The Lake Shore Limited

January 18, 2010
Four people are bound together by the 9/11 death of a man in Miller's insightful latest. Leslie, older sister and stand-in mother to the late Gus, clings to the notion that Gus had found true love with his girlfriend, Billy, before he was killed. But the truth is more complicated: Billy, a playwright, has written a new play that explores the agonizing hours when a family gathers, not knowing the fate of their mother and wife who was aboard a train that has been bombed. The ambivalent reaction of the woman's husband has shades of Billy and Gus's relationship, particularly the limbo she's been in since he died. Rafe, the actor playing the ambivalent husband, processes his own grief and guilt about his terminally ill wife as he steps more and more into his character. Finally, there's Sam, an old friend Leslie now hopes to set up with Billy. While the plot doesn't have the suspense and zip of The Senator's Wife
, Miller's take on post-9/11 America is fascinating and perfectly balanced with her writerly meditations on the destructiveness of trauma and loss, and the creation and experience of art.

February 15, 2010
An ambitious exploration of the interaction between choice and random chance in human relationships, from Miller (The Senator's Wife, 2008, etc.)

The book centers on four characters' reactions to the play that one of them has scripted about the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Leslie attends the play of the title with her doctor husband and their architect friend Sam, with whom she once shared vague romantic longings. Playwright Billy was Leslie's younger brother's live-in girlfriend when he died six years earlier on one of the 9/11 planes. Still grieving for Gus, Leslie assumes Billy feels the same sense of loss and is disturbed by Billy's play, which describes the ambivalence of the survivor. The play's hero is a man who learns that a bomb has gone off on the train on which his wife was traveling. Horrified to feel relief that his wife's death would free him to marry his lover, he sends the lover away, and the play ends with his ambiguous greeting to his wife when she returns. As Leslie struggles to understand what the play means about Billy and Gus's relationship, the actor Rafe, who is playing the lead, also finds the play hitting close to home. His wife is dying of ALS, and he is committed to her care. After he sleeps with Billy one night, he brings the loss and guilt he feels about his wife to his performance, the brilliance of which resuscitates his flagging career. Billy has written the play to clear the air. She had decided to leave Gus before he died, but Leslie sucked her into the role of grieving lover. Now Leslie throws Billy together with Sam. He is immediately smitten, but Billy resists. An architect whose first wife died of breast cancer and whose second marriage ended in divorce, Sam allows chance to take its course.

Miller raises tantalizing questions about the ethics of love, but the actual drama involving her decent, troubled characters never rises above a simmer.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2010
Miller ("The Senator's Wife") opens doors to the private lives of four people grappling with loss in her latest novel. Leslie, her husband, Pierce, and her close friend Sam attend a play written by Billy, the former lover of Leslie's brother, Gus, who was killed on 9/11. The play, "The Lake Shore Limited", seems based on the horror of that fateful day and the complicated feelings it unearthed in those waiting to hear if their loved ones were dead or aliveit jolts Leslie, Billy, Sam, and Rafe, the actor who plays the main character in the play, into a difficult inner struggle that could lead to healing and closure. VERDICT Expertly written, this novel plumbs the dark depths of grief and guilt but emerges into the light of self-forgiveness and freedom. Recommended.Jyna Scheeren, NYPL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.