While I Was Gone by Sue Miller Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of While I Was Gone
Book Review: While I Was Gone
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are looking for a book you can't put down THIS IS IT! Sue Miller draws you in with her excellent writing and keeps you hooked with irresistable characters. This book takes unexpected turns and ends in a way you never would have thought. In the story Jo Becker has a tainted past. Even if you can't relate to the wild time in her life I think we have all wondered occasionally where our lives would be if we had made different choices. She had the gutts to challenge the boundaries surrounding her. She did what all of us wants to do- escape. And she learns more about herself than ever before, ironicly when she is pretending to be someone else. This book makes you think about who you are and how got to be the person you are. It's a book to read again and again!Book Review: A bit disappointing....
Summary: 3 Stars
Not Sue Miller's best work, in my opinion. The Good Mother is much better and richer. In While I was Gone, Jo meets a man from her past with connections to an old unsolved murder. The book raises some interesting questions however. What secrets are being harbored by people you know? What lines will they cross?Who has the capacity for evil? Do you ever *really* know another person? Jo's character was hard to get to know and her husband was TOTALLY unbelieveable!Book Review: One more review
Summary: 5 Stars
It has been awhile since I read this book, but it is one which I will not forget. I,too am a 50 something woman who remembers the 60's, a time like no other, with Womens'Lib, the Birth Control Pill, Hippies, Civil Rights, Assassinations, and our boyfriends going off to fight a war we did not agree with. There were the folks that were involved and wanted to make a difference, and there were the hangers'on. Jo wasn't happy in her marriage so she ran off and lived the life of her newly adopted roomates/family and tried to assimilate their lifestyle. I remember Dana giving her little gifts and wanted to be like Jo, (wasn't it her cutting her hair that made Eli crazy?)but I did not sense any closeness other than they lived in the same house. There was a sense of order though that Jo seemed to enjoy.
After Dana's death, Jo became a Vet, which to me means she would rather be with animals than people. I did not see her minister husband as cold; on the contrary, I think he was very loving, enough to allow Jo the space she felt she needed both from him and her family. Jo seemed to use her business as a way to get out of doing family oriented things, including not even going to her husband's church services!
Then along comes a man from her past when she was living a lie with an assumed name, and starts having "feelings" for him. Maybe she was in love with him back then, although she didn't really know him that well. And when she decides to meet him "for a drink" in a hotel in another town, she was not prepared for what he told her. Her husband was quite a man for not throwing her out for her behaviour! Then she wonders if she should turn Eli in!
This story is so incredibly rich, I had to read it twice to see if I had missed anything! Jo had been self-absorbed all her life and still she could not figure out why she felt like an observer! She did everything she wanted for herself but found excuses even for the people she should have been able to show love the most. I have met women like Jo and they can never figure out how to feel love even when it knocks them over.
Book Review: While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book over a two day span - I couldn't put it down. The clean writing in this book explained feelings so obscure in such a normal way that anyone could have related. I loved the main character the most - and her loving husband. This book makes me look at my husband differently and has given me the foresight to appreciate life and what it hands me. The main character, Jo, has so much to be thankful for - yet she lets herself be taken back in history to another time and life she led, and it gets her in trouble. This book gives you the chance to think about things in a new way, a way that might not have even come up before. I like the captivating way Sue Miller writes and look forward to reading another one of her books.Book Review: A boring and uneffective plot
Summary: 1 Stars
This book arrives nowhere, after an interesting start. I felt like most of the narrative led nowhere eventually. Some of the twist and turns were clumsily devised and lacked impact. The characters are one-dimensional and the reader comes to expect exactly what they ended up doing. There are no unexpected surprises and no deep connections with any one. Once you finish the book, you will never think about it again and feel like you've wasted your time reading all that nonsense.