WHILE I WAS GONE

by Sue Miller

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

$24

Joey Becker is very secretive. Considering some of the traumas she has endured, this is quite understandable. She is perhaps the most demure sensual beast ever to have graced the modern novel with her penchant for provocation. As the heroine of Sue Miller's newest novel, While I Was Gone, Jo faces a grave dilemma: how to reconcile her domesticated life as a 52-year-old mother, wife and veterinarian with her sensual fantasies and hippie past. She is fascinated by naked flesh, particularly that of her daughters, her husband and her bar-waitress friends. Unlike her loving husband Daniel, a minister who professes to be "a happy man," Jo is increasingly dissatisfied with her predictable life. Her three grown daughters have left the house, her career no longer provides the excitement it once did and she tires of her responsibilities as the minister's wife.

Suddenly Jo's life is disrupted when Eli Mayhew, an acquaintance from her youthful bohemian days, moves into her town. Together they reminisce about their life in a communal home during the 60s, which had ended abruptly with the tragic murder of one of the house's most beloved roommates. The attraction between Eli and Jo bring forth the issues of betrayal, lust and forgiveness. Add to these themes a couple of shocking revelations and a tear-jerking mother-daughter bonding scene, and While I Was Gone reaches its melodramatic saturation point.

Yet Sue Miller redeems her book in two ways. Her writing style is lovely and unpretentious, and her dramatic encounters are fraught with intelligent psychological insights. While Joey Becker may lack the complexity of, for example, Madame Bovary (although parallels between the two women undeniably exist), overall she is a very well-developed character. Ultimately the juxtaposition of melodrama and intellect give her work the air of a very sophisticated soap opera.

While I Was Gone continues in the style of her earlier novels, The Good Mother and Inventing the Abbotts, using juicy plot and psychological insight to create an engaging read. Above all, readers will discover that it is a memorable work and a relevant commentary on a Baby Boomer's conflict between ideology and reality.