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| The Senator's Wife | 
 enlarge | Author: Sue Miller
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  87 reviews
Sales Rank: 18129
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0307264203
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307264206
ASIN: 0307264203
Publication Date: January 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 82 more reviews...
 "You can get used to anything. It's one of the most necessary things life teaches us." January 8, 2008
70 out of 80 found this review helpful
The newly-married woman. The senator's wife. A generation of differences. In 1993, when Meri Fowler and her husband, Nathan, move into the other half of a stately home owned by Delia Naughton, wife of former senator Tom Naughton, a Washington mover and shaker and beltway roue who now visits his wife only sporadically, Meri is fascinated by the older Delia. Without examining her reasons, Meri hopes for an intimacy that seems always out of reach, especially as Delia travels frequently to visit her grown children and to a secluded Paris apartment. It is Nathan who is curious about the senator, hoping in vain for a meeting, which fails to occur but for a brief time one holiday. Life settles into routine until Meri learns she is pregnant, her world suddenly shifting from an engaging job at a local radio station to the tunnel-vision of new motherhood, all-consuming days of feeding, changing, feeding, sleeplessness a further strain on a once carefree marriage.
But Delia is the centerpiece of Miller's engaging novel, a self-contained woman who has learned at last to make peace with an untrustworthy husband and the shattering of a dream, his peccadilloes finally driving a wedge into their marriage. Delia survives, healing with time and circumstance, the facade of gentility intact. And Delia's natural generosity toward Meri is not significant, at least to the senator's wife, caught up in her own emotions as the ground shifts once more in her relationship with Tom, a long-hoped for contretemps shimmering on the horizon. It is Miller's juxtaposition of the lives of these two women that drives the story, Delia's long journey through a marriage that has challenged her on every level, Meri the unwitting, if randomly destructive catalyst: "It was as if she dropped out of time, out of its press and obligation, out of its failings. Her failings."
The nature of marriage and motherhood, the needs of women at various stages of their lives, the roles of spouses and abrupt, devastating betrayals are themes Miller knows well, describes persuasively. The Naughton's painful marriage is a revelation, an explanation of the generational drift in then and now, women who committed themselves to marriage and children, their husband's careers dominating their lives. In the self-absorbed world of her youth and new motherhood, Meri is shockingly unaware of the consequences of her actions; but even youth is a chimera- Meri is thirty-six, not some naive young married with a new baby. Meri hasn't earned her curiosity, her intrusiveness and Delia has spent a lifetime protecting her privacy. How can Meri begin to comprehend the dignity of such as Delia, the hard-won rewards of devotion? Marriages are impossible to predict, let alone happy endings. Miller's precise manipulation of human frailty, the small, important counterpoints and misunderstandings that beleaguer her characters are compelling. Luan Gaines/ 2008
 Thoroughly Awful "Stand By Your Man" Dreck January 24, 2008
52 out of 74 found this review helpful
I'm amazed at the number of positive reviews of Sue Miller's new novel, "The Senator's Wife". Was no one else irritated as I was? Did no one else think that this novel about women, their lives, and the men who thwart their happiness, is merely a thinly veiled apologia for Hilary Clinton and other woman who stand by powerful men who abuse them with chronic infidelity? It is a portrait of an otherwise smart woman, Delia, who is stupid for "love". (If continually debasing yourself is "love".) Miller writes what can be classified as "feminist" literature...but I fail to see what is empowering about standing beside a cad. If he beat her but once no one would sympathize, but because the wounds of repeated and habitual humiliation are invisible, we do not question why these kinds of women "love" their abusers. A black eye or a fat lip would cause us to recoil, but a woman who maintains that it's no one's business what she puts up with from her husband is heroic? Not to me; these women are to be pitied not admired. Really, what man worth having would WANT a woman who so completely subjugates herself to him, mentally, physically and spiritually?
I kept hoping that Delia would have the scales fall from her eyes and stop her pathetic longing for this jerk of a man so selfish and cruel that he has no regard even for his own children, much less his wife, but I never expected such a thoroughly disturbing climax. One wise reviewer called it "vulgar" and that's the perfect word.
Oh, and there is another character in the book, Meri. She's a whiny, sneaky, and scattered woman who can only judge herself by what other's think of her; her husband, Delia, people at work, and ultimately really creepily and disgustingly by Tom...who she seems to think is a HERO!
I know that readers who equate sacrifice with sacrament and love the "stand by your man" genre will not agree with me here, but I felt I had to provide a voice of contrast. This novel made me sad for women who think these kinds of half-lives are acceptable.
 The Master of My Own Destiny? February 27, 2008
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
I was surprised to read the review by Connie Schultz, the wife of a senator, who said "There are so many assumptions about marriages like mine. What might Miller's be?"
Miller does not write about events; she writes about our responses to events. Miller does not tell us what we should do; she merely tells us what she thinks someone might do.
The measure of Miller's talent is not in whether or not she reflects who you or I are, but in her ability to illuminate human behavior. And if her illumination is full and bright, we might actually see something from which we can learn.
I think "The Senator's Wife" is one of the best of Miller's works, challenged only by "Lost in the Forest."
The first event of the book is the purchasing of half of a duplex by Meri and her husband Nathan. The other half is owned by Senator Tom Naughton and his wife Delia. We quickly learn that Nathan is controlled and controlling, Meri is unsure of the marriage or her direction in life. From Meri;s point-of-view we first are introduced to Delia Naughton, the perfect senator's wife. What we see in this section is the readjustment of the lives of Meri, Nathan, and Delia to the presence of one another. There are the little things like the awareness each household has of the other on the other side of the dividing wall. There is the relative importance (iconic and emotional) that each person has in the psyche of the others. And even the absent senator, Tom, becomes a presence in the course of the story.
It is no spoiler to say that Tom is a philanderer; this is made clear early on. Nor is the story really about Tom. Nowhere is his charisma shown except in the response of a few characters to him. Tom is who Tom is -- and that is core to the story. It is how the others see him, accept their own perceptions or reject them, respond both intellectually and emotionally to who Tom is that illuminates who they are.
It is disappointing that Connie Schultz and so many readers measure the book against their own experiences. For myself, the book was an experience. The characters were in essence true to themselves, including the very human condition of not always really knowing themselves or responding the way they (and we) thought they would respond. Certainly there is no harm in a reader asking him- or herself "would I do that?" But when the answer is "no", the next questions should be "would anyone do that" and "why would they do that." Miller plays fair with her answers to those questions.
The question most people will probably focus on is, would anyone act like Delia after she is forced to acknowledge her husband's infidelity? To me, Delia was absolutely consistent as a character. And part of that consistency was her own failure to completely understand her own emotions or her motivations. The event that leads to this insight on the part of the reader (although not completely on the part of Delia) is the only really contrived event of the book. It is contrived not because it is impossible but because it leads to too many character insights at the same time. Far better the event took place without the climax and that instead the final climax comes at the end of another less potent event. Life forces conincidence upon us far more than one has reason to expect, but readers detest it.
All of the above being said, it is important to point out that this is anything but a one-theme book. It is rich with characters and relationships. Delia's relationship with her three children and particularly with her controlling daughter Nancy is important and true. What aging mother -- living alone for any reason -- is not aware of the possibility for conflict with a controlling child who only has "her best interests" at heart? And there is Susan's relationship with her husband Nathan that is as telling in its anticlimax and how that is achieved as any of the more dramatic scenes.
I liked all the characters, finding myself shifting loyalties at various times only to end up caring for all of them again. The greatest gift of Miller's writing is the ambiguities she allows to stay in the text -- it is up to us to look for the deepest truths and answers within ourselves.
Betrayal and resiliency January 17, 2008
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
This book is an exploration of the complexities of marriage, especially in the face of troublesome developments, that follows the lives of Meri Fowler, thirty-something radio-program writer married to Nathan, a political science professor, and Delia Naughton, seventy-something wife of ex, two-term senator Tom. Their lives become intertwined when the Fowlers purchase in a small New England college town one-half of a divided older mansion, on the other side of which Delia now lives pretty much alone.
The essential problem for Delia is that the charm and attractiveness that enabled her husband to be elected to the Senate also facilitated numerous assignations with other women, some of them becoming long-term. Delia, a remarkably resilient woman, adjusted to her husband's faithlessness by creating an independent life, while, at the same, retaining a connection to Tom - a man she could not stop loving - on her own terms.
Meri, on the other hand, new to marriage, saw in Delia an intriguing strength that she hoped to understand and gain from. With her husband devoting much time to teaching and research, Meri was a lonely girl. She often spent time in Delia's half of the house when on house-sitting duties trying to absorb some of the essence of Delia. In the midst of Meri's unsettledness, her pregnancy and the birth of her first child were almost overwhelming. Meri's ultra insensitivity to Delia's newfound life at the end can only be understood in terms of her failure to grasp all that Delia stood for and could have taught her. Apparently, some, if not most, of what we learn concerning human relations must be learned the hard way.
Plot developments are minimal; marriage and character are the author's foremost concerns. But the book moves along briskly as it draws the reader into the mindsets of Meri and Delia.
A compelling story of compulsion March 16, 2008
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
I can't help thinking this book is not about whether we like, admire, or forgive its flawed characters but whether we can muster compassion for their compulsions and denial. This, to me, makes it far richer and more intriguing than some morality play. I was never (like the Washington Post reviewer) disgusted by anyone in this book--appalled, perhaps, and certainly upset, but always fascinated. These are profoundly complex people. Given that, we can't expect to know or understand them fully, any more than we can get all the way to the bottom of the real people in our real lives, including ourselves. If we don't try, though, we're in for trouble.
Sue Miller alludes to her characters' complexities scene by scene, memory by memory, but she doesn't tell us all that much because--I believe--she wants us to puzzle them out as best we can. She gives us clues as to their unlikeable qualities and seemingly mad actions, because these have the power to engage a reader more effectively than any easy map of their psyches could do. We're left to wonder: Why would Delia stick with Tom for one second after his worst betrayal? My best guess is that she can no more stop herself than Tom can stop chasing women. The question is whether her compulsion is based in love, need, or some barely knowable, subterranean mix of sexual desire and pyschological motive. Maybe she wants to "fix" Tom by showing him how much better she is, and their connection is, than his shallower triumphs can possibly be. Maybe she wants to show him that he can't bring her down to his level through jealousy. Maybe she just wants to remind him, every now and then, of what he might have lost completely if not for her generosity.
We might find it easier to "solve" the mystery of Delia if we knew more about Tom--more about why she can't entirely let go of him--but he remains beyond our reach. I'm quite sure this was intentional on Miller's part. We don't need to know why Delia is so attached to Tom, only that the attachment is more powerful than she is herself. Miller wisely allows us see deeply into just two characters--Delia and Meri, the two who so radically alter each other's lives through their natures, their denial, and their secrets.
Meri, the close neighbor (very close, separated only by a wall through which Delia can hear the sounds of sex and fighting and celebrating and crying) is just as complicated as Delia, though the answers in her case seem a little easier to parse. She's young. Her contradictory parts have had less time to deepen, to act upon each other, to shape her and to show her how intextricably connected she is to every life she touches.
Meri is miserable with her pregnancy because she's terrified of what it will show her and how it will change her. She herself wasn't loved as a child, so perhaps she won't be able to love her own baby. The one thing she has ever been entirely confident about is her beautiful, sexy body (her appearance, in other words, not her reality) and now that's gone, as is her husband, pursuing his career. Meri is lonely. She is drawn to Delia largely because Delia is the opposite, in every way, from her own mother. Meri's snooping through Delia's personal life is terrible; it makes us cringe. It endangers everything she hopes for in her new friendship. It is also understandable, even inevitable, given her fears, her past, and her lonely, uncertain present. Meri, too, is compelled. She agonizes over her betrayal of Delia, but she is helpless to stop. Just like Delia, just like Tom.
So--does Miller want us to excuse these people because they can't help themselves? I don't believe that for a minute. I believe she wants us just to see them, without judging, without clouding our eyes by liking or disliking. I think she wants us to try to understand her characters, in order to see what happens when they fail to understand themselves. This is how we can learn from them. We all act against our own interests. We all hurt people we care about. Why do we do this? If we can grasp even a little about the flawed and struggling people in a novel like this one--a mindfully constructed work by a writer who is known to make purposeful, artful choices at every turn--perhaps we'll be wiser about ourselves.
From the author of Every Last Cuckoo: A Novel
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