The Distinguished Guest [Paperback]

Sue Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 1999

The moving story of a mother and son that touches the deepest concerns about love, art, family, and life

Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief. Profound and moving, The Distinguished Guest reveals a family trying to understand the meaning of its life together, while confronting inevitable loss and the vision of an immeasurably altered future.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

How does an author tackle the issue of aging, so as to incorporate a generation's responsibility, a family's loss, and a person's life reflections? Miller deftly works through these issues in this story of famous writer Lily Maynard's battle with Parkinson's disease. When she moves in with her son Alan and his wife Gaby, their lives are irrevocably altered. In addition to the tedium of Lily's daily care and the interruption of their troubled marital relationship, they must bear witness to the loss of her craft, not just the physical act of writing, but her mental acuity, her ability to imagine and relate. With a director's eye for movement and angles of perception, Miller unreels the story like celluloid on screen. One has the overall sense of witnessing a cinematic dinner party where much is discussed and not discussed, where we are privy to characters' internal thoughts and perceptions as well as external conversations, where the focus of the lens--or narrator--shifts fluidly from person to person, creating an insightful representation of relationships, with their judgments, miscommunications, and tenuous connections. As other characters enter the scene with their probing questions and depart, what is created and destroyed, what is shared and withheld, and what is revised and protected is memory, a prime motivator for living and an often unwelcome, but revelatory, guest in the process of grieving. Janet St. John --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"As in the work of Jane Austen...Sue Miller's tale of a proud, elderly woman who visits and bedevils her son...is genuinely adult fiction." -- Chicago Tribune

"Ms. Miller depicts [her characters] with grace and elegance, enriching their perceptions with strands of connecting images and intertwined history...A very moving book." -- New York Times Book Review

"There is a certain kind of knowledge that we reach only through a certain kind of fiction: fiction so rich, so thoughtful, so absorbing that reading it is like experiencing the passage in our own lives." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060930004
• ISBN-13: 978-0060930004
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This novel hit home with me, January 30, 2000

By 

Douglas A. Greenberg (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Distinguished Guest (Paperback)

I was impressed by the intelligence, depth, and power of this novel. Sue Miller has succeeded here in spinning a tale that makes *real* many issues that I have struggled with personally, including dealing with an aging parent, the raw edges that inevitably surround familial relationships, the doubts that so many of us develop in midlife about ourselves, our successes and failures, and on and on. So many times as I read this book I found myself marvelling at how Wilson had captured a thought or a feeling I had experienced myself--and had thought, naively,was uniquely my own.

Then there is the fine portrayal of Lily, the fiercely independent, articulate, interpersonally cold yet socially idealistic writer who struggles with her declining physical and mental capacities from Parkinson's disease. The way that Miller approaches and analyzes Lily's past and her own ruminations about the past is nothing short of masterful.

Complementing the author's incisive depiction of the complex matrix of bonds and divisions that comprise an extended family, she offers insights into some of the most divisive and vexing political/social issues of our time, including the historical struggle of white Americans of good conscience to try to find a way to act rightly with respect to race relations. She never preaches, and never really takes sides when presenting this aspect of her story--but she demonstrates that she truly *understands* the various experiences, perspectives, and viewpoints that have emerged in response to this most contentious of issues.

This book impressed me tremendously. I have no idea whether this is because in some objective way, Sue Miller has created here a triumphant work of literature; conversely, it may just be a matter of this being the right book at the right time for me personally. Ultimately, I guess it doesn't matter.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Guest Not so Distinguished As You Might Think., July 25, 2000

By 

Katherine Neis - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Distinguished Guest (Paperback)

I found this book quite disappointing. It is about an elderly woman named Lily Maynard and her family. Or what is left of it. She is a divorced mother of three children, technically, although one has sort of disappeared (and the more you read the more you think you might have done the same). Miller highlights Lily's shining moments as an author and the fame and popularity her talents have found. Her son, Alan, takes her in temporarily until there is room for her at the nursing home. She is somewhat unbearable, although, that was not the real problem with this novel. For some reason, unlike Miller's other works, it was just really super boring. I kept reminding myself not to walk away without finishing it. Without at least giving it that much of a chance. At the end, instead of feeling like it was a good book after all, I was just glad I had finished it. Not the worst but certainly not the best.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A TOUCHING BUT UNFLINCHING STORY, September 29, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Distinguished Guest (Paperback)

Sue Miller's THE DISTINGUISHED GUEST is an immensely readable, sensitive, yet honest portrait of a fiercely independent, proud and intelligent woman stricken with Perkinson's disease. It is also a story of relationships within her family. Circumstances have brought her to live with her son and his wife 'for just a short while' -- her presence there triggers memories and emotions that have been allowed to lie comfortably dormant for years, bringing them to the forefront of several of the characters' minds, forcing them to reassess many things they had considered to be 'etched in stone'.

Lily Maynard, the 'distinguished guest' of the title, has become a bit of a literary celebrity late in life -- her memoirs were published to wide acclaim when she was seventy-two. She takes this gentle, respectful attention in both hands, relishing it and the opportunity it gives her to speak out and have some influence on her world. Her pronouncements alternately intrigue, delight and rankle those around her. As the disease progresses, and her grip on her faculties becomes more tenuous, she is forced to reassess both her life and the motives behind her writing -- how much of what she is telling is true, how much is creatively enhanced (and to what ends)? What is she really trying to accomplish?

Her presence in the household brings pressures to bear on other family members as well. They are there to stand by her and help her when she needs it -- but they are also seeing her as they have never seen her before. They are also seeing things in themselves and in each other that gives them both the need and the opportunity to have another look at their own lives.

This is not a book with a lot of 'action' -- but it is a very rewarding read in many ways. Miller's skill at developing these characters, at allowing the reader to look at them a layer at a time, is very satisfying. Relationships between them are very human and real -- they grow and shrink, adapt and change as they progress through life. With a little reflection, this book could easily be a tool allowing us to enhance our abilities to take a good look at our own lives and values -- and we can all stand to do that from time to time.

This book is entertaining on one level, but it is more than that -- there is much to be gained here, much to be savored. As tempting as it might be to read through this book in one setting, I think it is most likely the type of work that bears unhurried reflection -- and repeated reading.