The book starts off with an enigmatic Jorge Luis Borges quote - right; then the reader is thrown instantly into a domestic drama: a mother, Erica, is left alone with her "rude, coarse, selfish, insolent, nasty, brutish and tall" children at breakfast. Ok, this frigid and snobby U.S. housewife d...
”In this culture, where energy and egotism are rewarded in the young and good-looking, plain aging women are supposed to be self-effacing, uncomplaining--to take up as little space and breathe as little air as possible.” Cupid as Link Boy by Joshua ReynoldsVinnie Miner is 54 years old. She has n...
I really enjoyed this contemporary novel but if you peruse the GoodReads reviews you'll quickly see that not all readers shared this point of view. So, I'll lay my prejudices on the table:. . . I enjoy reading almost anything set in an academic environment;. . . I am looking for a reading "diet" ...
I may be judging this more harshly because I tend to have high expectations when it comes to Alison Lurie. And she didn't entirely disappoint me; her characters are multifaceted creatures and she can write a fabulous sentence. This wasn't one of her better books, though."The Nowhere City" is ab...
If we could give half stars, I'd rate this book 2.5.. half way between "it was ok" and "I liked it." I wanted a trip to Key West and I like the version that Alison Lurie gives us. Her observations of tourists and tourists who become residents strikes me as so true... I see it where I live now a...
I first read this around fifteen years ago. I remember liking it fine, but not much else. It's been on my bookshelf since then, unnoticed, until this Christmas when my 86-year-old mother took it down and started reading. I'd forgotten all about it, but since, like the book's protagonist, I'm also...
Again the island assumed its travel-magazine glamour: pulsating blue sky, ostrich-feather palms, scarlet and salmon-red flowering hibiscus, bronzed and beaming tourists. Under this blue sky, rather slowly and painfully, Molly Hopkins descended her front steps and set out toward the restaurant whe...
The road banked and curved like an amusement-park track; what must it be like in the winter!—but of course that didn’t matter: no time was winter here. Expensive, shiny cars gunned their engines behind her, and blew their horns to make her go faster; so recklessly she went faster, spinning past c...
From time to time he pats the front of his jacket in a quick, concerned way which would inform an experienced pickpocket (who fortunately is not present) that a large sum in cash is concealed there. He is dressed more soberly and formally than usual, and his expression is one of confidence and we...
Five professors were scheduled to move in the day after tomorrow ; but that morning a large piece of ceiling had fallen in the kitchen, filling much of the ground floor with dust and debris.Jane had not been very surprised by this event. One of the things she knew by now was that for anyone in an...