Jacqueline Kent

I think she did a pretty good job because the way she writes about grief, it's one of those really, really difficult subjects.

to write about what I like about Sue Miller I think is that she doesn't doesn't do the cliches she talks about Graham and yes she she thinks about him in a certain way and we have got a feeling before he dies we know that there are ambivalences in in Graham but we kind of still like him

And she obviously, she feels betrayed, as you say, and she feels furious when she finds out what's been going on.

One of the things I really like about this book is the way she finds out.

It's very nicely done, how she finds out about his infidelity.

It's unexpected and it's well done.

It's nothing as corny as finding a letter or anything like that.

It's just incredible.

the way you might think that you would.

And the interesting other thing about it is the way she accepts it or doesn't accept it.

And I think that is very clever of Sue Miller because she brings in all of Annie's ambivalent emotions all the way through.

And by the end, you understand them all and you understand Graham a lot better.

But it's not one of these taking sides kinds of novels.

It just looks at the ambivalence of feeling and how in grief you can feel

certain things at the same time.

You can feel furious and loving and how well you're doing, which is one of the things that Annie does.

She feels that she's managing this and it's a little bit of self-congratulation and then she discovers that really these things have happened and she falls in a heap.

But all those emotions together in rapid succession, it is not an easy thing to do in a novel and I think that Sue Miller's done it really well.

That is nicely done.

And having other people who don't have the same kind of interiority as the character of Annie does, looking at the daughter and the first wife and the woman next door who are all devastated by Graham in very different ways.