Monogamy
Graham and Annie have been married for almost thirty years, a loving, successful marriage. Graham is a bookseller, and a large man in every sense – big as a bear, gregarious, a lover of life and the host of frequent, lively parties at the home he shares with Annie. At the moment the narrative begins, Graham has had a short, impulsive affair, one he regrets almost instantly and is determined to end.
Annie is smaller, more reserved, maybe more unknowable, something her daughter Sarah has accused her of in her adolescence. She’s a photographer, about to have her first show in five years, anxious that her best years professionally may be behind her.
Graham’s sudden death and Annie’s discovery of his infidelity propel the action of the book, which traces her in her pain and confusion; and follows also the others affected by Graham’s death – his first wife, Frieda, and Lucas, his son with her; as well as Sarah, Graham and Annie’s child together.
This is a novel about marriage, then, and loss. About family, and the secrets they keep from one another. About the transformative power of memory, and the triumph of love over death itself.
“…The novel is grounded by vibrant prose, vividly portrayed secondary characters, and the resiliency of everlasting love. Miller’s fans will devour this spectacular, powerful return.”
— Publishers Weekly. Boxed, starred review
“How great is this novel? If this is not Miller’s best novel, it is surely among her very best. One measure of that is how the experience of it deepens with each reading.”
— Bookpage
“…a revelatory tale of the complexities – and the absurdities – of love, infidelity, and grief.”
— The Oprah Magazine
“Penetrating, intelligent, humane, funny too… And although it’s such a sad subject, it’s somehow not a downbeat book, too smart and powerfully alive for that.”
— Tessa Hadley
“She depicts both her characters and their Cambridge environs with such tenderness and precision that many readers will feel regret when Miller’s story, like life itself, reaches its inevitable end.”
— The Boston Globe
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Excerpt
…as soon as she got back, she went to find it, the book in which the photograph of Graham appeared. Graham’s book, Memoir with Bookshop. It was with the other outsize books -- art books, books of travel photographs -- on the lowest shelf of the bookcase behind the couch.
Annie sat on the couch and flipped though it slowly. The text accompanying each picture consisted of Graham’s comments on what the occasion was, sometimes on who attended, sometimes on odd or amusing things that had happened. Sometimes he just used quotes from the aftermath – the more telling thank you notes, a couple of written apologies for some outrageous behavior.
Here was that event at the store with Cameron Marx, his third book of poetry, the one that got nominated for something – the National Book Critics Circle Award? The National Book Award? The photo was taken from behind Cameron as he read in his wildly incantatory style, and the upturned faces watching him were rapt, shocked. Graham was in the front row, as usual, and there were tears in his eyes.
How easily he cried! As easily as he laughed. As he kissed.
And yes, sprinkled among the other photographs, perhaps on every sixth or seventh page, was an image of him kissing someone. A few that Natalie had taken of him kissing Annie -- once his head bent down to let his lips touch her arm as she leaned over the long table, holding out a platter of something or other. Here kissing Edith, kissing Erica. Also kissing men. Kissing Bill, who’d worked at the store from the earliest days. Kissing Cameron, and Peter. At least as many hugging people, people he swamped and surrounded.
Looking through it, Annie felt pulled back from her sense of smallness, of emptiness. Because as much as the photographs were a history of the bookstore and the parties, they were a history of their marriage. All of it, from the very start. For here was Graham in shirtsleeves at the opening party for the store, wearing the red wine stain down his front, her calling card. And here she was, sitting next to him in the front row at John Arnold’s reading, their bodies touching.
What she felt keenly as she turned the pages was how much they had made it together, this world that she and Natalie had recorded – just as Edith had said the other night. And Graham had written a version of that same thing over and over in his comments on the photos. On a photo of him talking animatedly to someone whose back was to the camera, Sarah sound asleep on his shoulder: “At least two of us up well past our bedtime. Annie, the third member of our merry crew, danced until almost dawn.”
On a photo of Annie, standing in the bright light of the kitchen, glasses and plates everywhere, Graham behind her wearing his favorite apron, loading the dishwasher. “Cleaning up together when all the fun is over. After this picture was taken, Natalie put the camera down and she and Don stayed on, helping us until everything was done. Then we all had a nightcap and bet on the Nobel Prize in literature, due to be announced soon. Annie, a little less tipsy than everyone else, called it: Nadine Gordimer. I owed her $150. Or so she told me the next day, and I was in no condition to disagree. ”
When she had turned the last page and shut the book, Annie sat motionless for a long moment. Then she got up and moved to what was almost the center of the open space she and Graham had made of the first floor those years ago. She turned slowly, surveying the room – the living area, the big table, the kitchen that extended into the space under the back stairs. Unpeopled, it seemed bigger than in the world of the photographs. Bigger, and emptier. How could she ever find a way of filling it without Graham?
Come back, she thought. Or maybe she said it aloud.