The Good Mother : A Novel (original 1986; edition 2002)

Recently divorced, Anna Dunlop has two passionate attachments: Molly, her four-year-old daughter, and her lover, Leo, the man who has made her feel beautiful - and sexual - for the first time in a long, long time. Swept away by happiness and passion, Anna feels that she has everything she needs in her life. Almost blind to certain changes around her, Anna will soon find that these shocking changes will threaten her new love, her new "family" and will eventually force her to prove she is a good mother.

I am not entirely sure, but I think that I may have read this book many, many years ago. Some of the scenes in it seemed slightly familiar to me, but I don't think that my having read it before affected my rereading of the book too much - I still couldn't remember the ending of the story! :) I loved this book and give it top marks, even though I found the sex scenes in the book almost too graphic for me.

I understand that the book needed to be graphic to make the plot work, however I guess I was just not that used to having such scenes be so descriptive. I found this book to be well written and very engrossing though, and would certainly recommend this book to other readers. I give this book an A+! and look forward to reading more books by Sue Miller in the future. ( )

From the cover - Anna is a divorced Boston piano teacher feeling her way toward an independent new life for herself and her three-year-old daughter Molly. A good mother, who never found much pleasure in sex, Anna soon surprises herself when she meets Leo, a wildly impulsive artist, unabashedly sensual and passionate. With Leo Anna blooms. But in the heat of their intensely sexual affair she does not see Molly's confusion, nor the threat to everything in life she holds dear...
The story is told in the 1st person through the eyes of Anna and so the reader is as shocked as Anna at the turn of events.Sue Miller creates vivid, recognisable characters, not only in Anna, Molly and Leo, but also in her grandparentsand extended family.
The scenario must be one that many modern parents have been confronted by when embarking on new relationships, maintaining a safe, loving, stable home without stifling a promising new relationship.
I found this quite a page turner. ( )

Hard though it is to believe, I READ this back in 2007, and I just don't remember it at all---why would it seem so completely new to me now? A woman who finds at least part of herself--not a cheerful story in any sense but it was interesting to see how little has changed in how a judicial decision might be made--since the book was written back in 1986. I like the way Sue MIller writes---I feel as though I know the main character as she talks about her life in the first person. ( )

This has a weighty, serious, introspective feel about it, and yet the subject matter is the sort of stuff Take A Break magazine churns out every week. Except that they would have sidestepped all the fancy stuff about playing the piano, family etc and cut straight to the nudity.

I admired the writing, the way the reader is immersed in every aspect of the main character's life. Having said that, the early stages sometimes felt like a slog - the chapters are lo-o-o-ong, and I would often find myself halfway down a page, having glided over the text without taking any of it in. Sometimes I had to read and re-read passages before I understood them. Some I could read an infinite number of times and still not understand.

If you can make it as far as the nudity it is unputdownable. The last hundred pages positively raced by. It's definitely worth the effort; I suspect the images will stay with me a long time. ( )

An interesting tale of a women torn between her lover and her child. ( )