While I Was Gone by Sue Miller Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of While I Was Gone
Book Review: Can't understand the hype
Summary: 1 Stars
I absolutely hated this book. Jo is just a selfish pig. She runs away from her husband and family and doesn't even extend them the common courtesy you would give a stranger. Then all is forgotten and forgiven because she married a minister and became a vet?? Yeah, sure, until she reverts to type and is again ready to deceive her family. What a waste of time -- I only finished the book because I wanted to know where this sorry tale was heading.Book Review: Intriguing
Summary: 4 Stars
Although feeling slightly odd and lonely since the last of her three daughters left home, Jo Becker has to admit she's got a great life. Her husband is loving and supportive, they have a wonderful old New England home, and she's a successful veterinarian with her own practice.
Before this settled, familiar life, however, Jo had another identity. For nearly a year, she was Licia Stead, a waitress living in a communal house in Cambridge. On the run from an unhappy marriage, Jo felt she'd finally found her true self in the rundown old house, filled with the gaiety and noise of her eclectic housemates.
One horrible evening, Jo comes home from work to find the bloody body of Dana, her housemate and friend, brutally murdered just minutes before. Anguished and horrified, she and the others are forced to undergo police interrogation and general disapproval from the community as a whole for their unstructured lifestyle. Ultimately, the killer is never found, and Dana's death marks the end of an era. The remaining housemates each find reasons to leave, and the group disbands.
Fast forward 25 years later, when Eli Mayhew brings his dog to Jo's veterinary practice. Seeing him forces Jo to remember Dana and the life they once had. She also begins to have feelings for Eli, though they're both married to other people.
Then Jo discovers that Eli may know more about the circumstances around Dana's death than he's ever let on...
In this book, Miller's fine writing is able to convey both the image of an average small-town New England existence, as well as the hints of something darker just beneath the surface.
Book Review: Good, not great
Summary: 3 Stars
This was a good book- not my favorite, but kept my interest. The characters never seemed real to me nor did the their actions.
Not a waste of my time, but a bit disappointing.
Book Review: Is it running away?
Summary: 4 Stars
Daniel, a pastor, is happy. His wife Jo, a veterinarian, is the narrator. The couple has three daughters, Sadie and the twins, Cass and Nora. Jo learns that Eli Mayhew, a fellow commune-dweller from long ago, is living in their town.
The story flashes back to the commune where Jo used a fictitious name. Eli had been the only serious one there, a scientist. Crime visited the commune, interrupting youthful activities, youthful development. Eli's return marks for Jo a time of surging memories of the tragedy at the commune. Daniel is surprised at Jo's reaction. He is consumed with his own pastoral duties centering on the death of one of his parishioners.
After a family Thanksgiving and a party given afterwards to ease familial tension, Jo realizes she has been collecting a bagful of petty grievances against Daniel. When Daniel and Jo go out to dinner with Jean and Eli Mayhew, Jo sees that Daniel doesn't care for Eli. Daniel talks about soul and Eli about neurons. Daniel explains to Eli that there has to be a desire for God to become a believer. Eli thinks that Daniel won't accept the implications of science in his thinking.
In the plot turns here there are a number of surprises for the reader. In the end the most important area covered by Sue Miller in this novel is the difficulty everyone has of accepting and being responsible for all of the deeds and misdeeds of former selves. Events in this novel verge on the garish, but it is possible that like circumstances haunt the background of everybody.
Miller writes easily and smoothly. It is no wonder that her novels are so popular.
Book Review: Betrayal
Summary: 5 Stars
In While I was Gone, Sue Miller takes us deeply inside a marriage. We always are surprised when people get divorced because marriages look different from the outside than the inside. Sometimes pretty on the outside, ugly inside. With this one between a vet and a minister we go inside the very fabric. We enter the bedroom. We enter the bed, the life of the mind, the life of the body, the life of the soul, the life of the parents, and when the fraying begins, we feel it acutely, a grind against our own gears. We feel the unravelling acutely. We are never the same. Kate Gale