The Lake Shore Limited, by Sue Miller

At the heart of The Lake Shore Limited is a play of the same name. Its author, Billy, is annoyed that people think all plays are autobiographical--yet an important element of this play is. The man Billy was living with in 2001 was killed in one of the planes that hit the Twin Towers on 9/11. In Billy's play, the main character, Gabriel, is dealing with conflicting feelings about the possibility that his wife has been killed in a terrorist attack on a train station in Chicago. Gabriel, who has clearly moved on emotionally (he has a serious girlfriend), feels relief and perhaps even momentary joy at the prospect of being unencumbered; yet, at the same time, he feels sadness, regret for the love he and his wife once had, and guilt.

The novel is told from the perspectives of four characters. Leslie is the sister of Gus, Billy's late lover, who has come to the play's opening night with her husband Pierre and a friend she once felt more than friendship toward, Sam. She has invited Sam to the play with the idea of introducing him to Billy but is stunned by the play's suggestion that Billy did not love Gus.

Rafe is the actor who plays Gabriel. His wife is dying from ALS. One night after rehearsal, he sleeps with Billy, and their conversation and the panic his wife experienced when he was late coming home give him new insight into the play, and his portrayal of Gabriel becomes a revelation even to Billy.

Billy, the playwright, had been on the verge of breaking up with Gus when he was killed. The public role she had to play as the grieving girlfriend (Leslie insisted on calling her Gus's fiance) made her guilt even worse. By the time the play is produced, she has struggled with these feelings for six years and is having difficulty making new connections with anyone except her dog.

Like Rafe, Sam had experienced the protracted death of his wife, as well as the failure of a second marriage and a degree of distance from his three sons. Somewhat offended that Leslie, with whom he once fancied himself in love, has decided to introduce him to Billy as a romantic prospect, he nonetheless likes Billy. Their first "date" is, however, a disaster.

Each character has one long section devoted to him/her and centered around the play's debut, but with a great deal of back story included. Each also has a much shorter section that takes place around the time the play closes. In addition to providing considerable detail about the fictitious two-act play, the novel has other theatrical elements--several sections end in a way that evokes the moment the curtain comes down at the end of an act and Sam, when he gazes into Leslie's and Pierce's house one night when he has driven there with the intent of declaring himself, sees them as characters in a play, one on stage left, the other stage right. While the theatrical piece may sound contrived or dull, it is neither. The ways in which different people experienced the same event spark reflection on the ways relationships change, the futility of guilt, the difficulty of being the partner who lives, and the way in which art works.

As I reread my description of the book, I recognize that I have not done it justice. The Lake Shore Limited is a marvelous book, perhaps the best I have read this year.

Favorite passages:

It was so ordinary, so unremarkable, but for Sam it had the potency of a Vermeer. Something changed in him as he watched. he had a sense in himself, in his response, of mildness, of generosity, as though in some way he were responsible for what he was seeing . . .As though he were blessing it, its very ordinariness, by witnessing it.

All her life, she had tried not to want. To be content. To be at peace. Safety lay that way, she had thought. You couldn't be hurt. (Leslie)

Gabriel looks back at him from the mirror, the man he's made, and made his own, the man whose grief drinks from his own grief, whose joy eats his joy, but whom he uses, over and over, to escape his grief and joy, to make them commodity, currency. For better or for worse--he doesn't know--to make them art. (Rafe)