For me this was a quick fairly light read. The main character is in a similar life stage to me so was interesting to see how she thought about her life, loves and choices. The book’s plot itself did not speak to me particularly, however. I just kept feeling like’is this it?’ after 264 pages.

I loved this book! Very well written by Sue Miller, astonishing story. Really makes you think, do you really KNOW anyone?? Everyone has a dark side and what can be unleashed in extreme anger and frustration is quite frightening...

Very slow at times that made an otherwise good story drag.

Wow! I was so moved by this book. There was a twist and turn that I didn’t see coming, but maybe I should have. I might almost be envious of Sue Miller‘s ability to write. There were parts that I had read over and over again because they were so deep and rich. I really felt, what Jo, the main character, was feeling. I will not forget this book.

Okay, okay, I know it's on Oprah's Book Club now, but really, some great books are - don't let your possible distate for Oprah Winfrey deter you from reading this book.
Sue Miller is a wonderful writer, and the story in While I Was Gone is incredibly compelling. I read it in one sitting and ignored chores for it. It's easy to read, conversational, straightforward. It seems for many pages that it's going to be a nostalgic memoir, about a middle-aged woman, in a long, comfortable marriage past its passionate days; a mother and veterinarian, looking back on her college days when she lived in a semi-communal household with a bunch of college friends in the '70s. Then strange things start to happen, and suddenly, it has turned into a bizarre murder mystery, with a shocking revelation when she finds out who did it. I remember getting to that part and actually saying, "Oh my god!" when the big reveal came.
The trick Sue Miller has is that her main character is SO believable. You know a ton of women like her. You may even be one. She's such a normal, flawed yet admirable, totally human person, that when things start getting shockingly weird, it resonates, because it makes you wonder how you would act if you were in the same situation?
I really love reading books which make you feel compassion for people who do horrible things. Like Lolita. It's a difficult trick to pull off, but it's such a humane point of view, and so much more realistic than the good guys/bad guys dichotomy of so many novels. Sometimes good people do really bad things, and the line is not so far away as we like to think... it's a great book and a quick read.
I find it odd that people will put a book down simply because the main character does something they don't approve of. I don't think Sue Miller was justifying, or advocating, infidelity at all in While I Was Gone. In fact, I believe she was trying to show how precious, yet fragile, marriage can be: Marriage is not the fairy tale it is sometimes made out to be. It can be dull, frustrating, crushing. It's real life, and passion fades, and you find yourself in a comfortable companionship with many rewards, but like the protagonist in this book, many married people find themselves wistfully wishing something exciting would happen - missing the flush of attraction, the ego-rush of being desired. That doesn't make the protagonist a bad person; it makes her real. And, in the end, she doesn't sleep with Eli - the whole point, to me, was how close she came - that she WOULD have done it, she would have thrown away her marriage, which would have devastated her, just to feel young and excited and wanted again. I think this is something we can all relate to. It's a nice fantasy, to think that you meet The One, marry him, and never ever miss being flirted with or desired or in passionate love. And one of the most interesting and realistic things in the book, to me, is that she would have done it, if she hadn't found out what she did, about Eli. Her husband, when she confesses her attraction, says it exactly - he tells her that one of the hardest things is that she has put him in the position of being grateful that Eli did such a horrible thing, so that he got to keep his marriage. And she is so relieved that she didn't throw her marriage away. Far from advocating infidelity, it's really more of a cautionary tale about the danger of taking the familiarity of marriage for granted.
I mean, if you don't want to read books about real people leading real lives, there are plenty of romance novels out there.

The seven college students came from all different walks of life. Jo, Eli, Dana, Duncan, Sara, John, and Larry may have met completely by chance, but their differences were what initially bonded them together in friendship. They did almost everything together - and were extremely close with each other - until a brutal crime tore everyone apart and the friends went their separate ways.

Jo Becker's life honestly couldn't get any better. She lives a comfortable life with her own successful veterinary practice; doing something that gives her an enormous sense of satisfaction and purpose. She has been happily married to her minister husband Daniel for almost thirty years, and the couple has three vivacious daughters. This loving family lives in a beautiful house somewhere in a tiny, picturesque town in suburban Massachusetts.

Despite living such a perfect life, Jo nevertheless finds herself strangely dissatisfied with her current situation. Her mind is periodically invaded by instances of persistent restlessness and she feels somewhat disconnected from her own life at times. The strange feeling of restlessness intensifies when Jo takes on a new client who brings her into contact with someone from her past. Eli Mayhew was an attractive, mysterious, twenty-something when Jo first knew him; and his sudden reappearance in her life brings back Jo's own long-buried memories of her troubled former life.

Her subsequent fascination with that particular period of her life, as well as with the horrific crime that marked its inevitable conclusion will begin to consume more and more of Jo's time and attention. Although her avid determination to solve the crime that so utterly devastated her past could ultimately define her future; Jo's obsession with discovering the truth about what happened in the past will eventually estrange her from everything she holds dear in the present. As she and Eli are drawn closer together again, Jo will be forced to tell lie after lie to protect herself and her family from this mysterious man...and from the repercussions of a horrible secret deeply buried somewhere in the past - somewhere within another lifetime.

I must say that I absolutely loved this book. The story was so well-written and intriguing for me to read. I appreciated that it flowed along so easily; in my opinion, it was was well-paced and held my interest all the way through. Although Sue Miller is a relatively new author for me, I am delighted to say that I have several other books by this author sitting on my bookshelf already.

I was just telling Mareena how much I was enjoying reading this book and how I thought that it would make such a good movie. She did a little bit of research, and told me that there had been a television movie made of the book back in 2004. Apparently, the movie starred Kirstie Alley and Bill Smitrovich. Despite never having seen the film adaptation of this book, I would nevertheless give While I Was Gone by Sue Miller a definite A+!

Added 2/14/11.
I started reading this book 9/7/11 and finished around 9/16/11.
This book kept me reading. It's the 4rd book I've read by Sue Miller. Each one seems better than the last.

This book, _While I was Gone_, isn't a mystery book but there's a bit of mystery in it which keeps you reading.

Below is a quote from the book which gives us some food for thought:
p.266: "Perhaps it's best to live with the possibility that around any corner, at any time, may come the person who reminds you of your own capacity to surprise yourself... ... Who reminds you of the distances we have to bridge to begin to know anything about one another. Who reminds you that what seems to be -- even about yourself -- may not be."

The main character in the book, told in the first-person, does a lot of reflecting about herself and others... about their personalities, their temperaments and other aspects of their natures. It's this psychological aspect of the author's books which I enjoy.

2 1/2. On the one hand I enjoyed reading it - the prose is strong if conventional, almost conversational, part gossip part confession. On the other hand, I didn't find either the plot or the characters' motivations particularly persuasive. I suppose in part it is the limitation of a first person narration; but I didn't find the narrator that persuasive either.

After reading many of the reviews already posted here, I find I cannot add anything more enlightening as to the story line. If you like good writing, you will like this book.

I am a man (husband / father) and, as such, I find it interesting that while many of the reviewers (especially females) here on Goodreads sound as if they are judging Jo / Felicia negatively as cowardly for running “away” from her life; I can somewhat relate to to the sometimes overwhelming urge to spontaneously recreate ones life. I have notice that urge is often times related to reconnecting with someone from my past. I can understand how one might think they are in fact running “to” a new life more aligned with their hopes and dreams. Although I neither condone nor condemn those that give into that urge, I find it interesting that many reviewers here seem to have little compassion for Jo and, in fact seem to have strong feeling against her. It makes me wonder how many of them secretly envy Jo’s choices and her wherewithal to actually act on them. Just a little food for thought: Let those without sin...... etc.

One final closing thought since I found myself using a bible reference above: Each of the Jesus’s followers walked away from their former lives and professions in order to follow their passions as did Christ himself. I wonder how my fellow reviewers feel about that?

Eugene Boyle

January 1oth, 2013

http://www.eugeboy.com

I'm two-thirds of the way through and am not sure how I feel about this book. I think I'm hitting a slump with it, the action is stalling and I'm not sure where it is going. It has been interesting reading about a mother/wife who is at the point in her life where her daughters are grown and moved out of the house. It makes me think about how I will handle that stage of my life someday.

UPDATE: A year or so ago I read a book by Sue Miller called The World Below. I really enjoyed that book, and was eager to read more by her. While I Was Gone was thought-provoking, but I can't say that I liked it as much. It did cause me to think introspectively about my own life, which is always good I think. But I had a hard time connecting to the main character, and the ending left me feeling unsatisfied.

I haven’t rated this book because I legitimately cannot decide how I feel about it... but I think I mostly hate it. Mild spoilers ahead:

1. It was so predictable who killed Dana.
2. I don’t feel that Miller trusts her readers to pick up on subtleties— she would show something about a character through their actions, then have Jo spell it out in her thoughts.
3. I HATE JO. I think Miller was going for a protagonist who was “relatably flawed,” but I just found Jo intensely unlikeable— and not in the cool Gillian Flynn antihero way.
3a. Jo consistently makes choices with no regard for anyone but herself, and never takes any accountability or bears appropriate consequences. I could almost forgive running away from her first marriage because she was so young, but she hardly seems to even acknowledge that she hurt anyone at all. She constantly excuses herself and glosses everything over with her self-forgiveness.
3b. Did I mention there are no consequences? I got excited toward the end because I thought maybe Jo would be killed for trying to expose Dana’s killer, or that she would somehow be accused and found guilty by mistake, or that Daniel would leave her for intending to cheat on him, or that her daughters would never speak to her again, but NO! She and Daniel just move past it and she learns to “let him not want [her] sometimes. So that when it comes, [she] can love it more.” What kind of malarkey is this? We are left with Jo again receiving forgiveness she does not deserve, and placating herself with the faux-deep notion of appreciating what she has because of the hard things she’s been through (which, by the way, were all exclusively her fault).

4. ...But it made me think, and it made me feel something. The something was mostly rage— at Jo as a character, at the boring excess information about her family life that was there only to aid her self-discovery of the fact that she’s kind of a rotten person, at wasting my time to find out what was already obvious.
However, it’s making me consider where all those feelings are coming from, and how many people out there really are like Jo... so much food for thought. So much that I don’t feel comfortable giving this a bad rating, even though I hated reading it.

If anyone else who has read this would like to chime in and discuss, I’d love that— disagreement welcome.

UPDATE: I’m still angry, so I gave it a 2.

This book was in places very beautifully written but for all of that I found the heroine and the choices she made quite selfish. Here's a woman with a loving husband, a prosperous career she loves and not a worry in the world. She's willing to toss it all away because, to me, she seems either bored or regretful that her life is so easy (we should all be so lucky!). This made her very difficult to sympathize with and made me want to strangle her. I did enjoy the fact that in the end her "problem" was going to stare her in the face for a good number of years to come. Serves her right, if you ask me . . .