How much do you really know about your nearest and dearest? That’s the plot of this stunning book. Annie is married to bookseller Graham. He is larger than life, funny, convivial and has made a mistake – but is keen to resolve it for the better. But when something happens and Annie is left to pick up the pieces, she wonders how well she really knew her husband. The surprise happens towards the beginning of the book, leaving you wondering how it’ll continue. But the plot picks up as the author deals with themes of family, secrets and enduring love, even if you don’t necessarily like that person currently. I found it very moving and truthful, not a sugar-coated look at marriage.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I've been sitting on this review for a few weeks as I wanted to think a bit more about whether I actually liked this book so I'm going to break it down simply.

The good

The setting was captured perfectly, I've never been to Cambridge, MA but I felt like I could have been.

I also liked the day to day domesticity and the descriptions of the house etc. Maybe that's a weird thing to like but it made it feel real

This book achieves the rare feat of seamless transitions into different character points of view. It was really skilfully done.

The portrayals of grief, jealousy and the messiness of long term relationships and extended families was captured really well.

The not so good

I kept forgetting who the female characters were. Their characters were all rather bland and sometimes they all blended into each other because they weren't terribly interesting.

I felt a bit like I'd read this book before. I had a really strong sense of deja vu and drove myself crazy wondering if I read a book similar to it that had the same plot premise/unexpected twist at the start. Or was there a movie with a similar chain of events? Maybe I'm losing the plot or maybe it just felt a bit similar to other books where a seemingly beautiful and intelligent woman loses her god damn mind over a guy who aint shit. 

An interesting enough read but it didn't bring anything new to the table for me.

I cannot praise this novel highly enough. It's rare to find a novel that is so engrossing, heartbreaking and beautiful, whilst at the same time, being so incredibly sharp. Sue Miller is an expert at writing the minutest details about relationships and feelings. Here, she tackles death within a marriage and the consequent secrets that emerge. 

Graham, a bookstore owner who has been married before, is married to Annie. When he dies suddenly, Annie is left to deal with the fallout of all he has left behind, including finding out about his affair, and dealing with her own reaction to that. Miller could have skirted around a lot of the details, for sure, but the fact that she did not, to me, makes this novel an absolute triumph. The pace of the writing is perfect, and what Miller does is put into words feelings that seem impossible to convey. It's the insight about what love and family is, and what love and family do, that forge a very specific connection between the reader and the text. Extraordinary, for sure.

Highly recommended.

My grateful thanks to the publishers and the NetGalley for the early copy.

Monogamy by Sue Miller is one of those books you have high expectations from due to its theme, title and a gorgeous cover.

At the core of the story is Graham, a genial bookstore owner, whose joie-de-vivre manifests itself in his love for food, friends, books and women. He is twice married and continues to have relationships outside of his marriage which he then also openly discusses with his first wife, Frieda.

While the premise of the book has so much potential, where it started to fall flat for me is, how none of the female characters, felt well etched out. Graham’s personality towers over Annie and Frieda’s lives and without him, they seem to fade into the background. Annie’s righteous anger with Graham over his indiscretions, is also put to rest rather too quickly, after we learn about her own experience outside her marriage. There’s some pacing and depth issues in this story. I struggled with the total lack of an authorial voice or character led perspective on what these characters journeys mean for the nature of relationships. As a result, the book ended up being a timid attempt at a powerful theme for me.

This is a beautiful book, fabulously written, with monogamy (or lack of) only one of the topics explored, along with marriage, divorce, family, bereavement, work and so on. Annie and Graham have had a long and happy marriage and lead full and vibrant lives with friends, interests, good food and satisfying work. Both are affected by a previous marriage and relationships with his son and their daughter impact on their lives for better and for worse. When everything suddenly changes, the revelation of an indiscretion casts a different light on what has gone before- but is it really of any deep significance? Sue Miller’s characters really come to life, they are flawed but loveable and she really illustrates  what makes them who they are and why they behave as they do. She writes with compassion and empathy about love, betrayal and, especially, grief, which is palpable, but also about the solace of memory and shared experience. I don’t know why she is not better known in the UK, she should be up there with Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout, and I envy anyone who still has her back catalogue to discover.

I have loved Sue Miller’s books – always wise and insightful – for many years and ‘Monogamy’ doesn’t disappoint. 
For Graham, fulfilment means being able to have his cake and eat it: matrimony first with Frieda and then with Annie, but with no reservations about embarking on a series of affairs. 
Annie seems the perfect foil for him. He is rambunctious, a bon viveur, the life and soul of their many parties and loved by all who meet him. She is poised, reserved and reflective, with even her own daughter finding her emotionally distant.
At first sight, their New England life seems enviable: a photographer and a successful bookshop owner, the coolest couple on the block, with a wide circle of friends and harmonious relationships across Graham's blended families. But when the worst happens, Annie has to deal with the double-whammy of Graham’s actual and emotional absence. 
Every family has its secrets, we’re told, and Annie is felled when she discovers a humdinger of a secret! (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here!)
Sue Miller’s writing is elegant, understated, never showy and yet the book contains one of the most perceptive descriptions of loss and grief that I’ve ever read. This doesn’t mean it’s a hard slog, far from it. At times, it’s seems as if we’re privileged eavesdroppers into long, gossipy conversations. The characters and the interactions between the different members of the family are utterly believable.  
I already want to read ‘Monogamy’ again to enjoy the many nuances I have surely missed first time around.

It has been a while since I read a book by Sue Miller. It is really frustrating when you find you have read all the books by an author you particularly like. I feel as though I have been given a second chance and will use it to read all the books by her I have missed in between. Monogamy quickly  draws you into Annie's world and you feel privileged to be there to share her highs and lows with a supporting cast of strong women and flawed men. You will be sad to leave it so soon.

#Monogamy #NetGalley

What an elegant, well written book. Dealing with grief and coming to terms with a sudden death and not being able to discuss hidden secrets with your lost partner. I enjoyed this book although I found it a little slow; I am sure this was deliberate due to the topic of the story.

A really well observed book about how we can never really know what our loved ones are really thinking, especially has we don't even fully understand and know ourselves. It also explores unintenede effects our own background and ways of being have on our beloved children and their own relationships. If you are looking for an exciting ride this is not the book for you, it is slow at times and digs deep into the observation and effects of thoughts and feelings.

The book revolves around Annie, a pretty small woman in her fifties married to a very tall, large, gregarious man called Graham in his early sixties (at the outset of the book)..They have a grown up daughter , Sarah and  Graham has a son from his first marriage , Lucas. Annie and Graham met at his bookstore opening when she was going through a casual sex phase following divorce. Graham is also divorced, he had several affairs, in the spirit of exploring an "open marriage" which his first wife, Freida couldn't cope with. Like his body he is a man of large appetites for life. He has recently "slipped" into having an affair with a recent divorcee and his marriage to Annie is suffering as she is aware that he is keeping something from her. Then he dies unexpectedly and the narrative starts to explore in details all the extended family's relationships, resentments about their childhoods and romantic partnerships. The book is very well written. I really  enjoyed spending time with Annie and her family.

So many books are written about the early days of marriage but few authors capture what it is to see it through to the bitter end. Sue Miller's perfect, graceful sentences disguise so many insights and observations that it's almost possible to miss them in the rush to find out what happened with Graham and how Annie will possibly survive the rewriting of her marriage. One to read first for the story and then to re-read at leisure and marvel at how real these people feel.

Sue Miller is a writer who knows how to dig deep into emotional places and she is certainly doing that in this book with a spread of fascinating characters. You might wonder why it’s called Monogamy, since only a few of them are what you might call monogamous but, as you work through the book, it becomes a linking theme.

At the centre of it all is Annie McFarlane and her relationship with, and then marriage to, a bookshop owner called Graham. Graham was previously married to Frieda and she is both the mother of his son Lukas and still a friend to the extent that she has also become a confidante of Annie’s. Annie and Graham have a daughter, Sarah.

And, monogamy? Annie got married very young and when her first marriage broke up she went on the razzle with numerous partners. Then, she met Graham…

Graham used to be married to Frieda and they had a kind of free-loving open relationship but Graham was more open than Frieda and she got fed up with it when she had a child so they divorced. Graham isn’t quite monogamous either when married to Annie and that causes quite a lot of unexpected stuff to hit the fan after some unexpected events and, then, everyone has to cope with that!

Things happen which cause everybody to re-evaluate where they are and what they’ve been doing for about thirty years and that might sound familiar to quite a few readers! What Annie thought was a trendy, independent life as a photographer might have been just a bit of a hobby compared to her marriage to the bookshop owner and the huge cultural context surrounding it – his friends, shop activities and the rest. You also have to ask what Frieda, the most monogamous of them all, think she’s doing having a half-baked friendly relationship with her ex-husband, and then you might wonder why Annie thinks that’s okay. It self-evidently isn’t…

I don’t think that Sue Miller is giving up on monogamy, she’s just pointing out the awful difficulties associated with that and the alternatives while, maybe, pointing a finger at the children of the 60s and their grand failure to sort all that stuff out. Here, that is mostly left to the children, Sarah and Lukas dealing with their dysfunctional mothers and trying to work out their own pathways.

All this complexity makes for a great read. The only reservation is the way the novel is structured which some readers will find hard going with little differentiation between what is happening to the characters now and the rambling back story but, maybe, that’s how Annie’s memory works. Just don’t expect a straightforward narrative!

Sue Miller has a clinical writing style and conjures up events and feelings in detail but you get the impression that she wrestled with these characters and where they were going and possibly that makes for a more challenging and involving read. Is monogamy really possible? Is it time to take a lover? You’ll have to decide!

Another beautiful read from Sue Miller. Considering that she started her career in her forties, Miller must be getting on a bit, and towards the end of the book the pace slows to such an extent that it seems even she is losing interest. When Graham, the larger-than-life husband at the centre of a love triangle (square? hexagon)? dies, some of the life also goes out of the book - but the writing is as stunning as ever, and some of the vignettes (a grandmother getting to know a new baby, the dementing woman next door, the inner life of Graham's ex-wife) are just beautiful. This book covers some similar territory to Miller's Lost in the Forest (second marriages, one of the characters owns a bookshop, children and step-children) and even the theme of her compelling first novel, The Good Mother, comes up in a subplot about 'inappropriate touching,' that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Annie, Graham's second wife, also had an indiscretion - I felt a bit sorry for her as it was such a dud one, and would rather she met the woman who she experienced a childhood trauma with who was part of the 'inappropriate touching' plot - the guy was so awful that I couldn't help but feel the other potential meeting would have been more enlightening. Still, at least she got some while Graham was behaving badly. I love the new-look cover, but out of Miller's considerable set of novels, I'd probably steer readers toward her earlier work.

The premise of this novel  is one that I have always found intriguing in fiction - i.e. how well do we really know anyone else, even the ones we have lived with for years - and the effects of time on our memories after an untimely death. This is a painstakingly in-depth, almost forensic dissection of how a person's view of their relationship or marriage is altered via the prism of time. Fans of Anne Tyler's character-driven novels may also enjoy Sue Miller's similar style of domestic fiction.

Interesting pacing in this book - it began slowly and seemed to get even slower, almost to the point of ennui, but then the central dramatic event in the story picked up the pace and the rest of the book was spent coming down from that, towards a harmonious ending. The writing is gentle and satisfying, but tends a little towards navel gazing at times - nonetheless, Miller shows a fine understanding of the psychology of  relationships, within a marriage, and the important relationships that surround it. Overall this was a satisfying, sometimes dreamlike read, with a depth that keeps it in mind long after the reading is finished.

Monogamy or the lack of it.
I found the beginning of this book quite interesting even though it was predictable.
But once one of the main characters died unexpectedly, the dialogue became for me turgid, like wading through treacle. I switched to speed reading mode just to get to the end of the book and see if there were any surprises or twists to the tale. But alas there were not.

In these turbulent times a Sue Miller book is salve for the soul.  Her gentle narration guides you through the ups and downs of a marriage, the tightrope of parenting and a navigation of grief.  Like all of her books this is an immensely satisfying take which I wholeheartedly recommend.

I love Miller’s novels - the domesticity and relationship stories seem simple yet draw you in with their honesty,  complexity and truth.
This novel is no exception: the story of Annie and Graham’s marriage fans out into something that questions the very nature of relationships and monogamy.
There is a plot twist - I won’t spoil it - that leaves you reeling. 
What is a good marriage? How can we forgive when the other person is not there to question?
I was slowly drawn in to this elegant portrait. Sometimes the characters felt a little predictable and manufactured, but generally I found them nuanced and believable.
Recommended to those who like beautifully observed fiction in the style of Ann Tyler or Margaret Forster.

Monogamy by Sue Miller is an enjoyable novel about a second marriage and a blended family and an experience of bereavement.

Monogamy is an excellent portrayal of marriage. Graham, a large man, is married first to Frieda and then to Annie. Graham has outsized appetites. He loves life, he loves the bookshop that he runs, he loves food and he loves women. Despite being married to Annie, he hangs on to Frieda and keeps her close. Although Graham is not the central character in Monogamy, his presence is felt in every scene. He dominates. Everyone else is defined by their relationship to him, including his children. It makes for a fascinating story, but I wished his extended damily could have broken free from his loving embrace, Four stars.