The Distinguished Guest - by Sue Miller (Paperback)

About the Book

Lily Maynard was seventy-two when her frank memoir made her a literary star. Waspish and unapologetic, she turned family pain into personal triumph. Now, years later, stricken with Parkinson's, her formidable powers fading, she's staying with her son Alan, a New England architect, for whom long-buried resentments are beginning to surface. For Lily, so are unbidden memories of what really formed her life, ended her marriage, and estranged her from her children. As the delicate family balance is upended again, it's time for Lily and Alan to reconsider the past and make the most of what's left of their future as mother and son. Profound and deeply affecting, The Distinguished Guest reveals a family coming to terms with itself, and the inevitable loss, grief, and rage that only forgiveness can ever hope to heal.

Book Synopsis

"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

From bestselling author Sue Miller comes the poignant story of a mother and son that touches on the deepest concerns about love, art, family, and life

Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, 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. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief.

Profound and deeply affecting, The Distinguished Guest reveals a family trying to understand the meaning of its life together, while confronting inevitable loss and the vision of an immeasurably altered future.

Review Quotes

"Ms. 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

"There is a certain kind of knowledge that we reach only through a certain kind of fiction: fiction so rich, so thoughtful, so absorbing that reading it is like experiencing the passage in our own lives." -- Los Angeles 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