In her still startling debut, The Good Mother, Sue Miller explored the premium we put on passion--and the terrible burden it places on a mother and child. Her fourth novel, While I Was Gone, is another study in familial crime and punishment. But this time, her wife and good mother is accessory to more than emotional malfeasance. Jo Becker has everything a woman could desire: a loving spouse, contented children, and a nice dog or two. When her New England veterinary practice takes on a new client, however, her past comes back to haunt her. Long ago, it seems, Jo had escaped her family and identity for a commune in Cambridge. Her Aquarian illusions came to an abrupt, bloody end when one of her housemates was brutally murdered.
Now this unhappy era returns in the person of Eli Mayhew, who had been the odd man out in Jo's boho household. His appearance is both tantalizing and upsetting: "Inside, I slowed down. I felt numbed. I had two last patients, and then I told Beattie to go home, that I'd close up.... I refiled the last charts, sprayed and wiped the examining table. I reviewed my list of routine surgeries for Wednesday. All the while I was thinking of Eli Mayhew, and of Dana and Larry and Duncan and me, and our lives in the house. Of the horrible way it had all ended." Sue Miller's fine novel is a penetrating--and sensuous--portrait of a woman besieged by her conscience. While I Was Gone also demonstrates that in the face of distance and betrayal, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing indeed.
When Oprah announced this as her latest pick, I was happy because this book has been sitting in my bookcase for over a year waiting for me to read it. I finished it in two days and was happy I finally had the impetus to read a Sue Miller offering. She is a gifted and talented writer but in this book she gives you a main character, Jo Becker, who you love at times and want to strangle at others. It's terrible to say but during the book I kept saying to myself, "what a jerk she is."
I know that's not a great descriptive word but it fits. This is a character who always thinks there is something better around the corner and although she's been married for 25 years, wanderlust is lurking around every corner. While devoted at times (to animals), I found her shallow both in the way she treated her husband's profession as well as her daughters. Over the years, Jo had lived a kind of quirky lifestyle and 25 years later, an old friend comes back into her life and wreaks havoc. The unfortunate thing is that it didn't have to be this way but wonderful Jo allowed it to be. For anyone who has lived through the 60's or even thought about free, communal living and is now living in just the opposite lifestyle, you will probably find this book as page-turning as I did. I felt that I was rushing the book because I wanted to see how it would end. This is not your typical Oprah dysfunctional family book set in the South -- rather it is set in the North but a bit dysfunctional all the same. Definitely worth the read.
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