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