Customer Reviews

The Lake Shore Limited

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I read "The Good Mother" years ago and haven't read anything by Sue Miller since that time. Based upon my experience with this novel, I need to go back and read what she has written in between that first novel and this latest one.

In "The Lake Shore Limited", the story is told from the point of view of four main characters. First we have Billy who is a playwright originally from Chicago. There is Leslie, the much older sister of Gus who is the man Billy lived with in Boston and Sam, who is a friend and neighbor of Leslie's. Finally, we have Rafe, the man playing the lead role in the play Billy has written about a man waiting to find out if his wife was on a train that was hit by a terrorist attack. All their stories become interwoven and the reader is allowed to come to know each one of them intimately and what their individual hurts and wounds are.

A beautifully written character study of mature adults (as it relates to age) who are reflecting back upon their lives and revisiting their life paths. How did they end up in the relationships they are in? What do they wish they had done differently over the years? What do they want from this point on? This is not an action-packed or quick, easy novel but one that should be savored along the way. For the older reader who has the perspective of time, this will definitely strike a chord. While sometimes these types of books can feel like navel-gazing, this one manages to be introspective without wallowing. It's more of an honest reflection of what is good and bad without much filter.

If you enjoy Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, and Anna Quindlen, this novel would be a good one to try.

Other reviewers have described the play-within-a-play feature of the plot, which I enjoyed. All in all, I found this book to be engrossing, well-paced, and beautifully written, as I found other Sue Miller books to be. (I personally find it so jarring to see "leisurely" used as an adverb, but I know it's accepted now...)I finished it in 2 days, and am on my way to drop it into a book-loving friend's mailbox. I think Miller presented the 9/11 aspect well, which many writers have failed to do, and I believe a message of the book was this: How DO we use our tragedies and traumas to move our lives forward; how do we transform such events into our own art, into a life fully-lived? By the skillful way she explores all the main characters' actions and interactions, she intriguingly begins to answer these questions. I know some reviewers didn't "like" the characters; I liked them all. I'd love to see a sequel in which Leslie, Rafe, Billy, and/or Sam are featured. All their stories were touching and real to me. One other small complaint: the generic-looking cover art. (If it was supposed to be Billy and Reuben, the proportions were way off!) Mary Lee Moser, author,There and Back: A Journal Companion for Special Needs Parents

I think Sue Miller is an incredible writer. Her prose is lyrical, she has a beautiful way of making characters human, and ultimately she tells a great story.

I found this disappointing and didn't even make it through - a first for me with Miller. She divides the narration between the characters, and each part gives you a little more of the story, an artful move, but that slow exposition and the coldness of some of the characters made it difficult for me to engage with them.

But ultimately I think I missed the tension I never knew I'd loved in her work. I think of The Senator's Wife, which somehow manages to make the relationship between a new mother and a stroke-stricken Senator a page-turning stay-up-all-night read, and this just pales in comparison. Publishers Weekly called that one "emotionally urgent", and I think that's what's missing here.

If you appreciate beautiful writing and love character-driven novels, I'd recommend just about any Sue Miller novel other than this one. But then again, even a bad Sue Miller is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Although I found this a beautifully written book and was generally engrossed by it, I didn't like the character Billie from the onset and had problems with what seemed a central current of selfishness and lack of empathy that cropped up in nearly everyone. Though these characters may feel love for others or say they're `in love,' most of them seem to think mainly of themselves and be buffeted by their own perceptions and issues. Even Leslie, who's presumably in a loving marriage and a very giving person, calmly considers what her life would be like if her husband died--would she get a job? move to Paris? And this as they lie warmly together in bed after making love!

That doesn't resonate with me at all, and neither did Billie's ongoing dishonesty about her relationship with Gus.I can see a character like her as realistic, but I didn't find her as sympathetic as I think the author does, and her predicament seemed almost entirely of her own making, to hold her tongue as she did about her legitimate feelings largely because of a need for housing. Then to write the play she did and not even prepare Leslie for the content and to joke about her "great creds" (credentials) to write about 9-11 seemed incredibly insensitive but was not really portrayed as such.

All and all, these people, though in their forties and fifties, seemed younger to me and not to have found much of the more selfless love and understanding that can develop through the crucibles of parenthood and long-term relationships. Nevertheless, I found the book very readable and really liked the diverse points of view, skillful use of language, revealing interior monologues (or much of them), evocative descriptions, and wonderful wit that permeated the whole. I just wish the characters or some of them had more wisdom to share or grew to find more in their trials. Everyone's response to caring for another dying, dependent, or no-longer-'lovable' partner seemed too much the same in a universe of possibilities, and being honest with a significant other rarely seemed to figure in the mix.

Sue Miller is a fine writer, no mistaking that. But, a writer needs to write about something interesting. I didn't find much here.

The book is, I suppose, about ambivalence and the various characters and their endless over-thinking and re-hashing of their past actions and their innermost thoughts and emotions Just when we dispense with the mental masturbation of one, the next chapter jumps to another character with his/her take on the same situation. Of course a husband caring for his dying wife (we've got two of those) would be ambivalent as to his lot: do I love her? do I resent her? Should I stay? Should I go?, etc. But, what about the other characters? Leslie is ambivalent about her feelings for poor old Pierce. Rafe is ambivalent about his career. Billy is ambivalent about her ambivalent feelings for her lover-that-she-didn't-much-love six years later and needs to write a play for catharsis.

No doubt, the world is full of such narcissism, but that doesn't make it an interesting subject for a novel. I daresay most people have lives that require them to "just get on with it," and don't have the luxury of over-analyzing every little thing they've done or thought. Mostly I just wanted to strangle the characters. Two stars for the prose and one because it's Sue Miller.

I cannot claim to be a prolific reader, but I did find time to complete approximately 30 books this year. I read Michael Connelly, John Irving, and my favorite historical fiction author, William Martin, among others. Simply put, Sue Miller's The Lake Shore Limited was the best novel I read during 2010. If you sincerely love people and enjoy gaining a better understanding of our complexities, you'll be glad you took the time to enjoy this novel.

It's interesting to examine the many ways in which novelists grapple with the events of 9/11/2001 and find different ways to express this in their work. Sue Miller uses a story within a story model for her novel, The Lake Shore Limited. A playwright, Billy Gertz, writes about a train accident caused by a terrorist. Her lover, Gus, died in a 9/11 plane crash. Gus's sister, Leslie, grieves for him through maintaining a relationship with Billy, without knowing that Billy was about to end her affair with Gus at the time of his death. Leslie imagines a loss for Billy that exceeds Billy's actual feelings. Leslie fixes an architect friend, Sam, up with Billy, who sleeps with Rafe, the lead actor in her play. If you've gotten all that straight, now be prepared to shift narrators and see events from the perspective of different characters. Miller does a fine job of presenting the complexity of relationships and the interplay of giving and receiving love and dealing with loss. The accidents and misunderstandings of life can become defining moments in relationships, and Miller's fine writing helps uncover this for any reader who enjoys reflective literary fiction.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)

This is a story of 4 people who are bound together by the 9/11 tragedy.
Leslie lost her younger brother Gus whom she loved as if he was her son. Her grief made her overly compassionate to Gus's surviving girlfriend Billy. Billy, however has a secret survivor guilt. She no longer loved Gus, but he was killed before Billy could tell him. Billy, a playwright, has written a new play, and Leslie comes to see the play planning to introduce her friend Sam to Billy. Her intention is to give Billy a permission to love someone else. Leslie is shocked when she saw Billy's play because it reveals something about their relationship. Rafe, the actor who plays the main character of Billy's play has his own tragedy at home. And Sam has his own loss, too.

You may not like The Lake Shore Limited if you need likable characters. There's also no suspense. However, her writing is superb and her character study is as good as usual. This book is not Miller's best, but still a compelling read.

More an in depth character study than an engrossing I can't stop reading it novel, Sue Miller's latest offering examines the complexity of relationships with the subjects of loss and guilt taking center stage as the featured players. The four individuals whose intersecting lives are scrutinized are members of a group who have gathered at a small Boston theater to attend the opening of a new play about a terrorist attack on a Chicago bound train called THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED.

Told from the vantage points of `the four", and filled with an abundance of symbolism and metaphoric references the story is in many ways reminiscent of Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS. All of Miller's characters have experienced tragedy and loss of one sort or another and Miller has put a window into the hearts and minds of the characters as they reminisce about past mistakes and fateful decisions. One has an invalid wife who has been cruelly crippled by Lou Gehrig's disease, another has lost her brother in the 9-11 terrorist attacks, a third is a widower with three adult children from whom he is alienated, the fourth is a playwright who is trying to purge her feelings of guilt by committing them to paper (and ultimately to the stage). Each one struggles for resolution and absolution.

Ultimately we discover that THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED is a more than appropriate title for this book and an apt metaphor for its contents since every one of the characters depicted therein seems to be carrying an accumulation of enough personal baggage to last a lifetime. 2 1/2 stars

Sue Miller is always a good read. Having said that, I will have to say this is my least favorite of her books. It is the story of how relationships change for the survivors after the loss of a loved one. It is an interesting story line and the characters are well fleshed out. The problem I had was switching from one character's view point to another's. It's not a book you can read for a couple of minutes here and there because you'll get lost. Would I read it again? Yes!