Rating  - The Senator's Wife
This story is filled with some great twists. However, the sexual content was too much for my taste, which distracted from the story for me. I read it for a book club, but it was not a book I would recommend to friends. I got it out of the house as soon as I was done with it, so my daughter would not stumble onto it and read it! I think there are better choices for pleasure reading out there.
Rating  - secret lives of politicians
I thought this book was a very light, easy read. The characters although "quirky" were well developed and had interesting personalities. I am willing to bet it's a pretty accurate rendering of a politician's life, including the scandals. I'm still not sure why the Senator's wife stuck with him, she had issues all her own, however it did help to create an interesting story. It also provided topics for discussion for our bookclub.
Rating  - The Senators Wife
This book is very well written, a good story with some strange unexpected twists. While I enjoyed the book, it is not something to read if you are on the edge of being depressed, or you think your husband may be a snake!
Rating  - The Master of My Own Destiny?
I was surprised to read the review by Connie Schultz, the wife of a senator, who said "There are so many assumptions about marriages like mine. What might Miller's be?"
Miller does not write about events; she writes about our responses to events. Miller does not tell us what we should do; she merely tells us what she thinks someone might do.
The measure of Miller's talent is not in whether or not she reflects who you or I are, but in her ability to illuminate human behavior. And if her illumination is full and bright, we might actually see something from which we can learn.
I think "The Senator's Wife" is one of the best of Miller's works, challenged only by "Lost in the Forest."
The first event of the book is the purchasing of half of a duplex by Meri and her husband Nathan. The other half is owned by Senator Tom Naughton and his wife Delia. We quickly learn that Nathan is controlled and controlling, Meri is unsure of the marriage or her direction in life. From Meri;s point-of-view we first are introduced to Delia Naughton, the perfect senator's wife. What we see in this section is the readjustment of the lives of Meri, Nathan, and Delia to the presence of one another. There are the little things like the awareness each household has of the other on the other side of the dividing wall. There is the relative importance (iconic and emotional) that each person has in the psyche of the others. And even the absent senator, Tom, becomes a presence in the course of the story.
It is no spoiler to say that Tom is a philanderer; this is made clear early on. Nor is the story really about Tom. Nowhere is his charisma shown except in the response of a few characters to him. Tom is who Tom is -- and that is core to the story. It is how the others see him, accept their own perceptions or reject them, respond both intellectually and emotionally to who Tom is that illuminates who they are.
It is disappointing that Connie Schultz and so many readers measure the book against their own experiences. For myself, the book was an experience. The characters were in essence true to themselves, including the very human condition of not always really knowing themselves or responding the way they (and we) thought they would respond. Certainly there is no harm in a reader asking him- or herself "would I do that?" But when the answer is "no", the next questions should be "would anyone do that" and "why would they do that." Miller plays fair with her answers to those questions.
The question most people will probably focus on is, would anyone act like Delia after she is forced to acknowledge her husband's infidelity? To me, Delia was absolutely consistent as a character. And part of that consistency was her own failure to completely understand her own emotions or her motivations. The event that leads to this insight on the part of the reader (although not completely on the part of Delia) is the only really contrived event of the book. It is contrived not because it is impossible but because it leads to too many character insights at the same time. Far better the event took place without the climax and that instead the final climax comes at the end of another less potent event. Life forces conincidence upon us far more than one has reason to expect, but readers detest it.
All of the above being said, it is important to point out that this is anything but a one-theme book. It is rich with characters and relationships. Delia's relationship with her three children and particularly with her controlling daughter Nancy is important and true. What aging mother -- living alone for any reason -- is not aware of the possibility for conflict with a controlling child who only has "her best interests" at heart? And there is Susan's relationship with her husband Nathan that is as telling in its anticlimax and how that is achieved as any of the more dramatic scenes.
I liked all the characters, finding myself shifting loyalties at various times only to end up caring for all of them again. The greatest gift of Miller's writing is the ambiguities she allows to stay in the text -- it is up to us to look for the deepest truths and answers within ourselves.
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