While I Was Gone | SUE MILLER

While I Was Gone | SUE MILLER | Not Miller's best work

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While I Was Gone

	While I Was Gone SUE MILLER, 1999 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 305 reviews view larger image
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?MILLER WEAVES HER THEMES OF SECRECY, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS INTO A NARRATIVE THAT SHINES.?
?Time

?FASCINATING . . . Despite having a loving husband, three vivacious daughters, a beautiful home in rural Massachusetts, and satisfaction in her work, Jo Becker?s mind is invaded by a persistent restlessness. Then, an old roommate reappears to bring back Jo?s memories of her early 20s. . . . Her obsession with that period of her life and with the crime that concluded it eventually estrange Jo from everything she holds dear, causing her to tell lie after lie as she is pulled closer to this man from her past?and to a horrible secret.?
?Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

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How to Be

This book grips you page after page. A book for all who have memories that harry or haunt, who have secrets they don't know how to tell or integrate into their lives, who wonder who people think they are and wonder who they are themselves. Simply one of the best books I've read on working through and integrating life's trials. Not an answer, but a hopeful pointer in the right direction. Past and present histories beautifully woven. Characters you care about, feel you know. Scenes that are real, sometimes frighteningly so. A book you won't forget.

Not Miller's best work

Try Sue Miller's other books, or read Rabid: A Novel by T.K. Kenyon or Bee Season: A Novel by Myla Goldberg.

I'm too young and too foreign to bring much to this book, but you shouldn't have to bring a similar history to enjoy and understand a book. I don't think I ever will understand why Americans in the 60's and 70's were so obsessed with very misrepresented Indian culture. The details seemed disjointed, and the culture of "free love" and bohemian living is so different from the type of world that I grew up in.

Beyond the setting and premise, the main character Jo Becker seems like a whiner who is always longing for something better than she's got. The ending was unsatisfying and unsettling, but not in a good way. My book club fantasized about more satisfying endings instead of discussing the book itself.

Sorry.

Minna

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