Monogamy

by Sue Miller

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020!

NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020

PEOPLE MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR

BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF 2020

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020

“A sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities—and the absurdities—of love, infidelity, and grief.”  —O, the Oprah Magazine

A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller.

Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple.

Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites—curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love.

When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? 

Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062969651
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	7,561
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sue Miller is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hometown:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

November 29, 1943

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Radcliffe College, 1964; M.A.T., Wesleyan U., 1965; Ed.M., Harvard U., 1975; M.A. Boston U., 1980

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/01/2020

Miller (The Arsonist) delivers a robust, character-driven examination of the inner workings of a lengthy marriage. Domestic tranquility quickly totters into roiling turmoil as photographer Annie McFarlane struggles with grief after the sudden death of Graham, her bookstore-owning husband of almost 30 years. When Annie met Graham on the opening night of his shop in Harvard Square, each was coming off a disastrous first marriage. Annie never really loved Alan, a handsome preppy filled with contempt for others, including her, and she left him. Graham’s first marriage was an open one (“It had been that era”), but his prodigious affairs were too much for Frieda, who left him with their young son. Frieda and Graham remained friends after their divorce, “leading to the lasting complexity of their entwined lives.” Annie feels “doubly betrayed” when she learns that Graham had confided in Frieda about a recent affair. The novel takes on various configurations, swelling with recovered memories of childhood experiences and crackling with revelations of seductive temptations at an artist’s colony. Annie swirls through bitterness and missed opportunities on her way to an acceptance of a “new sorrow,” while Graham’s Rabelaisian, larger-than-life personality is felt even in his absence. The novel is grounded by vibrant prose, vividly portrayed secondary characters, and the resiliency of everlasting love. Miller’s fans will devour this spectacular, powerful return. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

I was completely wrapped up in the beautifully, and often so tenderly observed rollercoaster of grief. Oh my goodness with what exquisite truth Sue Miller writes. An invaluably moving book

Juliet Nicolson

Miller takes on and renews familiar themes of trust and betrayal between husbands and wives, parents and children, and does so with her signature crystalline focus and boundless empathy. The grieving process is hard enough to endure without having to question everything one ever knew about the deceased, an emotional minefield Miller traverses with grace and authenticity that are both haunting and vital.

Starred Review Booklist

Penetrating, intelligent, humane, funny too... And although it's such a sad subject it's somehow not a downbeat book, too smart and powerfully alive for that

Tessa Hadley

"Sue Miller’s engrossing novel is infused with generosity and the complicated kind of love readers will recognize from real life."

New York Times Book Review

"A haunting meditation on love, marriage, fidelity, betrayal, and loss...Miller's work is magnificent and moving. Consider it for your next book club."

AARP Magazine

Miller is one of our most emotionally profound and nuanced writers. . . . The deeper I got into Monogamy, the more it made me think of James Joyce's ‘The Dead,’ about a man whose sense of his marriage is radically changed by one fateful moment. Both narratives end on a snow-silenced night haunted by ghosts — ghosts who are out of reach, but still, maddeningly, messing with the living.

Maureen Corrigan

Monogamy is an old-fashioned, slow burn of a novel that allows readers to dream deeply. . . full of depth and contrast and lush detail.

Richard Russo

The shifting perspectives in the narrative . . . demonstrate how dependent truth is on what is shown to us. Sue Miller’s skillfulness at doing so makes a familiar plot into an original story that reflects the real-life complexity of long relationships. Monogamy demonstrates that Miller remains one of the finest cartographers of the territory of marriage.”

Washington Post

A well-woven book about sexual attraction, family dynamics and the mess they make together. . . . Everyone in this novel hungers for love and loyalty, but no one truly achieves it. And yet after myriad struggles and revelations, those with the most attentive, loving hearts find peace.”                                                 

Minneapolis Star Tribune

In an absorbing and meticulously crafted page-turner…Miller depicts both her characters and their Cambridge environs with such tenderness and precision that many readers will feel regret when Miller’s story, like life itself, reaches its inevitable end.” 

Boston Globe

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.

Cover Interview (Starred Review) BookPage

"A gripping novel." 

Bustle

A sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities—and the absurdities—of love, infidelity, and grief.”                                                                                                                         —O, The Oprah Magazine

the Oprah Magazine O

What makes a good marriage? . . . .The book’s title isn’t the full answer for the couple in this emotionally perceptive novel. . . . The key to a happy marriage, Miller’s moving story suggests, lies in just this: two people opening themselves up to one another – like inviting books.

Christian Science Monitor

08/01/2020

In the late 1970s, Graham's first marriage had long ago imploded when his then-wife Frieda decided the open-marriage concept was not for her. Still, they have remained friends, for their own sake, as much as for their child, Lucas. Meanwhile, after Annie's own seven-year marriage ended, she embarked on a long, eventually unsatisfying run of endless casual encounters while pursuing a career in photography. When Annie and Graham meet at the opening of Graham's Cambridge bookstore, the connection is immediate and intense. Tired of their nonmonogamous ways, they marry within the year. Fast-forward to 2008. Their marriage, which was blessed with daughter Sarah, who now lives in California, has been a happy one, filled with joyful intimacy. Then in a careless moment of weakness, Graham embarks on a brief affair that he immediately regrets. Extricating himself isn't going well, as the woman has fallen in love and imagines a future together. Suddenly, before he can make things right, Graham dies. Annie, paralyzed by grief and disbelief at this unexpected loss, is nearly crushed when she accidentally learns of the affair while still in mourning. VERDICT Best-selling novelist Miller (While I Was Gone) unflinchingly examines the scorching pain of love, betrayal, raw grief, and the slow slog to forgiveness and healing. An eyes-wide-open look at the cost of commitment in all its messy permutations. [See Prepub Alert, 3/11/20.]—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Library Journal

2020-06-03
What do we do with bad news of the dead? A near-perfect second marriage is disrupted—first by death, then by posthumous revelations.

Boston bookstore owner Graham McFarlane is such a lovable and forgivable man that the ex-wife he cheated on, Frieda, and her replacement, a photographer named Annie, whom he is also cheating on, are close friends. Woman No. 3 is not going to make it into the circle, though, as Graham dies of a heart attack the day after he stops by her house to break up with her in a fit of uxoriousness and remorse. This death happens fairly early in the book, but since the reader knows about the affair and Annie does not, the first two-thirds of Miller’s 13th novel are infused with a merry narrative tension. That energy dissipates somewhat when Annie eventually finds out about Graham's infidelity. At this point the novel becomes more meditative, sticking close to Annie as she deals with the disorienting feeling that she never really knew the man she deeply loved—and who so clearly loved her—for 30 years. As their daughter, Sarah, describes her “Rabelaisian” father, “He was big, in every way. A lover of life. And kind.…He made people happy, without even trying.” Of course the last thing Annie wants is for Graham’s children, or anyone else, to know what she now knows. Miller’s skill at depicting the intricacies of marriage, parenting, and domestic life, the atmosphere of the independent bookstore, and the pleasures of flowers, wine, and food (a craving for split pea soup with ham and dill, served with “a loaf of dark rye [from] Formaggio,” lingers still) makes this book charming and inviting in a way that is somewhat at odds with its sorrowful impetus.

A thoughtful and realistic portrait of those golden people who seem to have such enviable lives.

Kirkus Reviews

The shifting perspectives in the narrative . . . demonstrate how dependent truth is on what is shown to us. Sue Miller’s skillfulness at doing so makes a familiar plot into an original story that reflects the real-life complexity of long relationships. 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. . . . The deeper I got into Monogamy, the more it made me think of James Joyce's ‘The Dead,’ about a man whose sense of his marriage is radically changed by one fateful moment. Both narratives end on a snow-silenced night haunted by ghosts — ghosts who are out of reach, but still, maddeningly, messing with the living.

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