LIT REVIEW: Sue Miller's The Lake Shore Limited

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LIT REVIEW: Sue Miller's The Lake Shore Limited

POSTED: Friday, April 2, 2010, 7:20 PM

Filed Under: Arts Books

Knopf, 288 pp., $25.95, April 6

Revolving around the lives and perspectives of four characters, Sue Miller's The Lake Shore Limited delves into the murky depths of grief and the occasional inappropriate emotions it evokes. Set in contemporary times, the story unfolds with the backdrop of 9/11 and moves on to the Obama-McCain electoral race. This setting is established through oftentimes-tedious recounts of conversations, with the real meat of the plot being streamed through a play titled — yes — The Lake Shore Limited. The most interesting, though not necessarily sympathetic, character is the playwright, Billy, who penned the play to deal with her conflicted emotions following the death of her boyfriend, Gus, in the terrorist attacks. While viewed as the grieving widow by Gus' sister Leslie, Billy was, in fact, contemplating a break-up right before his death. Spiraling out of these feelings of complicated grief and emotional dishonesty, two other main characters, Rafe and Sam, deal with feeling bound to their ailing wives. Though the plot is not always engrossing, Miller is successful in portraying the complexity of emotion and human interaction. Ignoring the unsubtle comments on fate, readers can be satisfied by the honest depictions of people behaving in the most backward-seeming ways in the face of grief. RELATED >> City Paper's BQ Book Reviews, April 1, 2010

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