Customer Reviews

The Senator's Wife

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I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I like Sue Miller's writing and the topic (why does a political wife stay with a philandering husband?) is interesting. The title character, Delia Naughton, is interesting if opaque. So what's the problem?

It's the other heroine of the book, Meri. She starts off seeming ungrounded and unanchored. Midway through the book she turns creepy. By the end of the book she's so self-absorbed she takes part in one of the biggest trainwreck moments I've read in a long, long time. Yet in the epilogue she's happy as a clam, justifying her actions as "an act of love."

I kept hoping that Meri's husband would start cheating on her and we'd have Delia and Meri providing a generational mirror of how women react to infidelity. That would have been a cliche but Miller might have made it interesting. It also would have forced Meri to deal with her marriage in terms of something other than sex and passive-agressive withdrawal.

Weirdly, the most self-aware person in the book seems to be the Senator himself. He admits that he's not capable of staying faithful to his wife even when he wants to be. Delia convinces herself she's faced this about her husband but, tragically, she has not.

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 roué 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 façade 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 naïve 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

I've read enough work by Sue Miller to say with complete confidence that she's a brilliant writer, and a master at character development. The Senator's Wife is a gray tale of two couples, neighbors sharing an east coast duplex in an upscale neighborhood. In the story, Miller brings in the focus so tightly, that it feels a little voyeuristic prying into the everyday thoughts, feelings and actions of these characters. Said characters are ordinary, but at the same time fascinating because of their mundane circumstances. Given this, one may wonder how the author manages to keep the reader interested for 306 pages. Again, I attribute it to the brilliant writing.

Alternating chapters from the perspectives of Delia, a grandmother who is the "Senator's Wife," and Meri, a woman in her mid-30s who is fascinated by the quiet glamour of Delia, move the story from 1993 to present day. Meri and her husband Nathan, a college professor, move to the split house. The decision to purchase their portion of the dwelling is based on his fascination with Delia's husband, a notorious senator, now retired. The senator is mysterious and although he is rarely seen, he is very much a part of the story. Delia's excerpts explain their complicated relationship in detail. But the thrust of the story centers on Meri's fascination with Delia, hence the title, and how the relationship between the women leads to the climax.

The Senator's Wife is a fundamental look at life. It's a look at young marriage and an aged marriage lived side-by-side. It's a look at long process of raising children from birth to middle age, and at finding one's place as a caregiver. It's not action-packed or even very exciting, but for fans of Sue Miller and for those readers who appreciate strong character development, I do recommend reading this novel.

Michele Cozzens is the author of It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club.

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

I find Sue Miller to be a gifted writer whose elegance of phrasing and story development is consistently brilliant. This book was, for me, a delight to read and very much in keeping with that standard. In reading some of the reviews, one would think that the standard for a worthy book should include the development of only highly evolved, heroic characters. I found the main characters in this book to be deeply flawed but compassionately drawn...and realistic. I found Delia to be a compelling character whose inner life was beautifully explored for the reader in these pages. Real women ARE like Delia! Some struggle and attach in ways that are not always politically correct (pardon the pun). I love the way Sue Miller writes dialogue: efficient and real. One feels as though present to an actual conversation. In this book I found that I marked at least ten pages which contained lines which deeply touched me and I found beautiful....for instance, when Delia watches her grown son, Evan, during a brief visit home: "And yet the love she felt for him was unchanged, was based on who he'd been and who he still was to her. This is how it is with your children, she thought. You hold all the versions of them there ever were simultaneously in your heart."

I loved this book. I thank Sue Miller for the visit into another woman's life via such beautiful craft and skill in writing.

I'm a big fan of Sue Miller's work, and eagerly dove into "The Senator's Wife." Her prose, as always, is immaculate and it was a joy to turn each page. In the end, though, I found the work disappointing, and can't share the enthusiasm of most of the other reviewers.

For starters, the main character is a woman named Meri, who behaves reprehensibly throughout the book. At the end, though, we're supposed to believe she somehow matured into awonderful, loving mother. There were far too many undotted i's and uncrossed t's for me to join the author in making this leap. And the Senator and his wife behaved as twin orbiting death stars, not as real people making understandable decisions.

At the end of the book, I felt a huge sense of missed opportunity for the novel. Such a great author, but such a frustrating plot line, with main characters that seemed to revel in self-destructive behavior. In the end, I concluded they were stuck in a story where they made a series of implausibly-dumb life decisions, and was glad to put these characters back on the bookshelf.

When I was through about one quarter of the book, I thought this was another flat, shallow tale of two women who are coping with two virile men. The older woman, Delia, is the Senator's wife, and mother of three children, who has lived through her husband's heart wrenching affairs. The younger woman is Meri, a college-educated woman from an unloving background who marries a handsome, aggressive professor.

As the plot expands, Sue Miller becomes the writer I have always admired. She fleshes out these two women and places them in situations motivating them to step forward and make life-changing decisions. The women, despite their ages, blend well into the plot and the settings. There are scenes in the book that are the most vivid descriptions I have ever read. Meri's labor and delivery of her son, Asa, will affect any woman with the shock of the pain, the length of the labor and the minute by minute severity of contractions. I could feel her humiliation and exquisite pain she endured. I have read childbirth descriptions but not like this.

Delia is the dignified, perfect wife who has devoted her life to making her husband happy. She is sacrificial to the very end. She is at times a remarkable woman and at other times, a woman with little pride. As usual, Sue Miller's women are clear and whether we like them or not, we surely understand them, even Delia's daughter Nancy who is as inflexible as her mother is flexible.

Without giving away the shocking ending, be assured that you will learn what happens to these women and how they play out the rest of their lives. I'm glad I read every page.

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.

I loved most of this book, sped through it, pages flying, totally wrapped up in the story, the characters. But for me, it all fell apart at the end. (SPOILER AHEAD) Call me simplistic and unsophisticated, but in the end I want the good guys to win and the philandering jerks to get punished. I yearned for the moment when Delia would see her husband for what he was (a two-timing cad) and walk off into the sunset a brave new woman, not the beaten down woman she becomes in Miller's book. And the fact that Meri, who so casually destroyed Delia's life, winds up happy and fulfilled, and says she did what she did out of "love"----gaaaaaack! It steams my beans.

Nevertheless, Miller's a terrific writer, and if you're a pomo kinda reader who doesn't mind an ending that makes you want to hurl yourself off a cliff, this book is for you.

Having lived and worked in Washington, I was amazed at the number of readers who thought Delia was a martyr for this self-centered senator. In fact, she was an admirable opportunist. She figured out a way to have her man, have her own relationships and have Paris! Not that this would be everyone's choice - I mean, why get/stay married at all? But for Delia, who was somehow not just loyal to this man but adored him, it was a relationship that worked. I found that Miller's recitation of Delia's most quotidian moments - the little drink in the evening, accompanied by her favorite cheeses, etc. - was compelling in that it did not paint a portrait of a woman who was depressed, lonely and resentful. It painted her as making a life. She obviously dressed well, did her hair, wore red lipstick, etc., etc., and the reference to Paris was not coincidental. Many many European women are in marriages that resemble Delia's - even if their husbands are NOT in politics. [It was also why my Italian father inculcated in me the critical importance of "always having your own money." Delia obviously had access to the Senator's money, to live a life that she might not have chosen but which seemed to make her content.

As for Meri, I thought like many other readers that she was the ultimate self-centered opportunist, and a total baby. However, she too married a self-centered man. What we don't read about explicitly - but Miller deftly suggests - is that Meri's young professor husband also has his own ego-maniac issues as evidenced in his spending way too much time on campus and always has a lot of work to do on weekends that takes him away from Meri. Hmmm, wonder what HE was up to; Miller doesn't have to say this explicitly. If a follow-up book is called "The Professor's Wife" no spouse of any college professor would be surprised: the classroom is a "target-rich" environment for extramarital dalliances, as one of my MBA classmates asserts.

Finally, like many readers I found myself wondering toward the end of the book what was the point of the continued recitation of the daily lives of these people? I forced myself late in the evening to read the last 50 pages bleary-eyed because I couldn't stand the investment anymore! When it finally came and I read the explanation for the unfortunate turn of events, I was disappointed, but I also think it totally summed up the characters, and especially the character whose thoughts we read in the end. In any event, I too did not love this book, and if the setting had in fact been Washington itself we would have had many more juicy revelations, even with Delia in the same town as her philandering husband. It happens, that's how they live there, and that's the price they pay.