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"  Sue Miller,  The Lake Shore Limited  Miller&amp;#039;s novel centers on a play of the same name about a terrorist bombing of a train as it pulls into Chicago&amp;#039;s Union Station, and about a man waiting to hear the fate of his estranged wife, who was traveling on it. Several characters intersect with that of the playwright, Billy (short for Wilhelmina): Leslie, the still-grieving sister of Billy&amp;#039;s lover, Gus, who died in the 9/11 attacks; Rafe, a lead actor in the play; and Sam, a man who&amp;#039;s drawn to Billy after seeing the play. This is an interesting study of entanglements, connections, and inconsolable losses.\u2014Mari V., Walnut Creek, CA If you&amp;#039;ve ever sat in an elegant restaurant in a theater district and eavesdropped on interesting and captivating conversations, you may have been near the characters in The Lake Shore Limited. Miller&amp;#039;s novel begins with Leslie, a woman in her middle years who lost her beloved younger brother on 9/11. Just as you become involved in Leslie&amp;#039;s story, Miller alternates the point of view between Rafe, an actor with his own private grief; Sam, an architect who perseveres despite life&amp;#039;s disappointments; and Billy (short for Wilhelmina), an insightful playwright whose most recent play debuts in Boston and brings together all of the characters. I loved the Boston setting and theater atmosphere, and the way that each character is flawed, but not hopelessly so. The Lake Shore Limited embraces the miraculous aspects of everyday life.\u2014Narci J. Drossos, Valdosta, GA Sometimes the characters in Miller&amp;#039;s books can seem ungenerous, and it&amp;#039;s hard to understand or condone their actions. On the other hand, maybe they are just true to life, and the reason it&amp;#039;s difficult to look at them is because we are seeing something of ourselves that we&amp;#039;d rather stayed buried. The characters in The Lake Shore Limited are flawed and selfish, but they are relentlessly human, and Miller does a good job of exploring their frailties through the lens of their different experiences. Grief is private and personal more than it is shared and each person in the story bares their load the best that they can.\u2014Betsy Denson, Houston  Miller is clearly a very good writer with some lovely turns of phrase, but the overall effect of encountering these characters was depressing. I was glad to get away from these people, who left me feeling drained.\u2014Sharon Walsh, Geneva, NY The Lake Shore Limited falls sadly short of becoming the truly touching thing it had the potential to be. The characters are trying to incorporate their muddled feelings of grief, loss, and relief with what we as a country have deemed acceptable and expected in the wake of a national tragedy. While this creates personalized perspectives on an event for which every American feels some sense of ownership, the entire cast is so ensconced in maintaining the facade of how they are supposed to think, feel, and act, that very little actually takes place.\u2014Kathryn Calderone, Arlington, VA  I was drawn in to the predicaments of Billy, Rafe, and Sam upon their first introduction; however, the plot eventually becomes predictable and overly dramatic. Miller uses the device of a play within a play (or novel) to underscore the porosity between fiction and fact, which has been done too often before. Each section is also told from the point of view of a different character, and while the transitions between these sections are quite clever, that narrative device is trite and gimmicky.\u2014Abby Fung, Boston   Anne Lamott, Imperfect Birds The delicate, often-tormented relationship between teen girls and their mothers is a fraught topic, intensely explored by Lamott with the honesty and pathos of one who has lived to tell the tale. In this fast-moving and involving story, mom Elizabeth and 17-year-old daughter Rosie are creative, cool Northern Californians\u2014Rosie a mass of smarts, swirling hormones, Ecstasy parties, sex experimentation, and rebellion. Elizabeth is also a dimensional, likable, sympathetic character\u2014despite being a depressive, medicated, recovering alcoholic. Thanks to deftly drawn portraits of family, friends, and troubled teens, everyday life in Elizabeth and Rosie&amp;#039;s small but upscale San Francisco suburb is vividly illuminated and endlessly engaging. The push-and-pull, lies, and confusion between parents and independence-seeking teens are illustrated in painful and absorbing detail and dialogue. Lamott is writing about a certain subgenre of privileged, NPR-listening, hip, literary Marin county dwellers, and their adventures with AA, sweat lodges, and teen wilderness &amp;quot;rehabs&amp;quot; may not resonate with every reader, but the emotions and struggles they face are universal and compelling.\u2014Katherine Turman, New York City  Looking for a book about an incredibly selfish mother in a dysfunctional relationship with her only child? Here you go. Elizabeth is a recovered alcoholic who lost her first husband. She felt herself to be in such an emotionally fragile state that for many years following his death, all she could do was garden, drink tea, and read. Not only does Elizabeth never get off the couch, she hypocritically has high expectations for Rosie after her father&amp;#039;s death. She feels Rosie should be a stellar student, get scholarships for college (mother of course can&amp;#039;t pay), have a job, and not become an addict like herself. I was repulsed by the mother, understood the daughter as annoying as she was, but just didn&amp;#039;t understand, why was I reading this?\u2014Jennifer Brown, Athens, GA   Jane Smiley,  Private Life  This story, epic in scope, covers in almost cloying detail the life and times of Margaret Mayfield, from her birth in late 1800s Missouri to life in San Francisco in the 1940s. Margaret&amp;#039;s marriage to odd astronomer/conspiracy theorist Andrew Early is stifling, strange and sad, and as World War II encroaches, Early even suspects his wife and friends of being spies or couriers as he falls under scrutiny by the FBI for his peculiar behavior. Actual historical events play large roles in the fictional Margaret&amp;#039;s life\u2014the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Albert Einstein, the 1942 internment of Japanese-Americans. While Smiley&amp;#039;s mannered writing is careful and detailed, it&amp;#039;s difficult to rouse much passion or compassion for her characters, even, as the title suggests, as private lives are laid bare.\u2014Katherine Turman, New York City I like a book that changes me in some way, and this book certainly reminded me of something I already knew but perhaps failed to appreciate sufficiently: As a woman in the late 20th and early 21st century, I&amp;#039;ve always had options. Choices for living her life weren&amp;#039;t available to Jane Smiley&amp;#039;s Margaret, who grows up in the Show-Me state but doesn&amp;#039;t come of age until decades later in California. Touching on varied aspects of the late 19th century, such as astronomical research, capital punishment, transcontinental travel, obsessive behavior, and political academia, Smiley creates unforgettable characters who bear witness to and eventually carve out their own space against the vicissitudes of life.\u2014Narci J. Drossos, Valdosta, GA  &amp;quot;A wife only has to do what she&amp;#039;s told for the first year,&amp;quot; Margaret&amp;#039;s mother tells her when she&amp;#039;s a young woman; but she only remembers it when she&amp;#039;s nearly sixty. If she&amp;#039;d have followed her mother&amp;#039;s advice, it could have saved her a lot of heartache. If you aren&amp;#039;t a Margaret, and you choose not to marry and toss aside social mores, you have Dora, Margaret&amp;#039;s lifelong friend. Dora, however, ends up an isolated extremist, maybe a little better off than Margaret, but not much. Basically, if you are a woman in this novel, you&amp;#039;re doomed. Choose your path of slow destruction. Another bit of wisdom from Margaret&amp;#039;s mother, &amp;quot;Romance . . . [is] always the first act of a tragedy.&amp;quot; Now, go get married.\u2014Jennifer Brown, Athens, GA  Set largely in early-20th-century America, Smiley&amp;#039;s novel chronicles the life of a woman through years of so-called womanly roles to include old maid, loyal and dedicated wife, and unfulfilled mother. Margaret, married off to a Naval Captain and physicist, leads a mostly contented life, oblivious to her &amp;quot;brilliant&amp;quot; husband&amp;#039;s self-aggrandizing and aggressive ways. When Margaret learns more about academic Andrew through both his professional attempts at scientific acclaim and his old correspondence, she begins to recognize that her perceptions of him, herself, and their place in the world may be skewed.\u2014Kathryn Calderone, Arlington, VA  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a11045/elles-lettres-may-440885/>