While I Was Gone - Softcover

Miller, Sue

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345420748 ISBN 13: 9780345420749

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2002

Synopsis

While I Was Gone

About this title

Review:

In her still startling debut, The Good Mother, Sue Miller explored the premium we put on passion--and the terrible burden it places on a mother and child. Her fourth novel, While I Was Gone, is another study in familial crime and punishment. But this time, her wife and good mother is accessory to more than emotional malfeasance. Jo Becker has everything a woman could desire: a loving spouse, contented children and a nice dog or two. When her New England veterinary practice takes on a new client, however, her past comes back to haunt her. Long ago, it seems, Jo had escaped her family and identity for a commune in Cambridge. Her Aquarian illusions came to an abrupt, bloody end when one of her housemates was brutally murdered.

Now this unhappy era returns in the person of Eli Mayhew, who had been the odd man out in Jo's boho household. His appearance is both tantalising and upsetting:

"Inside, I slowed down. I felt numbed. I had two last patients, and then I told Beattie to go home, that I'd close up ... I re-filed the last charts, sprayed and wiped the examining table. I reviewed my list of routine surgeries for Wednesday. All the while I was thinking of Eli Mayhew, and of Dana and Larry and Duncan and me, and our lives in the house. Of the horrible way it had all ended."

Sue Miller's fine novel is a penetrating--and sensuous--portrait of a woman besieged by her conscience. While I Was Gone also demonstrates that in the face of distance and betrayal, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing indeed. --Winnie Wheaton

Review:

'An astonishing mix of the warm, complex and frightening ... the stuff of real life that is rarely conveyed in fiction' Mail on Sunday 'Like Joanna Trollope, Miller is a fine artist of the domestic' Sunday Telegraph 'A beautiful and frightening book ... Many readers will find it difficult to forget' New York Times Book Review 'Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal and forgiveness into a narrative that shines' Time

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0345420748
• ISBN 13: 9780345420749
• Binding: Paperback