The Senator's Wife
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3.9 • 158 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTELLER • The New York Times bestselling author of Monogomy brings us a "tasteful, elegant, sensuous" (The Boston Globe) novel about marriage and forgiveness.
Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia—wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton—is Meri's new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Tom's chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong.
Soon Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, as they both reckon with the contours and mysteries of marriage: one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun. With precision and a rich vitality, Sue Miller—beloved and bestselling author of While I Was Gone—brings us a highly charged, superlative novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestselling 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.
Customer Reviews
Enjoyable to read. Complex and smart.
Sue Miller writes the most believable, complicated female characters. This engrossing tale follows a newly married woman, her feelings about her husband, and her interest in her next door neighbor’s life. Interwoven with that is the story of the older woman next door and her relationship her husband. An exploration of women’s issues, definitely. Very intimate and thought provoking. Nothing is easy in the world of Sue Miller!
The Senator’s Wife
Overall I would say it was well written. The two problems I had with the story was a) the was absolutely no prenatal care during Mere’s pregnancy. She didn’t see a doctor until the last minute. And b) with so much emphasis on the Senator, there was no discussion on who would take his office after he had the stroke. Who would represent his constituency?
But generally I would recommend the book.
Enjoy your read!
Beautiful story
Beautifully poetic. Wonderfully written. The story unfolds like a gentle wave hitting the sand on shore.