personally i cant see me hitting it off with someone who says 'one' instead of you or me or we.

The plot was set up well enough - couple moves next to aging woman who has been 'the senators wife' for ages, in that she has watched her senator husband cheat on her repeatedly and stuggled with standing by him or bolting - meanwhile the couple is a lot younger and obsessed with the senators wife (she is so graceful, so beautiful, so classy yap yap yap. This book was one of those - wow it would be so good if she would just x,y,z and the rest of the alphabet. The first word that comes to mind is 'uncomfortable.' This might have to do with reading it on the absolute most hellish plane ride ever, but it also had to do with the general content. Here are all the things for which Sue Miller has always been beloved-the complexity of experience precisely rendered, the richness of character and emotion, the superb economy of style-fused with an utterly engrossing story that has a great deal to say to women, and men, of all ages. What keeps people together, even in the midst of profound betrayal? How can a journey imperiled by, and sometimes indistinguishable from, compromise and disappointment culminate in healing and grace? Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, both reckoning with the contours and mysteries of marriage, one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun. Delia’s husband’s chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong. Delia Naughton-wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton-is Meri’s new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Meri is 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.

The author of the iconic The Good Mother and the best-selling While I Was Gone brings her marvelous gifts to a powerful story of two unconventional women who unexpectedly change each other’s lives. 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 Senator's Wife by Jen Lyon