The Distinguished Guest - Softcover

Miller, Sue

3.4

1,858 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747584648 ISBN 13: 9780747584643

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2006

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

At the age of seventy-two, Lily Roberts became a national celebrity on writing her first book - a spiritual memoir. But her new-found fame was not well received by her son Alan and wayward daughter Clary, both profoundly disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on their resentment is still raw, and when Lily, now ill and frail, comes to live with Alan, the bitter legacy of their very different memories threatens to upset the precarious balance of their lives.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

'Wonderful - rich, intelligent and moving ... this is the fiction we need' Los Angeles Times 'Miller depicts her characters with grace and elegance, enriching their perceptions with strands of connecting images and intertwined history ... A very moving book' New York Times Book Review 'As in the work of Jane Austen, Sue Miller's tale of a proud elderly woman who visits and bedevils her son is genuinely adult fiction' Chicago Tribune 'Miller's skill at dissecting relationships is as well honed here as ever' Newsweek

From the Back Cover:

The Distinguished Guest chronicles the visit of an ailing woman to her son and his family. Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and famous for writing, at age seventy-two, a memoir about the dissolution of her marriage years earlier and the spiritual and political crises that precipitated that rift. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. Her extended stay with her architect son, Alan Maynard, while she awaits relocation to a retirement community, sets the stage for conflicts, reflection, and new understanding. The visit raises questions for Alan about his relation to his mother and to his past, about the choices he has made in his own life, about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief. The story moves between Lily and Alan and among others - Alan's loving, wholly grounded French wife Gaby, their two remarkable college-aged sons, a troubled journalist writing a profile of Lily, an African-American graduate student working on a thesis that connects to Lily's history in the early days of the civil rights movement. Pieces of the profile, excerpts from intimate letters and from both Lily's memoir and her fiction, all form part of the rich narrative as it moves toward its dramatic conclusion.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.