Book Summary and Reviews of Monogamy by Sue Miller

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Neva Gronert

Why We Read Sue Miller
"...We read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel…consoled, I think he said, by that notion. Consoled to think that life isn't just one damn thing after another. That it has sequence and consequence....I think it was more or less the idea that fictional narrative made life seem to matter, that it pushed away the meaninglessness of death."

Miller uses marriage as a devise to give sequence and consequence to the lives of several couples in this book: The main couple Annie and Graham, and also Graham and his first wife, Frieda. We peer more briefly into the marriages of Lucas and Jeanne, Edith and Mike, Natalie and Don, and another couple, Sarah and Thomas.

Memory is faulty, it is changeable, and the loss of memories is a theme throughout this work. It's no accident that the protagonist, Annie, is a photographer, known to distance herself from her subjects and occasionally to hide behind her Rolleiflex, unreadable. Annie relies on photographs to augment her memory until, at the novel's conclusion, she is forced to use her own capacity for memory.

Annie's husband, Graham, is the cynosure of the book. Graham is the archetypal extrovert, living life large with enormous appetites. He feels everything, and is deeply loved by his wives, his children, and his friends. "Pleasure was who Graham was. It was his gift. It was the reason he'd said yes. As he almost always did." Miller has composed this story carefully, delicately, from the perspectives of several people, but always the subject returns to Graham.

Monogamy is not always a happy tale, but it's real and it's raw and it's beautiful. Like life.

Great American writer Russell Banks wrote a review of Monogamy in The New York Times, and I added it to my TBR due to my respect for him, and his nuanced writing. I'm so pleased he gave this book his recommendation. And that I listened.

Cathryn Conroy

A Cautionary Tale About the Fragility of Marriage—But Sad, Gloomy, and a Bit of Slog-Fest
This cautionary tale about the fragility of marriage begins as a page-turner that turns into a bit of a slog-fest before eventually redeeming itself. And that's disappointing because it's so good in the beginning!

Written by Sue Miller, this hybrid between ChickLit and literary fiction, is the story of a marriage and the heartbreaking betrayal of infidelity. Annie and Graham (second marriage for both) have been married for 30 years. They live in Cambridge in the shadow of Harvard University. A big man with an even bigger personality, he owns a thriving independent bookstore. She is a tiny little thing, who putters as an arty photographer. They live in a very small converted carriage house on a street of otherwise grandiose homes. Life is sweet. Because Graham has this habit, albeit one he has resisted for years, he embarks on an ill-advised affair with a friend of theirs. It's all about sex and nothing more. He ends it. And then Graham very suddenly and very unexpectedly dies. That's the page-turner part of the book.

After his death, Annie is understandably heartbroken and absolutely grief-stricken. While Miller portrays these emotions realistically, it just goes on seemingly forever. (And if she had skipped this part, we reviewers would blast her for taking grief too lightly. It's a no-win situation.) It's soon after Graham's death that Annie figures out he had the affair, which just sends her on a whole different kind of grieving—this time for her marriage. Eventually ("Finally!" says the reader), the book becomes an examination of all the characters' relationships and marriages—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and what makes a good marriage. This last part is much more readable, although not the page-turner it was in the beginning.

This is a very sad book. Deeply gloomy. There are several well-imagined minor characters, such as Graham's first wife, Frieda, and their son, Lucas, as well as Graham and Annie's daughter, Sarah. These characters add a lot to the story if only to give the reader a little break from all the grief.

Reader, beware. This is a book that can envelop you in sadness or, quite possibly, bore you because it just doesn't let up for so long. But most of all, it's disappointing. Sue Miller is such a good writer. This is not her best.

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