two marriages and how they intersect and, eventually, collide. Meri and Nathan are young and still negotiating the terrain of matrimony when they move next door to Delia Naughton. Delia is married to former U.S. senator Tom Naughton, a man who cheats on his wife so often one half-expects this tale to turn into a murder mystery. n nDespite his infidelities, Delia is unwilling to sever all ties with him. They no longer live together, but she won't divorce Tom and occasionally still sleeps with him. Miller depicts their dalliances with her usual sizzle and pop, and many readers will celebrate Delia's 70-something vivacity. Still, the question hovers: Why waste her energy on him? n nWe are told countless times that Tom is charismatic, but Miller gives little proof of his charms. Instead, Delia just seems a fool. She knew Tom had other women, and she told herself that every time she was thinking of him, he was thinking of someone else. Every time she wanted him, he was making love with someone else. But when she was swept with jealous longing for him, none of that mattered. She couldn't help herself. She called him. n nWe are given no mitigating circumstances for her continued devotion. Husband and wife do not share a commitment to any causes, nor does Delia enjoy the spotlight. We learn early that she prefers to live in small-town New England, far away from Washington. n nShe supposed most of it was just getting away with Tom from the sexually charged atmosphere of Washington, where a handsome man with power, a man who talked easily, a man who was charming and chivalric around women, could alway
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