The Lake Shore Limited

by SueMiller (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.25

  There's this set of things everyone expects from you... Since her boyfriend Gus was killed in 9/11, Billy has been pretending. It is easier for her to stay silent and go through the motions of grief than to tell the truth: that she was planning to leave Gus, and that his death left her feeling a mixture of ambivalence and anguish that she is still struggling to resolve. Drawing from her experience, Billy writes The Lake Shore Limited. The opening night of the play brings together three people whose lives intersect and interweave with Billy's: Leslie, Gus's older sister, haunted by his death and constantly aware of what could have been; Rafe, the actor who brings the joy and sadness of his own marriage into his role; and Sam, a recently divorced man who is irresistibly drawn to Billy's distinctive, enigmatic beauty. Together these four voices create a mesmerizing novel of entanglements, connections and inconsolable losses.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.25

  That's what the play was about, she was thinking abruptly. The wish to imagine what life could be, how it could change, if you were unencumbered. Did everyone who was married do this from time to time, imagine an unencumbered life? Three years after the death of her younger brother Gus, Leslie still thinks about what might have been: if Gus hadn't got on that plane on September 11th, if her husband understood the nature of her grief, if she had made different choices. As she sits down to watch The Lake Shore Limited, a disquietingly autobiographical play written by Gus' former girlfriend Billy, she can't help but wonder whether she also holds on to the past, and whether she really knows Billy at all. Meanwhile, Sam, Leslie's divorced friend, finds in the play inescapable echoes of his troubled life and begins to fall for Billy's distinctive, enigmatic beauty. A powerful love story; a mesmerising tale of entanglements, connections and inconsolable losses; a marvellous reflection on the meaning of grace and the uses of sorrow, in life and in art: The Lake Shore Limited is Sue Miller at her dazzling best.