Items related to While I Was Gone

While I Was Gone - Softcover

Miller, Sue

 
9780747545040: While I Was Gone
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0747545049 ISBN 13: 9780747545040
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2000

Synopsis

Thirty years ago, Jo Becker's bohemian life ended when she found her best friend brutally murdered in the house they shared in Cambridge. Now Jo has everything, but when an old housemate settles in her small town, the fabric of her life begins to unravel as she revisits the past.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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

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Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication date
2000
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0747545049
ISBN 13 
9780747545040
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
288