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While I Was Gone

3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 · rating details · 26,334 ratings · 768 reviews

Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving marriage, and a rewarding career. But she feels a sense of unease. Then an old housemate reappears, sending Jo back to a distant past when she lived in a communal house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Drawn deeper into her memories of that fateful summer in 1968, Jo begins to obsess about the...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published May 12th 2000 by Ballantine Books (first published January 1st 1999)

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44th out of 73 books — 967 voters

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Oct 20, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 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...more 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. (less)

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Sep 02, 2008 Kate rated it 2 of 5 stars

This story of a wife and mother suddenly revisiting her past had great moments and held my attention. Still it had long, boring passages.

I found the protagonist annoying and self-indulgent in a way that didn't jibe at all with the way she thought of herself. Further, her inability to see it, even in the end left me unsatisfied.

At points, her descriptions and observations, while interesting and well drawn, dragged on. Her focus on minutia rang untrue to me, her description of her marriage and her...more

15 likes · like · see review

Mar 15, 2008 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Erin by: liked others by this author

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 wa...more

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Mar 15, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Chris by: Rachel

I thought this one was a bit clunky at first. It didn't begin to flow for me until about the third chapter, but once it did, I sopped it up pretty eagerly. The book deals with selves. The ones we were, the ones we've become, and the ways we choose to incorporate our pasts into our present lives. It deals with self-justifications of the shameful, hurtful or otherwise negative actions we play out. Honesty and trust within the familial structure are weighed heavily against the images one hopes to c...more

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Aug 01, 2007 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2006july

One of the benefits to reading So Damn Much is I often forget what I've consumed, allowing me to discover it all over again.

I spent the first 20 pages of While I Was Gone thinking it felt very familiar, but I couldn't quite put it all together. I was viewing the story through a veil of forgetfulness.

So on this reread, I was able to invest in the characters, immerse in the world and be surprised all over again.

6 likes · like · see review

Sep 24, 2008 Beth rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

4 likes · like · see review

Jul 22, 2008 Nikki rated it 1 of 5 stars

I expect every Oprah's book club pick to get 3 stars (unless the book's by Toni Morrison). While I Was Gone is that special breed of book that plummeted to 2- and 1-star territory after chapter 10.

The novel started out well enough. I empathized with Jo, the main character, as she looked back on running away from an unsatisfying relationship. I understood that you can detest a particular lifestyle at one point of your life, and find it's exactly what you need at another. (Happy relationships are...more

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Dec 16, 2007 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: cotcbookclub

I finally finished this after what feels like forever (not a problem with the book so much as a problem with my schedule). I think the drawn out reading time did not do the book any favors. Also knowing the ending ahead of time due to our book club discussion meant I was reading the last third with different preconceptions than before. Even so though, this is a difficult book because Jo, our main character, is not immediately likeable or sympathetic and the decisions she makes don't help improve...more

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Mar 16, 2008 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title pulled me in. The narrator--a middle-aged woman, veterinarian, mother of two grown daughters, wife of a pastor--explores her own life from the vantage point of an intense personal crisis. Memories--from college days in the 60s--catch up with her, though one suspects she slows the forward pace of her immediate life so that they will certainly overtake her. The struggle thus begins--or continues, heightened. Sue Miller's past-becomes-present plot isn't original, but the writer's renderin...more

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Feb 01, 2009 Nancy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, northeast-us

The author says in the back-of-the-book interview that she found it hard to like Jo and I agree with her. I found Jo to be too self-centered and Daniel to be somewhat of a jerk. I also felt the kids were spoiled. No one in this family seems really loving. They're all involved in their own pursuits to the exclusion of everyone else. I agree that Daniel's sermon represents a turning point and was one of the more pleasurable sections. I do find it odd that Jo doesn't participate more in Daniel's li...more

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Oct 12, 2008 Margaret rated it 4 of 5 stars

Somewhat unwillingly,I reread this novel for a book group.
And I found details about Sue Miller's style that I had not
paid attention to in my first go round.She is a master of
natural description and I slowed to savor the snow falling
in New England and the pleasures of walking the dogs late on an autumn evening.
Miller strikes me as both a highly moral author and one who is scrupulously honest about her characters inner thoughts and motives. The tension between these results in
gripping prose...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Barner rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second Sue Miller novel I have read: the first was abaout a father suffering from Alzheimers. This one is much different and so very good. The novel is well crafted, I think, and lets the reader stay a little ahead of the characters.

The marriage of Jo and her husband seems unlikely. He a minister, she a non believer, but she does him a kindness at times by attending and church and suurely carrying out other duties of a minister's wife. Their marriage becomes so very strained during t...more

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Jan 10, 2013 Eugene Boyle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Eugene by: Missi Kelly

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 one...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

In any given day, there are an infinite number of things I would like to get away from -- phone calls, traffic, laundry, work. Who hasn't wanted to get away from their lives or to experience what it's like to be someone else? But the fact that I, like so many others, stay grounded and don't indulge the urge to run made it hard for me to like Jo, the main character.

Jo's a runner. Sue Miller gives a lot of examples of things she runs away from. She runs away from home when she was eight or nine ye...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

One way I can gauge whether I really like a book is if I would be interested in rereading the tale. This book is one of those. I am not even sure what year I read this story (I'm guessing 2002, but who knows), but I remember I borrowed it from my Mum, and that I was at the camp, reading this by the lake (no better place, imo...). While I was Gone was my introduction to Sue Miller, and it has since invited me to read other Miller titles (The Good Mother, the World Below).

So here's the tale: In 1...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Cynthia Davidson rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to Cynthia by: Kathy Sohar

Shelves: pi-book-club

I believe the title refers to the times when Jo/Felicia, the protagonist, is not present in her own life, because she's distracted and not paying attention...something we're all guilty of. She was opaque, reserved, dignified or do you call her secretive??

This first person narrative is told by the mother in the family, as she recalls her 'thoughtlessly' conventional life...and her prior identity.

Some of the names of people & places, like Stead family name (instead? ;-) and the house on Lyman...more

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Dec 28, 2011 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

My only experience with this author was her excellent novel "The Good Mother" which I read 20 years ago. Don't waste time with the movie (unless you really love Diane Keaton, a vice that is not really wholly objectionable). The Good Mother was a poignant tale about a failed marriage, a reckless romance and a custody fight. Like the "Good Mother", "While I Was Gone" is a story told from a distinctly female sensitivity. My daughters had ridiculed me derisively a few months ago for reading "Chick L...more My only experience with this author was her excellent novel "The Good Mother" which I read 20 years ago. Don't waste time with the movie (unless you really love Diane Keaton, a vice that is not really wholly objectionable). The Good Mother was a poignant tale about a failed marriage, a reckless romance and a custody fight. Like the "Good Mother", "While I Was Gone" is a story told from a distinctly female sensitivity. My daughters had ridiculed me derisively a few months ago for reading "Chick Lit" - specifically the book "Eat, Pray, Love" - which I thoroughly enjoyed; hence, I couldn't give a whit about the gender of the author. "While I Was Gone" tells a story about a middle aged woman who confronts a rather shocking personage from her troubled young adulthood. She had impulsively abandoned her first husband, squandered college education and job to work as a waitress and live in a commune. She changed her name and literallly dropped out. I won't spoil the whole thing, but the book does recapture the carefree spirit of 1960's campus life, the hedonism, drugs, sex and communal living. The author waits until the second half of the book to roll out the "dark side" of this earlier life. Replace the spontaneous joy and ecstacy of Woodstock with the anarchy and violence of Altamont. That's where all the flowers have gone. The dark side resurfaces and disrupts the narrator's life quite unexpectedly, many years later after she has comfortably settled into suburbia.
If I may present a male point of view, I felt tremendous and overwhelming sympathy for the narrator's second husband. He is presented as a dutiful, loving spouse who adores his wife. Her subsequent deceits and betrayal devastate him. The narrator comes across as narcissistic, self-indulgent and careless. While she feels regret at betraying her husband adn tries to make amends, the husband elicited a lot of empathy. I applauded him as he turned a deaf ear on his wayward spouse and imposed the silent treatment. The interaction with their three college-age daughters also creates a foil for much of the narrative.
But this book really focuses on people reconciling past and present, wrestling with ancient demons and salvaging the best they can. An interesting ending that seems more plausible than the Hollywood scripted good guys win and justice prevails. The couple just goes on living. Like the rest of us.(less)

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Oct 21, 2011 Deb rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, women

I think that most of us feel separate from the person we once were, as though our earlier life belongs to someone we used to know; a person we have now lost touch with. This is certainly true for Jo Becker, whose restlessness and unhappiness in her first marriage led her to escape to another city where she lived under an assumed name in a house shared with several roommates. Years later, when Jo's daughters have all left home to live their own lives, Jo is adjusting to her empty nest with her mi...more I think that most of us feel separate from the person we once were, as though our earlier life belongs to someone we used to know; a person we have now lost touch with. This is certainly true for Jo Becker, whose restlessness and unhappiness in her first marriage led her to escape to another city where she lived under an assumed name in a house shared with several roommates. Years later, when Jo's daughters have all left home to live their own lives, Jo is adjusting to her empty nest with her minister husband when one of those roommates from her past reenters her life.

Sue Miller is an excellent writer, and this could have been (in fact I expected it to be) just another "women's story" about a middle-aged woman who has an affair and the typical consequences. But since it had the Oprah's Book Club label I trusted that it would be worth reading, and it was.

A few favorite passages:

"You might have thought I was slumming, taking such a job, and of course, in a way, that would be fair. I was a college graduate, from a good school. I'd taken courses after college to prepare myself to teach high school. I'd married my promising husband. He certainly thought I was slumming. But he saw my job as a kind of perverse joke, too, and took a malicious pride in it. That was fine with me. Whatever he thought. Whatever anyone thought. The point for me was that for once I didn't have any idea what it would lead to. Some of the point anyway. The job was also a claim on my time from five or so in the afternoon until well after midnight every day, time I might have spent cooking a nice meal, grading papers, making curtains, talking to my husband. All the things I'd prepared myself to to and promised others I would do."

"It wasn't that I had been conscious of falsifying myself when I was living my other life. I'm sure I hadn't. I think, in fact, that I was barely conscious of having a self in that world. My mother tells me that I was a willful little girl, but I don't remember that. What I remember is later, when I wasn't willful anymore: the inner calm of knowing I was satisfying expectations, I was pleasing. The self isn't important in such a feeling. It was only as I began to startle and disappoint other that I was aware of myself at all - that I came to understand, slowly, that I wasn't who I had pretended to be. And now, when I was pretending to be someone completely other than myself, I felt, for the first time, at home in my skin."

"Now it had come back to me, but with some of that sense of remove I felt looking at the group photo of us on the porch steps, seeing myself there in my long hippie hair and my bell-bottom jeans. Remove, and a kind of shame for having fogotten so much I'd sworn always to remember. It seemed to me then that if there was an admonition, it was simply this: we have no right to let go of so much that shaped us; we shouldn't be allowed to forget."

(less)

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Mar 13, 2010 Marci rated it 3 of 5 stars

Who among us hasn't felt restless at some point in their lives. Well Jo Becker is riddled with it from a very early age--as she runs from a marriage she got into because of expectation. When she realizes she's not happy, she runs away, changes her life and finds the friendship of her contemporaries. When a tragic event occurs, she is forced to go back to her life and start anew. On the journey, she meets her second husband. Together, they start a fufilled life--at least that is the premise, unti...more

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Dec 07, 2009 Dee rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 25, 2012 Readingjay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, american, crime, domestic

Some books choose when it is the right time to read them. I don't even know where this book came from - it has been sitting on my shelf forever. With its attractive cover (Bloomsbury edition, and not a GR selection) it has appealed but others have appealed more. Yet this week was, for whatever reason, the time.

The second book I have read very recently, where the past comes to haunt the present, grabbed me immediately. We only ever have Jo's (Licia's) point of view, so she may not be terribly re...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Alexandria Baca rated it 4 of 5 stars

While I didn't love the main character in this novel, author Sue Miller is a master of scene and narrative detail (and as she notes in an interview printed in the back of the book, she found it hard to like Jo Becker too).

Jo Becker is having some sort of existential late-life crisis in "While I Was Gone" (1999). Despite having a successful career as a veterinarian, three daughters and a solid, long-term marriage to a preacher, she constantly questions her conventional life. This complex internal...more

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Apr 21, 2012 Lynne rated it 1 of 5 stars

Ick. One star for a decent plot, and a respectable theme.

I dislike being told all about a character, especially by the character herself. Show me, and let me experience the story rather than instructing me. I found much of the narrative to be a little trite, and sometimes too "Harlequinesque".

Far too many mundane details about insignificant acts, such as an entire paragraph on making risotto. No, I did not think that such ramblings of routine ran counterpoint to Jo's impulsiveness, nor that th...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Kimberly rated it 1 of 5 stars

I did not care for this book.........the main character risks her marraige by contemplating an affair, backs out of the affair when she finds out something about the man with whom she's thinking about sleeping with, admits it to her husband, then seems bewildered when her husband is hurt and feels betrayed. I cannot identify with the main character at all; I came away wanting to slap her silly!! It was a waste of time!

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Aug 21, 2012 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone who likes contemporary fiction

Recommended to Mary by: Library Book Sale

Shelves: my-library, 1990-2009, 96-100, bought-at-a-library-book-sale, contemporary-fiction, paperback

Jo Becker has every reason to be content. She has three dynamic daughters, a loving husband and marriage, and a rewarding career. In spite of this, Jo still finds herself to be somehow dissatisfied with her life.

Then, Jo's veterinary practice takes on a new client who brings her into contact with a man from her past. Eli Mayhew was a housemate of Jo's, from a time when she lived a bohemian lifestyle in a communal house with several other people. Her chance meeting with Eli brings back memories o...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Stephy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Can we say Boring? Oh it really was...She jumped from her current life to her teenage years back and forth like a ping pong ball..And when I finished the book I sat there question what was the whole point of reading it? I mean yes there was an issue that was solved but it just didn't say much about the story. I found a review by another woman on good reads and I have to say I agree with her 100 percent...She says
I liked this book until I realized that I has 1/3 of the way through and couldn't fi...more

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Apr 30, 2009 Jlawton rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: rich-character-favorites

"When I was most confused by her, it helped me to remember myself at her age---just that egocentric, just that lost, just that uncaring about the pain I might be causing others, because I felt I was in so much pain myself. " p 133

"We didn't know what would happen next: that was our great gift. The gift of youth. The thing we miss, it seems to me, no matter what we've made of our lives, as we get older. When we do know what will happen next. And next and next, and then last.
And that is what I fe...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was not a fan of this book in the beginning. If I wasn't so far behind in my reading goal I might have stopped half way through. But I also just don't like to not finish a book after starting. The plot was very slow to pick up. When the scandal was occurring it became juicy and intriguing but that was after halfway through, which I feel is a long time to leave the reader unattached to the book. Also when they introduced me to her younger days too many characters were introduced very quickly an...more

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May 13, 2013 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: stopped-reading

I feel wrong rating this only three stars. It is, from as far as I read, well written, but I have come to admit that I do not care for the characters Sue Miller gives us. They're too, I don't know, suburban for me. I tried to read this book, the second of her books I've tried to read, and first put it down after about 10 pages. Was advised to give it a chance, it isn't so suburban. And, indeed, it got a bit more intriguing for the next 30 pages, but then it was back to the characters in their li...more

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May 24, 2007 Liddy Barlow rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, 2007

I read this for my couples counseling class (we had to then write a paper imagining that we were the main characters' pastor) and quite enjoyed it. The setting -- a New England town quite like the one where I grew up -- was richly imagined, and Miller offers realistic insights into her narrator's inner life.

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About Sue Miller

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Sue Miller (born November 29, 1943 in Chicago) is an American writer who has authored a number of best-selling novels. Her duties as a single mother left her with little time to write for many years, and as a result she did not publish her first novel until 1986, after spend...more

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Quotes from While I Was Gone

“But perhaps this is all to the good. 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, to put at risk everything that’s dear to you. 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. That like him, you need to be forgiven.” — 28 people liked it

“I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.” — 16 people liked it

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