“Monogamy” by Sue Miller

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“She’d wanted to remember everything so she could feel him with her and be comforted by that. She’d sought those memories, they were the balm she needed. And of course they were exactly also the wounds she needed balm for.”

Sue Miller writes beautifully about grief, about what happens after the one we’ve devoted our lives to leaves. Annie and Graham have the kind of relationship their friends swoon over. Graham is the larger-than-life bookstore owner in Cambridge, Massachusetts who is outgoing, loud and welcoming, the kind of man who is most at home in a crowd, who thrives on being seen and heard. Annie is the shy, soft-spoken, seemingly timid photographer who stands comfortably in her husband’s shadow, the yin to his yang. She is the kind of woman that appreciates her husband’s extroverted nature as she would rather observe a room quietly. The couple frequently host dinner parties, a necessity for Graham and the kind of evenings Annie has grown accustomed to. Miller writes, “Love isn’t just what two people have together. It’s what two people make together.”

When Graham suddenly dies in his sleep, Annie is left alone for the first time in thirty years. She is forced to consider who she even is without this towering personality by her side. What should be a slow progression of grief is further complicated by the truth about their marriage. Annie is torn between loving the man she lost and hating the reality she is now forced to navigate alone. Annie examines her relationships with their two adult children. Sarah, Annie and Graham’s only child together, lives in San Francisco and has always related more to her father, finding Annie cold and difficult. Lucas, the son from Graham’s first marriage to Frieda, has a soft spot for Annie, blaming his mother for his parent’s divorce decades prior. Graham had always kept Frieda a part of their family, an oddity that Annie, like everything else, simply grew accustomed to. When the man both women adored is now gone, the man their children idolized is no more, this oddly maintained family searches blindly for how to move forward without the light they’d always relied upon. 

Sue Miller explores the complexity of emotions, how one person’s perception and presence can set the narrative for so many. Is it worth it to completely lose oneself in another human being? And if so, what is one to do when that person is now gone? How does one rebuild a life one can’t imagine living alone? Am I who I thought I was or was I only truly visible through my partner’s lens? Monogamy, a New York Times Book of the Year for 2020, is told through alternating points of view from all the characters and memories from before and during Annie and Graham’s marriage. Miller questions the stories we tell ourselves, how we think things happened, and how we condition ourselves to remember selected versions of events. The death of a family member rattles the cage, and Miller explores how the dust settles around everyone left behind. Sue Miller has written 10 other bestselling novels.