Book/542654

The Senator's Wife

~~List Price: $24.95~~
Our Price: $16.47
Released: 2008-01-08

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Product Description
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.

Customer Reviews:
Simply Awful; Boring Boring Boring

Checked out the DVD version to listen as I drove 10 hours. If I had been reading it, would have quit after first chapter. Boring detail that added nothing to the plot --- but then I never discovered a plot either! I kept thinking it would get better, perhaps a surprize ending, but it only deteriorated the further it went. Hung in because there wasn't anything else on the raido I wanted to listen to. When at long last it was over I was so disgusted that I made a note of author's name so I won't ever read another of her books. The only reason for one star is I couldn't figure out any way to give it none.

WONDERFULL!!!!!!!
I am a avid reader. This is the best book i have read in a very long time. I could not put it down. I stayed up until about 3:00 in the morning reading this book.
I highly recommend it.

The Senator's Wife
Came quickly in good condition. I was notified by ther seller when it was shipped.

Insightful and riveting
The book's premise appealed to me immediately but I didn't pick it up for a while, suspecting it couldn't live up to my expectations. It surpassed them and is now one of my favorite books.

The novel examines what women are promised in marriage and motherhood and what the hidden costs are. Miller excells at making a concrete world; you can imagine Delia and Meri perfectly as their entanglement grows. I finished it and was dying to talk to someone about this book's issues: infidelity, loyalty, the limits of love.

interesting, but disturbing
It took me a while to get into this book. The first chapter introduces you to a somewhat dark, depressing character, some 4-letter words related to sex, and just generally read slow for several chapters. I wasn't sure I was going to want to continue reading.

Then the story picks up, and the character seems to be coming into her own and she befriends the Senator's Wife.

For the most part, I enjoyed reading this book, despite the fact that I didn't like how sex seemed to be on everyone's minds much of the time and some of the author's choice of words were uncouth and a bit offensive.

But I did enjoy the story as it developed and it held my interest throughout.

However....the culmination left me disturbed. On so many levels. Not only is "the surprise" so upsetting, but it sent me into this feeling of that awful haunting of guilt I imagined Meri was living with after that sinful act. How depressing. But then...the last few pages tells us that she seems perfectly comfortable with her decisions and wouldn't do them any differently. That's even more disturbing as a book's ending.