About the Author

ELINOR LIPMAN is the author of eight previous novels, including The Inn at Lake Devine, and My Latest Grievance, winner of the Paterson Fiction Prize. In 2001 she won the New England Book Award for Fiction. The film Then She Found Me, directed by and starring Helen Hunt, is based on her first novel.

Reviews

Completely irresistible. Expect high demand for this novel and renewed interest in Lipman's previous seven. Highly recommended.
Library Journal Starred A novel of warmth, wisdom, love, and redemption that is funny and fun to read.
Booklist, ALA Up there at the top is where this enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original and Austen-like stylist belongs.
The Washington Post Lovable, psychologically intricate... Bittersweet farce.
The New York Times Book Review May be Lipman's best work so far... Every page offers laugh-out-loud dialogue...So entertaining you're sorry to see it end.
The Seattle Times This is not-to-be-missed reading.
Bookpage --

Frederica Hatch-the articulate, curious, and na?ve narrator of Lipman's eighth novel-proves the perfect vehicle for this satiric yet compassionate family portrait. It's 1976, and psych professors David and Aviva Hatch are honest with their daughter to the point of anatomically correcting Frederica's Barbie dolls. In all their years as a dorm family at a small women's college outside Boston, though, no one mentioned Laura Lee French, David's first wife (and distant cousin). Frederica, now 15 and ready for rebellion, delights in Laura's arrival on campus as a new dorm mother; David and Aviva look on nervously as the two become fast friends. In contrast with Frederica's right-thinking, '60s radical parents, Laura Lee becomes the delicious embodiment of all the moral and psychological complexities of a flawed world beyond campus. Meanwhile, campus itself looks very little like an ivory tower as major scandal brews amid petty gossip. As in previous novels, Lipman addresses sensitive issues (anti-Semitism, adultery, dementia) with delicacy and acerbity. She also nails the shifts and moods of an angry teenager, a grandmother in denial, a philanderer in hiding and a campus in shock. By the end, a smart young girl learns compassion for a world that can be grotesquely, hilariously, disturbingly unfair. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.