Sweet book, written very cleverly and interestingly. I love that Henry and Todd and Henry and Henry and his daughter have nice mutually supportive, loving respectful relationships. Denise, his ex wife, was just fun; bad but still loveable. Thalia, as an actress takes on the job of pretending to...
I had a lot of trouble connecting with any of these characters. Why a man would indulge his ex-wife to whom he hadn't been married in over a quarter of a century escapes me. He runs into the step-daughter that he supposedly loved more than anyone who is now a 29-year-old salon coat check girl and...
I suppose I could complain about this book of tales by Elinor Lipman, but I would be fooling myself because I really enjoyed each of her anecdotal stories with her wry humor. Within the four sections, she elaborates on her family, career, relationships, and moving forward throughout the thirty on...
I've never heard of this author before, but now after this one book of personal essays, I am a huge fan! I was in the library last week browsing the "new nonfiction" section and just picked up this book to look at the cover. On a whim I checked it out and boy am I glad I did. These essays were de...
The Short of It:The Inn at Lake Devine is the perfect summer read. The setting and the characters do not disappoint and it’s surprisingly meaty given its summery feel.The Rest of It:"It was not complicated, and, as my mother pointed out, not even personal. They had a hotel; they didn’t want Jews;...
Fiction. Elinor Lipman writes a good novel. Her characters are engaging and sympathetic (or fabulously annoying). She's got a great sense of humor and the ability to tell a decent story. But this book is missing something; namely, a satisfying conclusion. The beginning is a little difficult to re...
I like Elinor Lipman's books. Her writing style is light and insightful and funny and deft, however, this one seemed to fall short of her usual mark as it was a bit too predictable. I loved the characters and loved that it's a nice, easy read...but I find that I really preferred her other books m...
This novel reflects many realities from our daily life that usually each one of us think about it individually but doesn't give much thought about sharing it with others whether because he/she is ashamed to do so or just because he/she doesn't realize the universality of his/her case. One of thos...
“How would you feel on this miserable day to know that Sigourney Weaver loves your book?” this agent asked. She was talking about my first novel, Then She Found Me, and even though I surely knew that books could be turned into movies, I had no idea that mine had been circulated to producers. My h...
He waits in a hallway outside her modest office, through two cycles of patients: a college-age student, female, kohl-eyed and hostile, then what appears to be a bag lady, who leaves with several waiting-room magazines. Richard politely asks a wire-rimmed young man in a suit and ponytail—the docto...
A better-behaved Charles, a Charles on a probation of our design, started taking meals with us twice a week, due mostly to geography and happenstance. The first move in that direction was his, engineered the night of a raging blizzard. The phone rang in late afternoon and Margot answered. We hear...
I wanted to know everything: How could anyone who'd lived with my gynecologically astute father let herself get pregnant? Did her serene smile mean that this was no accident? And how far was she broadcasting the news? I rang the president's doorbell late on a Friday afternoon. Laura Lee answered,...