“Miller
depicts [her characters] with grace and elegance, enriching their perceptions
with strands of connecting images and intertwined history. . . . A very moving
book.” —New York Times Book Review 

From bestselling author Sue Miller comes the poignant story
of a mother and son that touches on the deepest concerns about love, art, family,
and life

Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a
famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and
staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as
well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her
children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises old questions about
his relationship with her, about the choices he has made in his own life, and
about the nature of love, disappointment, and grief. 

Profound and deeply affecting, The Distinguished Guest reveals
a family trying to understand the meaning of its life together, while
confronting inevitable loss and the vision of an immeasurably altered future.

“As in the work of Jane Austen...Sue Miller’s tale of a proud, elderly woman who visits and bedevils her son...is genuinely adult fiction.”