Book No. 37 of 2021
Monogamy isn’t the type of book that is about what “happens” so much as it is about the characters’ observations of their own reactions to and feelings about life. Miller nails acute and specific aspects of the human condition, like re-examining a suppressed childhood memory with the realism of adulthood, or the intense overwhelming fizz of a fleeting attraction.
Miller writes with such skill that even though you don’t necessarily know much about the characters in terms of quantitative facts, you feel as if you know them deeply through their love, grief, and pain—there is something universal-feeling in the concentrated specificity of their experiences. She also captures, beautifully, the sensory experience of moments: of rollicking dinner parties, of a lovingly run bookstore, of intimate moments of grieving with family.
Similar Reads
I was reminded of Rachel Cusk’s Outline, which had very similar “it’s not about what happens” literary vibes.