Worthwhile Read, Hated the Ending | The Senator's Wife

The Price of Love | The Senator's Wife | Sue Miller

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	• The Senator's Wife Sue Miller Knopf, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 87 reviews view larger image
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The Senator's Wife

I loved the book, it held my interest the whole time and had a shocking twist near the end. Very Good

Worthwhile Read, Hated the Ending

Sue Miller's The Senator's Wife is an interesting read. Written from the perspective of two neighbors, one who is much older toward the end of her life and one who is younger toward the beginning of her life.

While I was interested in the lives of both women and enjoyed the creative way in which their stories emerged, I felt that Meri's character's development dropped off while Delia's character development took over the story. I would have like to hear a bit more how Meri came to terms with her marriage to a man who seemed pretty self-absorbed and distant.

Further, I felt that the ending was COMPLETELY unbelievable, although from a creative standpoint it sure got me thinking. I guess any author who can do that knows her stuff. I would like the opportunity to debate the ending with the author someday.

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The Price of Love

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.

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Once again Sue Miller takes us deep into the private lives of women with this mesmerizing portrait of two marriages exposed in all their shame and imperfection, and in their obdurate, unyielding love. The author of the iconic The Good Mother and the best-selling While I Was Gone brings her marvelous gifts to a powerful story of two unconventional women who unexpectedly change each other?s lives.

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 Naughton?wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton?is Meri?s new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Delia?s husband?s chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong. What keeps people together, even in the midst of profound betrayal? How can a journey imperiled by, and sometimes indistinguishable from, compromise and disappointment culminate in healing and grace? Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, both reckoning with the contours and mysteries of marriage, one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun.

Here are all the things for which Sue Miller has always been beloved?the complexity of experience precisely rendered, the richness of character and emotion, the superb economy of style?fused with an utterly engrossing story that has a great deal to say to women, and men, of all ages.

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