Ahysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend Henry Archer’s wellordered life. They bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago. Henry is a lawyer, an old-fashioned man, gay, successful, lonely. Thalia is now twenty-nine, an actresshopeful, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother— Denise, Henry’s ex. Hoping it will lead to better things for her career, Thalia agrees to pose as the girlfriend of a former sitcom star and current horror-movie luminary who is down on his romantic luck. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry’s Upper West Side townhouse, she finds a champion in her long-lost father, and he finds new life—and maybe even new love—in the commotion.
Elinor Lipman's latest is another in a long line of great comedy-of-manner novels she's written. Maybe not quite as good as Lake Divine and Dearly Departed, but almost at that level.
There's something unique in Lipman's writing that I've tried to figure out in all ten of her novels. Her secondary characters are written as brilliantly as her main characters. I don't know how she does it - I guess that's why I'm a reader and not a writer - but maybe it's her wonderful dialogue. I'm left after reading her novels with the - unacted on, of course - urge to call her and ask her to write another novel, using the same characters, taking the storyline further. As all her novels are "stand-alones", it's clear she considers each one finished at the end.
She is a worthy successor to the late Laurie Colwin.
