My Latest Grievance
Elinor Lipman, 2006
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618872350
Summary
My Latest Grievance introduces us to Frederica Hatch. Sixteen years old and accustomed to being the center of attention, Frederica has been raised in a dorm on the campus of Dewing, a women's college just outside Boston. It's 1978, and her parents are intensely PC (before the term was coined)—two bleeding hearts that beat as one. Aviva Ginsburg Hatch is a union grievance commitee chairperson and perennial professor of the year, and, to Frederica's frustration, she's the only mother around who doesn't own a jewelry box and makeup. Frederica's father, David Hatch, shares his wife's political passions and agrees with her about almost everything. Chafing under the care of the "most annoyingly evenhanded parental team in the history of civilization," Frederica is starting to feel that her life is stiflingly snug.
But then Frederica's path crosses that of the glamorous new dorm mother at Dewing, Laura Lee French, the antithesis of the Hatches. And with Laura Lee comes the best gossip in the history of the college—she is David Hatch's ex-wife. When Frederica learns the surprising news, she can't stop imagining the maternal road not taken, wondering if she was born into the wrong side of the divorce. Fearing scandal, the three Hatches and Laura Lee are forced to keep their history a secret, and havoc and hilarity ensue. The New York Times Book Review compared Lipman to "an inspired alchemist," and the magic continues with My Latest Grievance. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 16, 1950
• Where—Lowell, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—A.B. Simmons College
• Awards—New England Books Award For Fiction
• Currently—lives in North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York, New York
Elinor Lipman is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist, known for her humor and societal observations. In his review of her 2019 novel, Good Riddance, Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Lipman "has long been one of our wittiest chroniclers of modern-day romance."
The author was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. She graduated from Simmons College in Boston where she studied journalism. While at Simon, Lipman began her writing career, working as a college intern with the Lowell Sun. Throughout the rest of the 1970s, she wrote press releases for WGBH, Boston's public radio station.
Writing
Lipman turned to fiction writing in 1979; her first short story, "Catering," was published in Yankee Magazine. In 1987 she published a volume of stories, Into Love and Out Again, and in 1990 she came out with her first novel, Then She Found Me. Her second novel, The Inn at Lake Devine, appeared in 1998, earning Lipman the 2001 New England Book Award three years later.
Lipman's first novel, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a 2008 feature film—directed by and starring Helen Hunt, along with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick.
In addition to her fiction, Lipman released a 2012 book of rhyming political tweets, Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus. Two other books—a 10th novel, The View from Penthouse B, and a collection of essays, I Can't Complain: (all too) Personal Essays—were both published in 2013. The latter deals in part with the death of her husband at age 60. A knitting devotee, Lipman's poem, "I Bought This Pattern Book Last Spring," was included in the 2013 anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting.
Lipman was the Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College from 2011-12, and she continues to write the column, "I Might Complain," for Parade.com. Smith spends her time between North Hampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Works
1988 - Into Love and Out Again: Stories
1990 - Then She Found Me
1992 - The Way Men Act
1995 - Isabel's Bed
1998 - The Inn at Lake Devine
1999 - The Ladies' Man
2001 - The Dearly Departed
2003 - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
2006 - My Latest Grievance
2009 - The Family Man
2012 - Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus
2013 - I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays
2013 - The View From Penthouse B
2017 - On Turpentine Lane
2019 - Good Riddance
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/27/2019.)
Book Reviews
A lovable, psychologically intricate novel.... As Lipman's bittersweet farce unfolds, she uncovers a family romance of an unusual kind, delving into the stories parents tell each other about child-rearing—and the stories children tell themselves about parenting. Digging still deeper, her spade hits something hard. What is the root that links the parents? How solid is the bond joining one parent to another, and both parents to their daughter? Lovable, psychologically intricate...
Janet Maslin - New York Times
May be Lipman's best work so far.... Every page offers laugh-out-loud dialogue.... So entertaining you're sorry to see it end.
Seattle Times
Frederica Hatch—the articulate, curious, and naive 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.
Publishers Weekly
In the late 1970s, Frederica Hatch is the enchantingly outspoken daughter of brilliant college professors at a minor all-girls college in Massachusetts. Her temperate, mildly eccentric, and lovely parents, also union activists for the faculty of Dewing College, serve as houseparents at one of the dorms, where Frederica has lived her whole life. Wise beyond her years, Frederica takes it in stride when she discovers that her father was married once before and that Laura Lee French, the smashingly solipsistic first wife of Dr. David Hatch, has just been hired as housemother of one of the other dorms. Within hours of her arrival, French seduces the new president of Dewing in a flagrant affair that provides rich fuel for Frederica's hilariously dry wit and searing analysis of adult foibles. Lipman (The Pursuit of Alice Thrift) creates that rare blend of no-nonsense compassion and believable, offbeat innocence that is completely irresistible. Expect demand for this novel and renewed interest in Lipman's previous seven. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
All hell breaks loose when a new dorm mother arrives at a second-rate New England girl's college in Lipman's eighth romantic comedy (The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, 2003, etc). In 1977, 16-year-old narrator Frederica Hatch lives on the campus of Dewing College with her mother and father, David and Aviva, who serve as houseparents as well as professors of psychology and sociology. Frederica's only friend on campus, sort of, is Marietta Woodbury, daughter of Dewing's new president; the girls have formed an uneasy relationship encouraged by Mrs. Woodbury, who gives Frederica rides to the public high school they both attend. David and Aviva are stereotypical academics: dowdy, painstakingly rational, and committed to liberal causes, particularly those related to employee-management relations on campus. So their daughter is shocked to discover that David was previously married to his distant cousin, Laura Lee French, whom he left for Aviva, his soulmate. Thanks to Frederica's conveniently (if unconvincingly) interfering grandmother, Laura Lee takes a job at Dewing as a dorm mother. Frederica, already chafing at being raised as a kind of college mascot, is initially enchanted by the new arrival's flamboyant style, but Laura Lee is clearly a troublemaker, if not a sociopath. She enjoys making David and especially Aviva uncomfortable. After Frederica introduces her to the college president (in the cafeteria, where the Hatches eat all their meals), Laura Lee and Dr. Woodbury carry on a brazenly open affair, which so humiliates his wife that she attempts suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning. She survives, but with brain damage—a decidedly unfunny situation for a supposedly comic novel. Lipman ties up the rest of the plot in typical sprightly fashion: David becomes college president; Laura Lee has a baby who grows up to be a delight; Frederica returns to work at Dewing as an adult. It's as though Mrs. Woodbury's ruined life is just a minor contrivance. Not one of this popular author's best.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book is narrated by the adult Frederica Hatch as she looks back at a tumultuous teenage year. Does the author make the combined sensibility—age sixteen viewed through the eyes of the narrator's present self—work?
2. Why do you think the author made Dewing a lackluster institution rather than a top-notch college?
3. Frederica asks on page 1, "Were they types, my parents-to-be? From a distance and for a long time, it appeared to be so." Does this serve as a warning? A prediction? A wink from the author? An apology?
4. Laura Lee French's ex-husband is a distant cousin. Would the story have unfolded in the same way if she had not been a relative?
5. Marietta Woodbury and her mother are rude to Laura Lee upon first speaking to her on campus. Did this meeting resonate with you and signal trouble ahead?
6. The affair between Laura Lee and President Woodbury is anything but discreet. Did their public carrying on amuse or offend you?
7. The professors Hatch are passionately committed to righting wrongs and to each other. In what ways do they let their daughter down?
8. What turning point triggers Frederica's more sympathetic and respectful view of her parents?
9. One could say that the Blizzard of '78 is a character in My Latest Grievance. Did the author succeed in conveying the power of that historic storm and effectively put you there?
10. Did you find any character less than fully developed? What else did you want to know about him or her?
11. Laura Lee French, narcissist extraordinaire: is it possible to feel sympathy for this character?
12. Chapter 33, "Emeriti," the epilogue, brings the reader to the present. How well does the jump forward in time wrap up the story?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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