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by: Sue Miller
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345443281
ISBN: 0345443284
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1999-02
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: May 12, 2000
Sales Rank: 27317
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
“Riveting . . . While I Was Gone [celebrates] what is impulsive in human nature.”
–The New York Times
“Miller weaves her themes of secrecy, betrayal, and forgiveness into a narrative that shines.”
–Time
Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the person she once was. As she is pulled farther from her present life, her husband, and her world, Jo struggles against becoming enveloped by her past and its dark secret.
“[While I Was Gone] swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman’s complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies–and fears–about another man. . . . [Miller writes] well about the trials of faith.”
–The New York Times Book Review
“Quietly gripping . . . Jo shines steadily as the flawed and thoroughly modern heroine. As in her 1986 novel, The Good Mother, Miller shows how impulses can fracture the family.”
–USA Today
“Marvelous . . . poignant . . . powerful.”
–Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer
Amazon.com Review:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 2000: 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. --Winnie Wheaton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - While I Was Gone
If you have a lot in common with the narrator (professional class woman/vaguely dissatisfied with everything), AND you don't like to think while you read, you may enjoy this book.
Normally, I would give a book 2 stars just for being able to reach people (which this does), but I can't because it was full of pretentious language and meandering descriptions/anecdotes which didn't really contribute to the plot or the characters. Also, it was poorly researched.
If you like reading ... Read More
Rating:  - 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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Baby Boomer Cliches
Occasionally I pick up the books my wife's book club has been reading, and I've enjoyed some of their selections. Not this time.
It was impossible to feel anything but dislike for Jo, the main character. She's just your typical self-absorbed Boomer baggage from her wild past. For 20-plus years, she's had a nauseatingly perfect life, with her little Monday adventures with her husband and her steady veterinarian practice. Even her ne'er do well daughter who is a roadie with a skanky rock band just happens ... Read More
Rating: - 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 ... Read More
Rating: - Disappointing.
I was really disappointed in this book and reminded not to assume a book is good because it has a lot of blurbs. This seemed more like a first novel to me. While it contained some scenes and snippets that were well-written, they seemed forced together. I never believed what the narrator was feeling towards her old housemate and it didn't help that he sounded like a jerk the whole time anyway. Instead of the story flowing, I felt that the author just wrote her way out of each situation. Really not good, and I was disappointed ... Read More
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