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The Senator's Wife | 
| Author: Sue Miller
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 1498
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.2
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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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Some wear on book from reading, spine creases, wear on binding and pages, we guarantee all purchases and ship all items via USPS mail.
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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 73 more reviews...
 The Senator's Wife June 28, 2008
This was my first experience with this author and my last. I hated the book. I kept asking myself why would anyone put up with a cheating lying husband for 25 years. It was so improbable to want me to beleive that a woman who hasn't lived with her husband for 20 years and has a completely separate life is still so in love with him that she takes him back once in a while to have sex, even into her 60's. What exactly is the love based on if you are not sharing the experiences of life that help grow and bond your life together. It made no sense to me. I kept asking myself why is she staying married I don't see the love between them, only betrayal and lies. Meri's character was so whiny, disloyal and unpleasant I was hoping her husband would just leave her. I didn't see anything about her that was ever happy and she was a devious liar. The ending floored me and made me sick. It was thoroughly depressing. After ruining the lives of two elderly people Meri ends up the happy one with the husband and childern. I guess in this case it pays to be selfish,bitchy, sneaky, and untrustworthy.
 Characters are complex, not evil June 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Unlike many readers, I found the ending merely sad, not shocking or a sign of Meri's moral bankruptcy. Meri is far from perfect, and what she does at the end is clearly not noble or ethical. But she has lacked love all her life -- her husband seems too self-absorbed to love her -- and she honestly believes that she did it for love. It is sad that such a gesture can cause such harm, but it did, and Meri will have to live with the consequences.
Sue Miller knows how to delineate characters and how to write dialogue. But she has a very annoying, constant writer's habit -- what I would call the fading-away comma phrase. Just in the online excerpt, we see: "this is a coup, an achievement," "the profiles, the three-quarter angles," "a great change, a beginning," "they can find a way to keep talking about all this, a way of shaping their marriage to suit them both." Those last phrases trail away and make the sentences seem precious and affected. On occasion, it's fine, but Miller does it constantly. What about, for example, "the profiles and the three-quarter angles." Or what does "an achievement" add that was not already present in "a coup"?
A big disappointment June 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
To keep it brief: I read this book because I liked While I Was Gone, also by Sue Miller. Though the heroine of the that book was unlikable, the story was good and rather well-written.
Sue Miller seems to have slipped several notches in the interim. The prose in The Senator's Wife is straight out of Writing 101, with conversations unremittingly punctuated by inane asides: "She took a sip of beer" or "He cut the pizza and put it on her plate." There was also a lot of meaningless detail that served no purpose.
The older heroine is a one-dimensional stereotype of an old lady. The senator husband is worse, maybe half-dimensional. But the worst thing about this book was the young heroine, an utterly amoral piece of work whom the author seems to like and believe moral. Either Sue Miller is off her nut or she's pulling our leg.
I don't recommend it at all.
This would make a good book club choice June 10, 2008
The Senator's Wife is about two women: Delia is the one who gives the book its name while newly-wed Meri is her new next-door neighbor. Delia's husband Tom was a prominent Democratic senator in the 1960s. The couple now live apart, but still maintain a relationship. The book is about the relationship between the two women as well as their individual marriages. The book is set in 1993/1994, although it has an oddly dated feel, as if it were set 10 years earlier.
Delia is the more likeable of the two women and for some time I felt that Meri wasn't adding much to the book other than another perspective on Delia, but ultimately their lives become entwined and common themes develop. Although Meri is a newly-wed, she is aged in her late 30s (presumably to make some events that occur later in the book more credible), and yet she has the naievity and self-absorption of a younger woman.
Even though I didn't particularly warm to either woman, I enjoyed this book very much and read it quickly. I could feel the tension building throughout and I wasn't sure how it would resolve itself. Some reviews that I had read talked about a twist at the end which I think is over-selling it, but it does build to a climax. However I also felt that the ending was over-explained and that Meri's motivations were spelled out in a way that didn't feel convincing (nor necessary). This would be a good choice for a book club as there's plenty to discuss.
This is the first book that I've read by Sue Miller, but her writing reminded me in many ways of Anne Tyler, whose writing I love.
 Stand By Your Man or Stand Up For Yourself? June 5, 2008
It doesn't take a literati to decipher that the message here is this: despite what your husband/significant other may do to embarrass both you and himself, it's best to keep that dirty laundry in the washing machine of marriage. Delia Naughton, 'The Senator's Wife', is an educated, sophisticated woman. So, why on earth would she allow her husband's philandering to carry on? Unlike Hillary Clinton, she didn't have political aspirations; she didn't need to use her husband Tom like Mrs. Clinton implemented Bill.
Then there's the issue of her young married neighbors, Meri and Nathan. Nathan is completely enthralled with the idea of living next door to a Senator, while Meri subconsciously begrudges the life that Delia Naughton lives, both in the public eye and behind closed doors. Perhaps that is what leads Meri to execute her wiles over Tom, however, that is surreptitiously the point that Delia takes a stand - finally.
While I wasn't one to really be intrigued by the plot, Miller's deft use of language was reward enough to warrior through this one. If you hoped to gain a bit of insight into a political marriage, this may whet your appetite. If you are looking for a page-turner, this one isn't it.
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