monogamy sue miller review guardian

Graham’s presence is revealed through his second wife, Annie’s eyes. Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ... 7 Sep 2020 "Heart-wrenching and absorbing" In her latest spellbinding read, Sue Miller pulls back the curtain of idealism that has been sheilding a complex relationship from scrutiny. Both critically acclaimed and loved by readers, Sue Miller is recognized internationally for her elegant and sharply realistic accounts of the contemporary family. The best approach to this unbelievably good novel, however, is to avoid summary altogether and simply urge readers to read—and reread—the book itself. Often the term … As readers, we see a marriage dissected in Sue Miller’s novel MONOGAMY. A novel about marriage, family, secrets and love, Monogamy confirms Sue Miller's place among the greatest writers at work in America today. ‘Dead.’”. When Annie, as a child, returns home from a production of the “Messiah” excited and anxious to share her experience, her mother explains that there’s really no need because “she knew it perfectly well. . Takes the long way home… This is my first novel by Sue Miller.Based on the synopsis, I was hoping for some dark secret to emerge that would explain Graham’s infidelity, but, as it turns out, the story doesn’t offer that as an out. September 08, 2020 ... We’ve heard this tale a couple of times, and that is one way to summarize the story Sue Miller tells in her 11th novel, Monogamy. They need to be studied, not glanced at. Bookstore Often the term seems to refer to how much of themselves writers are willing to share with readers, or how hard they’re willing to work to ensure that their readers’ narrative lift is no greater than it needs to be. Miller writes: “Annie was happy too. 1 Mar 2021 twonightstands “Just, that we read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel . . In the end, is loving someone so profoundly even good for you? For example: After 30 or so years of a relatively happy marriage, a woman wakes to find her husband dead beside her. The one thing that’s never in doubt is that Graham and Annie love each other, which some would say ought to be enough to guarantee happiness, though of course it never is. Monogamy demonstrates that Miller remains one of the finest cartographers of the territory of marriage.” — Washington Post “Miller is one of our most emotionally profound and nuanced writers. ARTICLES. She remembered what she’d worn for her performances — it was the first time her mother had allowed her to wear black: how sexy she’d looked!” (Yep. But after his death these same questions become existential, and she comes to realize that the love of her life is partly to blame for the fact that she’s never really found herself. • This information about Monogamy shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Such writers take on faith that, if you’re able to lose yourself in fictional others, any additional storytelling obligations will naturally fall in line or become irrelevant. Contact Us Unlike her protagonist, Miller knows exactly who she is and what she wants to take pictures of. (It’s good. “The emotional beauty of Monogamy arises from the impact of her characters’ interactions on one another, and how their memories of those interactions and of other events shape, shift and reshape.”-- BookPage, Cover Interview (Starred Review) "A gripping novel." • consoled, I think he said, by that notion. Without exception Miller’s minor characters spring to life with Dickensian vividness. Monogamy Reviews. But in the end it’s Annie’s view of Graham and their marriage that matters most. It’s not irrelevant that Annie, a thoughtful person and a good-not-great photographer, views the world through her own lens and keeps any boisterous turbulence at a bit of a distance. Miller is excellent at conveying and illuminating the inner lives of her characters, and she remains one of the best writers at depicting the day-to-day normality of sexual desire. Sue Miller has always been a generous writer. There is, of course, considerable risk in doing things this way. (No spoiler here; we learn this in the flap copy. Even Graham contributes to his own richly detailed portrait when he confesses to Annie that while other people see him as a life force, he regards himself as greedy — “more or less bottomlessly hungry,” someone who gobbles up more than his share of whatever he’s offered. How great is Monogamy? It can also be about how a writer relates to her characters — her willingness to put their needs before her own. Sue Miller has always been a generous writer. Handel will do that every time.) ), “He was dead,” Annie realizes. When he decides he wants to own a bookstore, he makes that happen. Sue Miller was born in Chicago in 1943. Sue Miller on our ever-changing perceptions of ourselves and each other. There’s a lot of very good TV that operates on these principles. Author interviews, book reviews and lively book commentary are found here. Graham, who co-owns a bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a passionate, needy, generous man who clasps his past—his ex-wife, for example—more closely than Annie does hers. Her grief is nearly unbearable until, at his memorial, she discovers he had been having an affair. It’s a rich, complex book — but in the end it’s the story of a marriage, a remarkably good one considering how mismatched this fictional husband and wife appear to be. Find out more That he took me up.” She wishes she had been “more separate, more independent.” Yes, Annie loves her husband and is devastated by his loss, but was he as good for her as she was for him? And what a village Miller offers us here! Advertise • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ISBN: 2928377045760 Number of pages: 352 Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Monogamy at Amazon.com. Graham and Frieda, his first wife and another of the novel’s major characters, had an open marriage, which Graham (remember those large appetites?) Score pending. If this is not Miller’s best novel, it is surely among her very best. "Monogamy" by Sue Miller; Harper (352 pages, $28.99) ___ Two painfully memorable moments anchor "Monogamy," a sophisticated, melancholy novel about an American family that some would call dysfunctional, others awkwardly recognizable and sympathetic. • Often the term seems to refer to how much of themselves writers are willing to share with readers, or how hard they’re willing to work to ensure that their readers’ narrative lift is no greater than it needs to be. “She made herself think the word and then she said it aloud. $28.99 ★ Monogamy Sue Miller Review by Alden Mudge. From the opening chapters it's pretty clear why photographer Annie married barrel-chested bookseller Graham. Questions of monogamy drive Miller's tender latest tale. the reader sometimes wonders, fearing that we’re veering off course. . She is the bestselling author of ten previous novels including The Good Mother, The Distinguished Guest, the Oprah Book Club selection While I Was Gone, Lost in the Forest, the Richard & Judy choice The Senator's Wife, The Lake Shore Limited and the acclaimed memoir The Story of My Father.Sue Miller lives in Boston, Massachusetts. ‘Monogamy’ Review: The Shocks of Domesticity Novelist Sue Miller’s story of the secrets behind an apparently happy marriage asks what we can really know about each other. Content includes books from bestselling, midlist and debut authors. And maybe that’s the point. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Any story told quickly, without the chill or warmth of accumulated details, becomes a cliche. “Monogamy,” by Sue Miller (HarperCollins) Even after reading all 338-plus pages of Sue Miller’s new novel, it’s hard to tell if the noun of the title is aspirational or unattainable. Annie, a talented photographer, doesn’t operate this way. This last is the kind of generosity that I particularly associate with Miller’s work, and it’s showcased again in her fine new novel, “Monogamy.”. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. A novel about marriage, family, secrets and love, Monogamy confirms Sue Miller's place among the greatest writers at work in America today. 9780062969651 Naturally, each sees him differently, which is why Miller gives them all point-of-view chapters. And maybe that’s the point. Annie and Graham really do love one another. Monogamy by Sue Miller is a 2020 Harper publication. Sue Miller . So is our understanding of ourselves and others. Monogamy Sue Miller Harper Hardcover 352 pages September 2020. . The views expressed here are the author's own. We’ve heard this tale a couple of times, and that is one way to summarize the story Sue Miller tells in her 11th novel, Monogamy. One measure of that is how the experience of it deepens with each reading. In fact, she and Annie become close friends. It turns out that monogamy comes with a price tag, and the bill never gets split down the middle. They have a daughter, Sarah, who’s big like the father she adores and works for a West Coast NPR affiliate; and Graham has a son from his first marriage: Lucas, who is a book editor in New York. Quick to laugh, to eat, to drink, to tell stories, he’s a classic extrovert. ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Sue Miller on our ever-changing perceptions of ourselves and each other. What appears to surprise Graham most about his second marriage is that Annie seems enough. • Each has a past that captured and shaped them. . Submission Guidelines, © 1996-2021 BookPage and ProMotion, inc. | 2143 Belcourt Avenue, Nashville, TN 37212. By contrast his wife, Annie, is shy and private, her stature so diminutive that their friends wonder what their sex life must be like. Privacy Policy The new novel by Sue Miller Monogamy, by Sue Miller … Sue Miller's skillfulness at doing so makes a familiar plot into an original story that reflects the real-life complexity of long relationships. They belong in an art gallery, not on Instagram. Her work is important to her, but because she doesn’t know herself nearly as well as Graham knows Graham, she’s beset by doubts, tormented by the most fundamental questions any artist can face: What should she take pictures of? Not all writerly largess derives from their relationship to readers, however. But Miller knows what she’s about and the reason for the seeming detour always becomes clear. "Monogamy" by Sue Miller; Harper (352 pages, $28.99)-----Two painfully memorable moments anchor "Monogamy," a sophisticated, melancholy novel … You can live with it. Individual Harper, $28.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-296965-1. The pace of your narrative unexpectedly slows? Consoled to think that life isn’t just one damned thing after another. Patch - This post was contributed by a community member. In this way the novel builds by accretion, each character existing to shed light on the others. 09/08/2020. Published Find BookPage, About BookPage Select Your Cookie Preferences. Among the relationships of the characters in Monogamy, there are reverberations upon reverberations. In Sue Miller’s “Monogamy,” Annie – half of the couple at the novel’s center – presses to include a similar image in an upcoming exhibit of her art photographs. Very good.) • We use a small number of cookies to provide you with a great experience. Her books have been widely translated and published in 22 countries around the world. Book Review: Monogamy by Sue Miller. By using The StoryGraph, you agree to our use of cookies. In 'Monogamy,' Sue Miller Explores Widowhood NPR's Scott Simon talks with novelist Sue Miller about her latest work, Monogamy, which follows the story of a new widow. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. • MONOGAMY By Sue Miller. By then the ’70s have given way to the ’80s and somehow monogamy sneaks up on him, so problem solved. Digital Library As a result those pictures are full of depth and contrast and lush detail. Sue Miller has always been a generous writer. The story assumes an odd, unanticipated shape? And maybe that’s the point. She has found in Monogamy probably the best expression of her longtime interest in sociograms, an exercise to demonstrate how lives intersect and influence each other. By Sue Miller. Monogamy by Sue Miller: Taking the long view By Susan Osborne / Fiction Reviews / 9 September 2020 9 September 2020 / 34 Comments I’ve long been a fan of Sue Miller’s intelligent, perceptive fiction and was delighted to see a new title from her in the publishing schedules. Book Review: Monogamy, a novel by Sue Miller (OT) Monogamy , by Sue Miller (HarperCollins, 2020, 338 pages, $28.99) Prolific* New York Times best-selling author of 11 novels, a short story collection and one memoir, Sue Miller keeps on writing good, long character studies about families and marriages (with sex and profanity). Monogamy Sue Miller. Sue Miller’s ‘Monogamy’ Begins With an Ending. But as fully peopled as the novel is, it’s Annie and Graham’s marriage that centers things, a feat all the more remarkable given that Graham dies in the first act. She’d sung it in chorus in her senior year of high school in Belmont, and Bob Samuelson, who had the tenor solos, had been madly in love with her then and couldn’t keep his eyes off her. “Monogamy” stars Annie and Graham, two Cambridge residents devoted to the arts (he co-owns a bookstore, she’s a photographer), happily married for three decades. Every character in the book is drawn to Graham, and his passing is a profound loss, but each loss is different and uniquely illuminating. Harper Miller operates differently, and the result is an old-fashioned, slow burn of a novel that allows readers to dream deeply. Dead, however, in the hands of a skillful writer, isn’t the same as gone. 1 review. There’s no cell service at the tiny Vermont house where author In the first, Annie, an introspective photographer, awakens before dawn one day in the mid-2000s in her shabby, comfortable home in … Graham knows what he wants and how to go about getting it. She becomes angry. What then? At a family Thanksgiving, she describes a toddler playing a game that involves handing a wooden spoon to each of the adults in the room and then tugging it back again. But be forewarned: Miller’s generosity requires a corresponding generosity on the part of readers. Having both been married before, we learn much more about his first wife than about her previous marriage. Sue Miller, Novelist. Well, so does life. While Graham is alive, who Annie is and what she should do doesn’t matter as much. But the past is always up for reevaluation. Why are we going here? She admits to a friend: “I’m so angry at him, in a way, that he had so much energy. Of course authorial generosity can take many forms. “Monogamy” stars Annie and Graham, two Cambridge residents devoted to the arts (he co-owns a bookstore, she’s a photographer), happily married for three decades. • Of course authorial generosity can take many forms. Did her marriage — did monogamy itself — provide her with an excuse to not ask questions about herself that needed answers? Category: General & Literary Fiction, Fiction. So what? But occasionally through their years together, and in spite of everything that was pleasurable and loving between them, she would feel it again, the sense of his having overtaken her somehow, overwhelmed her.”. The source of such charity, I suspect, is humility, and it manifests as an eagerness to step aside, to suppress one’s ego. Except, well, not really. His is still very much in the picture. wholeheartedly embraced. Graham, a gregarious Cambridge bookstore owner, is a large man of outsize appetites. A site dedicated to book lovers providing a forum to discover and share commentary about the books and authors they enjoy. Graham and Annie, the couple at the heart of Sue Miller’s latest novel, Monogamy, have been married nearly 30 years, and their devotion to each other is the envy of their many friends.It’s the second time around for both of them. If it were truly solved, there’d be no book. MONOGAMY. Her great gift is how clearly she sees these all-important people of hers, even in the smallest of moments. Like most marriages, Graham and Annie’s is rife with tension, including historical context: Though he is older, both are creatures of the 1970s. We’re often told that it takes a village to raise a child, but in “Monogamy” Miller seems to suggest marriages require such villages as well, at least in terms of our ability to comprehend them. Events occur in this novel—normal sorts of things—and Miller’s attention, her descriptions and the tempo at which she reveals them help us feel these events truly and deeply. Every time the little girl succeeds in repossessing the spoon she “would laugh, a hiccupping squeal of joy and triumph that sometimes convulsed her so thoroughly that she would sit down, hard, on the floor — which itself seemed funny to her, made her cry out again with a gurgling pleasure.”. Indeed Graham becomes even more vivid in memory — Annie’s, his children’s and his first wife’s. ISBN The two relate to each other as siblings, and both are adults by the time the novel begins. Of course authorial generosity can take many forms. Here is a taste of what a reader will find: The long marriage of Annie and Graham is a second marriage for both. Sue Miller’s skillfulness at doing so makes a familiar plot into an original story that reflects the real-life complexity of long relationships. He’s not wrong. That it … Frieda didn’t disagree in theory, but in practice found Graham’s extramarital adventures impossible to live with. Even after reading all 338-plus pages of Sue Miller’s new novel, it’s hard to tell if the noun of the title is aspirational or unattainable. Even after reading all 338-plus pages of Sue Miller’s new novel, it’s hard to tell if the noun of the title is aspirational or unattainable. “Monogamy” may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Monogamy. If you’re looking for spare, show-don’t-tell narration, brisk pacing and snappy dialogue spoken by easily comprehended characters, look elsewhere. Your plot is thin? He took up all that psychic space.

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