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Description edit
Once again Sue Miller takes us deep into the private lives of women with this mesmerizing portrait of two marriages exposed in all their shame and imperfection, and in their obdurate, unyielding love. The author of the iconic The Good Mother and the best-selling While I Was Gone brings her... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Delia Naughton: stylish and charismatic woman in her seventies. the senator's wife. neighbor to Meri and Nathan.
- Tom Naughton: retired senator. philanderer.
- Nathan: Meri's husband. newly wed. young political science and history professor
- Merl: Add a description of this character.
- Nancy: Delia and Tom's daughter
- Evan: Delia and Tom's son
- Meri: newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation
- Carolee: Nancy's best friend
- Brad: Delia and Tom's son
- Henry
- Madeleine Dexter
- Toni
- Ilona
- Jane
- Asa
- Martin
- Len
- Alison Miller
- Matthew
- Gail
- Sheila
- Mrs. Davidson
- Nate
- Anne Apthorp
- James
- Tony
- Elizabeth
- Mary Anne
- Ken
- Coleman
- Brian
- Dee
- Shirley
- Lou
Quotes edit
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“Nathan is beautiful. You shouldn't love someone for the accident of his beauty, Meri knows this, but it's what drew her to him.”
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“she is thinking, as she has at certain moments ever since she married Nathan, of how separate she and he are. She is thinking that she doesn't want to be grateful to him for what he allows her.”
Meri -
“In order to be truly honest with Nathan about her feelings, she would need to be willing to fight it out, to argue over every small thing. And she hadn't realized, until she got married, just how many small things there were.”
Meri -
“Life was hard, hard for everyone. One never stopped having to work at it. Meri was of an age when she ought to know that.”
Delia Naughton -
“And yet the love she felt for him was unchanged, was based on who he'd been and who he still was to her. This is how it is with your children, she thought. You hold all the versions of them there ever were simultaneously in your heart.”
Delia Naughton -
“Life doesn't change in its fundamentals, she thought. The same small things bring pleasure, and always will.”
Delia Naughton
Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
From her perch in the middle of the backseat, Meri surveys the two in front - her husband, Nathan, and Sheila, the real estate agent. There is something generally vulnerable about the back of the head and the neck, she thinks.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Sue Miller (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: ALFRED A. KNOPF
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 0307264203
Page Count: 320
Publisher: ALFRED A. KNOPF
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 0307264203
Page Count: 320
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.54
Subjects edit
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