"Monogamy," by Sue Miller

Sue Miller’s novels are reliably “good reads,” and I don’t mean that in a condescending way at all. I have read all of her novels and her book of short stories, starting with the bestseller (later a movie) “The Good Mother” (1986). She is one of the writers that the minute I see she has a new book out, I make a note to get it as soon as possible. She writes her best about women’s lives, loves, and families. Her new novel, “Monogamy” (Harper, 2020), is in this vein as well. As the title suggests, the novel focuses on a couple, Annie and Graham, and is mainly told from the point of view of Annie. It is a good marriage, one that others admire and are drawn to. Graham is a big, amiable, sociable man who owns a bookstore. Annie is an art photographer, although her work has gone a bit by the wayside as she tends to the needs of her husband and (now adult) children. They are both friendly with Graham’s first wife, Freida, the mother of Graham’s son Lucas. Graham and Annie have a daughter, Sarah. But then Graham dies (the front flap tells us this, so I am not giving anything away), and Annie finds that not all is as she had thought it was. She then struggles with reconciling the strong and wonderful relationship the couple had in many ways with the part that was secret. So the novel is “about” many things: marriage and the way every marriage has some unknown parts; parenting, and accepting the difficulties that one’s children may have despite everything parents do to protect and help them; what women often give up for their marriages and children; the varieties of families and friendships (Frieda’s still being such a close part of Graham and Annie’s family); the style of living of a certain strata of professional and artistic people in Boston and Cambridge (and perhaps in general of “the Coasts”), and so much more. So much to think about, so much to relate to, so much to admire about the recognition of, and acceptance of, the “grey areas” of most marriages, relationships, and lives. Suffice it to say that I finished the novel in two days.