Author Description

Product Description At the age of seventy-two, Lily Roberts became a national celebrity on writing her first book - a spiritual memoir. But her new-found fame was not well received by her son Alan and wayward daughter Clary, both profoundly disturbed by Lily's intimate revelations about her married life. Ten years on their resentment is still raw, and when Lily, now ill and frail, comes to live with Alan, the bitter legacy of their very different memories threatens to upset the precarious balance of their lives. From Booklist How does an author tackle the issue of aging, so as to incorporate a generation's responsibility, a family's loss, and a person's life reflections? Miller deftly works through these issues in this story of famous writer Lily Maynard's battle with Parkinson's disease. When she moves in with her son Alan and his wife Gaby, their lives are irrevocably altered. In addition to the tedium of Lily's daily care and the interruption of their troubled marital relationship, they must bear witness to the loss of her craft, not just the physical act of writing, but her mental acuity, her ability to imagine and relate. With a director's eye for movement and angles of perception, Miller unreels the story like celluloid on screen. One has the overall sense of witnessing a cinematic dinner party where much is discussed and not discussed, where we are privy to characters' internal thoughts and perceptions as well as external conversations, where the focus of the lens--or narrator--shifts fluidly from person to person, creating an insightful representation of relationships, with their judgments, miscommunications, and tenuous connections. As other characters enter the scene with their probing questions and depart, what is created and destroyed, what is shared and withheld, and what is revised and protected is memory, a prime motivator for living and an often unwelcome, but revelatory, guest in the process of grieving.Janet St. John About the Author Sue Miller is the author of the books While I Was Gone, The Good Mother, Family Pictures, For Love, Inventing The Abbots, The World Below, The Story of My Father and Lost in the Forest. She lives in Boston. Review 'Wonderful - rich, intelligent and moving... this is the fiction we need' Los Angeles Times 'Miller depicts her characters with grace and elegance, enriching their perceptions with strands of connecting images and intertwined history... A very moving book' New York Times Book Review 'As in the work of Jane Austen, Sue Miller's tale of a proud elderly woman who visits and bedevils her son is genuinely adult fiction' Chicago Tribune 'Miller's skill at dissecting relationships is as well honed here as ever' Newsweek From the Publisher The author of the bestsellersThe Good Mother,Family Pictures, andFor Love once again goes right to the heart of her readers' concerns in a moving novel of changing family relationships: estrangements and reconciliations, loss and enduring connections. From the Back Cover The Distinguished Guest chronicles the visit of an ailing woman to her son and his family. Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and famous for writing, at age seventy-two, a memoir about the dissolution of her marriage years earlier and the spiritual and political crises that precipitated that rift. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. Her extended stay with her architect son, Alan Maynard, while she awaits relocation to a retirement community, sets the stage for conflicts, reflection, and new understanding. The visit raises questions for Alan about his relation to his mother and to his past, about the choices he has made in his own life, about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief. The story moves between Lily and Alan and among others - Alan