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The Lake Shore Limited

3.27 of 5 stars 3.27 · rating details · 2,135 ratings · 441 reviews

Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from Sue Miller, the author of 2008’s heralded best seller The Senator’s Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The story itself centers on The Lake Shore Limited—a play Billy has written about an ima...more

Hardcover, 270 pages

Published April 6th 2010 by Knopf

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Jun 22, 2011 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

Back in my dating years, I once heard some pop psychologist say something to this effect: in many early meeting situations, two people show up. You. And your representative.

The point, of course, is that each of us wears masks, and it takes some time for those masks to come off and reveal whom we truly are underneath. Sue Miller – in what I believe is her most ambitious and boldly rendered novel to date – explores precisely this phenomenon, but raises the stakes. Her main character – Billy Gertz,...more Back in my dating years, I once heard some pop psychologist say something to this effect: in many early meeting situations, two people show up. You. And your representative.

The point, of course, is that each of us wears masks, and it takes some time for those masks to come off and reveal whom we truly are underneath. Sue Miller – in what I believe is her most ambitious and boldly rendered novel to date – explores precisely this phenomenon, but raises the stakes. Her main character – Billy Gertz, is a female playwright whose lover, Gus, is on one of the ill-fated 9/11 planes.

The problem is that she had determined that the relationship had to end…and had not told him yet. She is suddenly elevated to “grieving widow” status yet knows that her actions – and the responses she gets – are all false. As one character says, “Think if you’d been about to ask someone for a divorce, and they upped and died then. The ambivalent reaction to such an event, the complicated one, is shocking to people. It’s repulsive. It’s unpatriotic. It’s small. It’s personal. It’s unworthy. Such a truth needs to be suppressed.”

Billy writes about the experience in a disguised play – the eponymous Lake Shore Limited. One character says to her, “Weren’t you intimidated, writing about Nine-Eleven?” Her answer, “Well of course, it’s not nine-eleven, it’s the Lake Shore Limited.” But is it? There are many themes in this book and one of them is how we transform our experiences – how we use what’s inside us – to create art and indeed, to get by.

She and the other three main characters in the book – Gus’s older and devoted sister Leslie, the main actor Rafe, and Sam, who is Leslie’s friend and Billy’s pursuer, all are in the process of transforming their lives, and reluctantly going through their own performances. Rafe, for example, is living with a wife who is afflicted with ALS, and is forced to “act out” – to her – that nothing has changed between them, while using the conflict and pain he’s feeling to inform his art. His character, in particular, is a tour de force.

In this “environmentally sound school of human interaction”, you use everything up to get by and move forward. It’s all gist for the proverbial mill. Sue Miller’s themes are both mature and complex: where is the line between performance and reality? How do we transfigure our grief and our joy into true art? How do we reshape ourselves? And what is the price of letting the mask slip and becoming vulnerable once again?

This is an introspective novel, an analytical one, that sometimes distances readers from the characters as they struggle to make sense of their lives. But at the end of the day, it’s a novel about beginnings…the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes and starting Act Two of life…or perhaps, fashioning a new play entirely. It elevates Sue Miller to a whole new stratosphere.
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Sep 09, 2010 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Megan and Michael Hollinger, Judy, Molly, Marylynn, oh, all my friends.

I absolutely loved this book. You know how writers say that they write the books they want to read. If I could write fiction, this is the book I would have written because it is exactly the kind of book I want to read. I love the multiple perspectives. I love that people are certain about each other, and absolutely wrong, I love the way the play that one character, Billy, has written is woven into the novel in so many different ways. It is utterly intimate and yet so complicated.

When the traged...more

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May 10, 2010 Kay rated it 2 of 5 stars

I know what this book is about but I still don't know why I continued to read it. The characters are not very likeable. The story isn't very interesting and when I was done I was glad. In the past I have enjoyed Sue Miller but my opinion is changing. Her characters seem colder and difficult to care about even when you can see that the little kernel that is the base of the story has merit. In this case how different people feel when a "loved one" dies in a big event. Of course all of those people...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Steve Lindahl rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Sue Miller novel I've read. It took me awhile to get used to her style, but in the end it was worth it. This book was a reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Billy, the main character, lost her lover, Gus, who was killed when the plane he was on was flown into one of the twin towers. But this wasn't a simple story about losing someone you love in a senseless act of terror. There were problems with Billy and Gus' relationship and those problems left Billy feel...more This is the first Sue Miller novel I've read. It took me awhile to get used to her style, but in the end it was worth it. This book was a reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Billy, the main character, lost her lover, Gus, who was killed when the plane he was on was flown into one of the twin towers. But this wasn't a simple story about losing someone you love in a senseless act of terror. There were problems with Billy and Gus' relationship and those problems left Billy feeling confused and guilty. Since she was a playwright, she wrote a play about those feelings. The name of that play was The Lake Shore Limited, hence the name of the novel.

There were a couple of things that I found very unusual about Miller's style. First of all she included a great amount of detail that at first seemed superfluous, yet that detail seemed to push me into the characters' minds by emphasizing everything they might notice in their surroundings. Secondly, Miller generally told her readers what her characters were thinking instead of letting us see reactions that would show us their thoughts. Here's an excerpt from the novel that shows both those techniques:

“Yeah,” Pierce answered. They were all standing now. They moved into the aisle among the others inching back to the lobby. Pierce kept his hand on her elbow—a kind of sympathetic connection, she felt. She was grateful to him, but she was far away. She felt confused. Around her, she could hear others talking, speculating, commenting on the actors, on the arguments.

Some weren't. Some had shed the play quickly, were on to their own lives. She heard a voice say, “I wish I'd known it was going to rain today. I didn't bring an umbrella to work.”

All of Miller's characters seemed to analyze their own emotions and situations as if their lives were one gigantic therapy session. At the reception following a memorial service for Gus, Billy met a number of Gus' friends and colleagues who had heard about her through Gus. She kept thinking how she should be honest and explain everything, including why she wasn't part of the service. But she didn't because she felt explaining herself would be self-aggrandizing. This was his memorial service, not hers. The strange way Billy's mind worked, combined with her lack of emotion was intriguing.

I loved the way the play within a book worked. The characters in the play were aspects of Billy and all part of her need to be honest about her feelings. Also, I've been involved in school theater and community theater for years, so I can identify with the backstage activity

Oddly, I finished reading this novel the week of the Boston Marathon bombings.

I plan to read more of Sue Miller's work.

Steve Lindahl – author of Motherless Soul(less)

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Sep 02, 2012 Gina rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, book-club, ccc-club, challenges-2012, contemporary-fiction, drama, death-spouse, death, family, grief, library, literary-fiction, new-england, relationships, romance

Goodreads Description- Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from Sue Miller, the author of 2008’s heralded best seller The Senator’s Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The story itself centers on The Lake Shore Limited—a play Billy has written about an imagined terrorist bombing of that train as it pulls into Union Station in Chicago, and about a man waiti...more Goodreads Description- Four unforgettable characters beckon you into this spellbinding new novel from Sue Miller, the author of 2008’s heralded best seller The Senator’s Wife. First among them is Wilhelmina—Billy—Gertz, small as a child, fiercely independent, powerfully committed to her work as a playwright. The story itself centers on The Lake Shore Limited—a play Billy has written about an imagined terrorist bombing of that train as it pulls into Union Station in Chicago, and about a man waiting to hear the fate of his estranged wife, who is traveling on it. Billy had waited in just such a way on 9/11 to hear whether her lover, Gus, was on one of the planes used in the attack.

The novel moves from the snow-filled woods of Vermont to the rainy brick sidewalks of Boston as the lives of the other characters intersect and interweave with Billy’s: Leslie, Gus’s sister, still driven by grief years after her brother’s death; Rafe, the actor who rises to greatness in a performance inspired by a night of incandescent lovemaking; and Sam, a man irresistibly drawn to Billy after he sees the play that so clearly displays the terrible conflicts and ambivalence of her situation.

How Billy has come to create the play out of these emotions, how it is then created anew on the stage, how the performance itself touches and changes the other characters’ lives—these form the thread that binds them all together and drives the novel compulsively forward.

A powerful love story; a mesmerizing tale of entanglements, connections, and inconsolable losses; a marvelous reflection on the meaning of grace and the uses of sorrow, in life and in art: The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.

I discovered Sue Miller's books several years ago and had always counted on her work being good. I think she is often put into the "fluff" category but her stories usually have more meat than anyone gives her credit for, so when I saw this book in the library, I was happy to finally see it available for check-out. Eager to gobble it up, I started reading with my expectations high. After all...this was Sue Miller and her books have been fantastic before. Almost like a hidden gem. I couldn't have been more disappointed after about 20 pages. This book started dry and slow in the typical Miller setting of Boston. I thought surely it would pick up the pace or that I would start to care for and be more invested in the characters, but it just never happened.

The theme of this novel is loss and the complicated feelings that can go along with it. It also examines what happens when we "take off our masks" and show our true selves. Wilhelmina, (Billy) Gertz has written a play, “The Lake Shore Limited” with the plot that a train by that name is bombed by terrorists as it enters the station, and the main protagonist is waiting, with various feelings, to hear whether his wife had been on that train and whether or not she survived. Billy wrote the play to, in some ways embody what she went through on 9-11 while waiting to hear if her own lover, Gus, was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Gus’s sister, Leslie, is still grieving his loss six years later when the play opens. She and her husband, Pierce, go to see the play, and invite their friend, Sam, to come with them with some vaguely thought-out plan by Leslie that he and Billy should meet. The actor playing the role of the waiting husband, has a wife now dying from ALS. Sam’s first wife died of cancer and he had to raise their three sons alone. Leslie mourns her brother’s death and feels she’s given up the opportunity to make a better life for herself. And Billy feels incredible guilt because she had been getting ready to leave Gus when he died. It’s a book full of sad people coming to terms with loss or impending loss and trying to find ways to move on.

This book was a serious downer! I know that her books usually tackle serious issues but I just felt like Miller was really trying her best to write the great tragedy. It felt very intentional like the author's main goal was to write as "literary" a book as she could. She filled the book with characters who were portrayed as strangely stiff, snobby and aristocratic with the gigantic words the characters used in the dialogue that no normal person would use in conversation. It was just strange. Miller tried way to hard and it didn't work for her. I ended up not giving a rat's behind what happened to these terribly sad people by the end of the book. The writing of these characters put me off so much that I just wanted to get the darn thing over. This was really nothing like her previous works and I was hugely disappointed. I thought about giving this book 1 star but her writing is good and I try to be fair and not just rate books strictly on my personal reaction to the storyline. So for me this book was just ok and by far the worst one of her books so far. Stop trying so hard Ms. Miller...we know you don't write fluff but you are turning off readers with this overly snobby and strange book. 2 stars.

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Dec 19, 2011 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Sue Miller doesn't get the credit she deserves. No doubt she sells well and she publishes with reputable presses, but I feel like she's consigned to the fluff pile too often. And this stuff is not fluffy.

In The Lake Shore Limited she ponders the question of what happens when a spouse or lover dies and one might have wanted to break it off with that person pre-death. This also allows her to explore the greater question of how we all deal with grief and p...more

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May 05, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

This measured and substantial novel is the capstone of Sue Miller's literary career and clearly removes her from the realm of just "women's fiction" and into a more Jamesian sphere of natural realism. Miller provides penetrating and complex characterizations--it doesn't get any better than this--through robust interior monologues, counterpoint between characters and scenes, overlay, keen perceptions and multiple perspectives, and an artful metaphor between stage/theater and real life. Her quarte...more This measured and substantial novel is the capstone of Sue Miller's literary career and clearly removes her from the realm of just "women's fiction" and into a more Jamesian sphere of natural realism. Miller provides penetrating and complex characterizations--it doesn't get any better than this--through robust interior monologues, counterpoint between characters and scenes, overlay, keen perceptions and multiple perspectives, and an artful metaphor between stage/theater and real life. Her quartet of characters are examined and explored with a gifted pace and subtle precision that is both calibrated and unmannered simultaneously. There is very little overt drama, and no melodrama; the scrupulous and painstaking finesse to character and story is nearly flawless.

The parallel between a play staged in Boston at the beginning of the novel and the novel itself is the engine and drive of this story. Two protagonists of the quartet (Leslie and Sam) are watching the play, "The Lake Shore Limited"-- three, if you count the playwright, Billy, (Wilhelmina), and the fourth, Rafe, is the main actor playing Gabriel. There is also an unconscious ghost or shadow present in the performance, that of Leslie's much younger brother, Gus, who was Billy's lover until he died in the 9/11 tragedy six years ago.

Leslie, who is watching the play with her husband, Pierce, and her old friend, Sam, is struck by the story, but especially to Rafe's character, Gabriel. In the play, a bombing incident on the Lake Shore Limited train is emotionally jarring and reflective of the American tragedy that took Gus's life. Gabriel's response onstage to his wife's possible death is unsettling to Leslie, who begins to revisit Gus's death and her perception of Billy and Gus's relationship. Likewise, Billy is startled and moved by Rafe's performance in the final scene. And the effect on Rafe of playing Gabriel is stark indeed. Identification with the stage performance changes the lives of all the characters and brings a robust dimension to the novel.

Miller has this brilliantly controlled. The play that readers "read," i.e. see staged, takes up only a handful of pages, and therefore cannot be the entire play. What Miller does is recreate the dramatic turns and action in this section. As the story progresses, more of the play is unfolded through reflection. Although the theatrical "showing" is moderately stilted, (in the contrived style of the stage) this proves later to be a seamless counterpoint to the story at hand. In other words, the questionable authenticity of its truncated beginning will cease to be a problem as time goes on. The text of the play is meticulously linked to its intended audience and is artfully reticulated in the subtext of the novel.

Leslie, Sam, Billy, and Rafe are irrevocably connected in a combination of direct and circuitous ways that intensify with conversation, memories, and with each character's struggle against the past. The author captures the rueful feelings associated with conflicting and impure affections; she conveys the internal contradictions through extended interior monologues that are reminiscent of Henry James. Moreover, Miller's ability to sustain potent, lengthy dialogue between the characters without a shred of artificiality is remarkable, and evokes the reality twist to the theatrical performance.

Through flashbacks and linear chronology, the attachments and junctions, as well as the missed connections between the quartet build to a ripe, organic network of emotions and circumstances. Although there are references and scenes of September 11th, this is not a "9/11" story per se. It has a distinctly American texture, but the thrust is the equation of life with theater. The environment is often like a stage set, and the characters move cautiously around, holding back, playing roles, and letting go at concentrated intervals. Yet, the action and story feel completely natural.

Throughout the novel, the theatrical play is the axis--hence, the title. Miller returns to the play repeatedly, buttressing the novel and characters, and fortifying the themes with an elegant body of construction. Miller's familiar themes of love, loss, grief, and redemption are present, but sans histrionics and spectacles. The subtle, sublime drama is a quietly pulverizing experience for the reader. The intensity of the story fueled with comprehensive characterizations is so richly satisfying that it will take considerable effort to re-emerge from the novel, from the play, from the indelible characters that make up the story.

Ignore the covers; the hardcover picture is misleading and the paperback edition is frivolous, both adding up to an almost generic choice of covers not worthy of such a distinguished work of literature.
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Oct 11, 2010 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really love Sue Miller's books, but---like an exotic dish or vacation destination--they're best read, and appreciated, at intervals. Miller's style--building motivation and storyline through the accumulation of details--is fascinating, and her characters very real. But the endless small acts and almost desultory conversations, while realistic, take considerable patience. The onus is on the reader to make connections and see where plot and characters are going; it's not spelled out.

This is a bo...more

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Aug 18, 2010 marg rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sue Miller tends to be reliable enough; well written, thoughtful works with some insight into the human experience, yet nothing too exciting or powerful, and way too many details. This was much the same, however it touched me more than her usual.
This novel centers around four people who are interconnected and a play they are all watching/performing that, ala Hamlet, reveals a lot about their inner selves. Billy, the playwright, uses the play as a venue to explore her complicated relationship wit...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-contemporary-authors

I read this novel gratefully after completing Anna Quindlen's latest novel, which I have not even reviewed yet. I use the word "gratefully" because Miller's approach allowed me to keep an arm's length between the characters and me, a healthy detachment, despite the richness of this novel. Centered around a play and the people connected to it, the novel read a bit like a play, with characters being laid out, dialogue, characters walking off to the right and left. Miller also works with life's man...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Jane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Leslie,the sister; Rafe, the actor; Billy, the former girlfriend and playwright; and Sam, Leslie's former client: these four characters take turns providing a point of view on the story. Leslie's brother died in a terrorist attack on a train; Billie, his former girlfriend writes a play inspired by the event. How we deal with guilt after the end of a relationship, how we put on masks to show people the feelings we think they want to see - these are the motifs explored. At first I didn't care for...more

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May 31, 2010 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-audio-books, 2010fiction

The Lake Shore Limited, by Sue Miller, narrated by Sue Miller, produced by Random House Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

The theme of this novel is loss and the complicated feelings that can go along with it. Wilhelmina, (Billy) Gertz has written a play, “The Lake Shore Limited” with the plot that a train by that name is bombed by terrorists as it enters the station, and the main protagonist is waiting, with various feelings, to hear whether his wife had been on that train and whether or not s...more

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May 24, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This was a beautiful and poignant story that is told between the "voices" of four characters: a playwright, Billy Gertz (a woman); Rafe, the actor who plays the protagonist in her play and whose wife has Lou Gehrig disease; Leslie, the sister of Billy's deceased lover who died during 9-11 and was never found; and Sam, an old friend of Leslie's with a complicated past who is introduced to Billy by Leslie and begins a relationship with her.

Besides exploring complex emotions and relationships in a...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Stephanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

This novel is told from several different characters in the story, not one of which is likable or memorable. The basic synopsis: a playwrite creates a play that expresses her mixed feelings about when her ex-boyfriend was killed in 9/11. What I found most interesting was the relationship of the playwrite to her work and the actors to the work and how each does their part to create an authentic piece of art for the audience to experience. The complicated emotions Billy was trying to convey were i...more

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May 07, 2010 Mary Taitt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I saw this book at the library, I almost didn't pick it up. I was thinking some previous book by this author had left a bad taste in my mouth, but I couldn't remember which. I decided to get it anyway, and I am delighted that I did! It was one of the best books I've read in a long time. It is honest, thought provoking, human, difficult, unhappy and happy and realistic and good.

The entire book revolves around the play, The Lake Shore Limited, which is about a terrorist attack on a train in C...more

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Dec 21, 2011 Laurie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is a passage toward the end of the book where one of the characters is talking to a college theater student about some critique the professor had given: "Yes. You said no one Amelia's age would keep saying, 'Oh. My. God!' all the time. You said, 'One would hope with age comes maybe not wisdom ... but at the least an enhanced vocabulary." Well, I can certainly say that the characters in this book speak with an enhanced vocabulary. It's one of the things that bothered me about this book. I a...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: boston, contemporary, death

I just finished listening to Sue Miller narrate her own work. Sometimes authors do superbly (Sherman Alexie, Neil Gaiman) and sometimes they flop (Madeleine L'engle.) Miller makes a fair job of it, but maybe she should have taken a cue from Billy, her playwright protagonist, and let an actor do the job. Billy, who seemed to me rather prickly and self-deceiving, gets a sympathetic reading from Miller.

The Lake Shore Limited (name of book, name of play in the book) looks at how loss affects the li...more

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May 06, 2010 Gail Cooke rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

AUDIO EDITION:

When an author reads his or her own work quite often an awareness, an understanding not only of the story but of a character's psycheto enriches the narration. These subtleties of meaning would be difficult for even the best trained actors access but it is all there in the mind of the author who, after all, is the creator of the tale. Such is certainly the case with Sue Miller's narration of her 11th novel THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED.

It is a story hinging on a play penned by Wilhelmina...more AUDIO EDITION:

When an author reads his or her own work quite often an awareness, an understanding not only of the story but of a character's psycheto enriches the narration. These subtleties of meaning would be difficult for even the best trained actors access but it is all there in the mind of the author who, after all, is the creator of the tale. Such is certainly the case with Sue Miller's narration of her 11th novel THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED.

It is a story hinging on a play penned by Wilhelmina "Billy Gertz, a complex figure who reflects emotions that many of us feel, anger, conflict, a desire for validation. Six years ago Gus, Billy's lover, was killed in a 9/11 plane crash. The couple had been cohabiting but Billy intended to end their relationship. Now, with Gus dead she's unwittingly placed into the position of being thought a tragic figure, a widow - sort of. After this length of time she is more than ready to move on.

Leslie, Gus's sister is unable or unwilling to do the same. She holds on to Billy, presumably either in memory of or to honor Gus, despite her husband's pleas to let go. In Boston, as the opening of Billy's play nears, Leslie issues an invitation she believes helpful - she invites Sam to meet Billy after the performance.

Billy's play concerns the terrorist bombing of a train as it pulls into Chicago's Union Station. A man is waiting to hear whether or not his estranged wife who was on the train managed to escape alive. A parallel between the way Billy waited for news of Gus? Of course. Rafe, the lead actor in the play delivers an astounding performance, only to be filled with regret that he has called upon the impending death of his wife to provide the tears he needs to shed on stage.

The performance of the play has a dramatic effect on the lives of all. Miller's scenario may also have an effect upon us, causing us to reflect upon the losses in our lives and how we have responded to them. THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED is poignant, real, unsettling, and proves once again that Sue Miller is a major literary talent.

- Gail Cooke (less)

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Jul 28, 2011 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, goodreads-giveaways

Beautiful, quiet, evocative novel told from multiple viewpoints. The viewpoints don’t shift rapidly like most books employing this method, thus The Lake Shore Limited reads like several short stories, but more connected. One immediately interesting device was that instead of this being a novel about 9/11 it’s a novel about a play that’s about 9/11. I found that a very clever twist. Also, I loved the delving into of Billy’s creative process for writing her play.

This is not a loud book. The plot...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Jan 18, 2013 Robert Palmer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sue Miller has long been a favorite author of mine. In every one of her novels their comes a time when I have to stop and reflect over what I have just read,it may be a whole chapter,a paragraph or just a sentence . Once again she did not disappoint.
The lake shore limited is the name of the play that Billy has written about a terrorist bombing of that train and how the characters in the play react to the death of a loved one.
The story is told thru the eyes of four different people,Billy whose lo...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Pam rated it 2 of 5 stars

I've read five other of her books and enjoyed them all to one degree or another - this one was rather boring. I think she was trying to be "literary" and maybe she succeeded but I didn't care for it. The way it was written was complicated - I'm not sure I'm liking these books that keep repeating the same story told by different characters and each time we hear the story again, a little more information is given. For me that just makes the novel confusing, especially when I listen to part of it o...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Emma Taylor rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I adore this book. And can’t recommend it strongly enough.

It deals with the issues surrounding pain, loss and guilt. But it’s not a book that screams them in your face, more whispers them in your ear; and it’s all the more powerful for it.

I’ve never read Sue Miller‘s work before but felt echoes here of the same painful, simple human emotions Suri Hursvedt captured in What I Loved.
Her characters don’t feel like characters, they feel real; you don’t always love them and your relationship changes w...more

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Aug 05, 2010 Mark Buehl rated it 3 of 5 stars

First let me say I in some strange way liked this book. There were times I thought I would not finish it. There were also times I did not want to put it down. So overall, I guess I have mixed feelings about The Lake Shore Limited.

I thought the characters were excellent. Full of surprises and many facets. They were also complex in a simple way. I know I am not being very to the point, but this is how the book felt to me. It is sad but not sad. Well you get the drift. This book is hard to describ...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: july-aug-2010

Miller's latest novel poses some compelling questions about relationships and the misguided assumptions and unreliable memories that underlie one's sense of self--and it offers some profound if unsettling answers. Critics varied in their assessments of Miller's prose, her use of the play as a story-within-a-story, and her plot, which boasts "no drama, no crisis, barely any action at all" (Washington Post). However, most agreed that Miller's complex, sympathetic characters are authentic and that...more

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Dec 29, 2010 Kirsty Darbyshire rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

This was fabulous.

The book is a composite of four different characters stories set around a play being performed in New York. The Lake Shore Limited is the title of the play as well as this book and the play concerns a terrorist attack on the train with that name which runs from Chicago to New York. In the play inside the book this is a thinly veiled parallel to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which the play characters work through themes of love and loss and for most of the play live in a world...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Laurel-Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

Four lives, connected in some way by an event that changed the world, now continue to intersect over the years afterwards.

Leslie, Billy, Sam, and Rafe—their lives are inexplicably altered.

Leslie is comfortably married to Pierce, but her loving connection to her brother Gus is a truly nurturing relationship. Childless, she has become almost like a mother to Gus, since she is fifteen years older.

Billy, a playwright, was Gus’s live-in lover on that fateful day when the planes crashed into the Twin...more Four lives, connected in some way by an event that changed the world, now continue to intersect over the years afterwards.

Leslie, Billy, Sam, and Rafe—their lives are inexplicably altered.

Leslie is comfortably married to Pierce, but her loving connection to her brother Gus is a truly nurturing relationship. Childless, she has become almost like a mother to Gus, since she is fifteen years older.

Billy, a playwright, was Gus’s live-in lover on that fateful day when the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. What nobody knows is that she had already decided to leave Gus, so when he dies as a passenger in one of the planes, she feels like a fraud as she grieves for him.

Sam, an architect, who bought property when Leslie was selling real estate many years before, is now divorced; his first wife had died years before and his children, somewhat distant from him, are grown. Sam has harbored feelings for Leslie for many years.

Rafe, whose wife suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease, is an actor. He is one of the stars in Billy’s newest play, called “The Lake Shore Limited”—a play about a terrorist act on a train that leaves people waiting for news of their loved ones, just as many did after 9/11.

These four all connect again as they come together to see Billy’s play, and then their lives intersect continually for weeks and months afterwards.

As the story unfolds, we get to view the interior lives of these characters, as sections are devoted to each one in turn. We see what motivates them, what they’re worried about, and what they fear. Their worlds are truly explored and we come to know and understand them. Even empathize with them, despite some of their choices.

In the end, I sincerely wanted to know what would happen next with each of them, as we are left at a point in all of their lives where much is unresolved.

There’s a moment in the story where Billy, the playwright, is reflecting on the success of her play, now that it’s over, and feeling some satisfaction that, in her creation of a terrorist act on a train, she has used similar events (from 9/11 and what happened to Gus), but that, in a way, she has memorialized him as she would not have been able to do otherwise. She sees this as her homage to him, her way of “not forgetting” Gus.

Sue Miller has done it again, with her characters, her plot, the multi-layered story that exposes the dark and light side of the human condition…and she has totally captured the attention of this reader. "The Lake Shore Limited" definitely earned five stars.(less)

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Aug 27, 2011 Victoria Watson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having read 'The Senator's Wife' a few years ago, I saw this Sue Miller novel and decided to give it a go.

Featuring four main characters, this story is told through their eyes during the run of a play, written by Billy, a 9/11 widow. The difference about Billy, though, is she was preparing to end her relationship with Gus, her younger lover, when he got on a plane on September 11th, 2001. She has never told his older sister, Leslie, this though and she is still in touch with Leslie which is why...more

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Apr 27, 2010 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I listened to the audio version, read by the author. These are my favourite audiobooks, when the author reads. Sue Miller wrote a novel that somehow included the events of 9/11 in a peripheral way. She is very respectful, but also brings up some really interesting questions about the feelings people may have had about what happened that day - the visceral fear and yet the relief that we are okay, the terror of the unknown.

Her main characters are somehow involved with...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Cathe Olson rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Lake Shore Limited centers around four main characters: Billy -- a playwright whose show, The Lake Shore Limited, has just opened; Leslie -- almost Billy's sister-in-law (at least in her mind) as Billy was with her brother Gus until he was killed in 9-11; Rafe -- the star of the play The Lake Shore Limited and also caring for his invalid wife; and Sam -- Leslie's friend who she is trying to fix up with Billy.

The book starts with opening night of The Lake Shore Limited. At first I was irrita...more

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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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