The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
Elinor Lipman, 2003
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375724596
Summary
In her newest well-tuned, witty, and altogether wonderful novel, bestselling author Elinor Lipman dares to ask: Can an upper-middle-class doctor find love with a shady, fast-talking salesman?
Meet Alice Thrift, surgical intern in a Boston hospital, high of I.Q. but low in social graces. She doesn’t mean to be acerbic, clinical, or blunt, but where was she the day they taught Bedside Manner 101? Into Alice’s workaholic and wallflower life comes Ray Russo, a slick traveling fudge salesman in search of a nose job and well-heeled companionship, but not necessarily in that order. Is he a conman or a sincere suitor? Good guy or bad? Alice’s parents, roommate, and best friend Sylvie are appalled at her choice of mate.
Despite her doubts, Alice finds herself walking down the aisle, not so much won over as worn down. Will their marriage last the honeymoon? Only if Alice’s best instincts can triumph over Ray’s unsavory ways. (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
The great accomplishment of The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is Lipman's ability to chart the course of this mismatch in an utterly persuasive way, and this in turn relies on Alice's justification of her involvement with a guy who becomes creepier and creepier with each passing chapter. It's not love that possesses Alice (conveying a mad attraction of opposites would be a far simpler task) but loneliness, the desire to feel normal, to feel as if she has a life—which turns out not to mean what Dr. Alice Thrift, despite her tremendous I.Q., once thought it did.
Karen Karbo - New York Times Book Review
Elinor Lipman reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse, and The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is no exception.
Susan Salter Reynolds - Los Angeles Times
In her new novel, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, returns Lipman to the very peak of her form. Like the brilliant British writer Barbara Pym, Lipman creates small domestic spheres in which characters are neither famous nor magical. They are simply, wonderfully, memorably human and therefore complicated and compelling.
Deirdre Donahue - USA Today
Snappy wit, a clever plot and the sheer fun of a book you can't put down await readers of Lipman's (The Inn at Lake Divine) eighth novel, surely her best to date. The eponymous Alice is a sleep-deprived surgical intern at a Boston hospital. A graduate of MIT and Harvard and a congenital workaholic, she's also devoid of social skills, a sense of humor or elementary tact. Though miserably unequipped with self-esteem, Alice is an intelligent, well-brought-up offspring of upper-middle-class parents. Why, then, does she fall prey to the romantic blandishments of Ray Russo, a vulgar loudmouth and con artist who-it turns out-lies every time he opens his mouth? That Lipman can make this story plausible, and tell it with humor, psychological insight and rising suspense, is a triumph. Despite her roommate Leo's description of Ray as " a slimeball who won't take no for an answer," Alice fails to see through her conniving beau because she's achingly lonely and because he remains devoted when she's put on probation for falling asleep while assisting in the OR. It's easy for her to dismiss the concern of family and friends as simple snobbery-which, in some cases, it is. Lipman's knowledge of hospital routine, especially the bone-weary lives of interns and residents, is a major reason that the plot moves along as smoothly as if on ball bearings. The dozen or so supporting characters, from Alice's horrified parents to her good friends and fellow residents, are vividly three-dimensional. Lipman's eye for social pretense has never been so keen—or so cruel. There's a dark moral here—that class differences cannot be breached—but readers will appreciate the candor. If ever a novel can be lifted intact from page to silver screen, this is one. From the leads to the character parts, there are juicy roles for Hollywood's best.
Publishers Weekly
Surgical intern Alice Thrift is, by her own admission, a wallflower. Her mother prefers to think of her as socially autistic. But no man—or woman—is an island, and before Alice knows it, her male roommate, a neighbor, and a kindly doctor begin to drag her from her lifelong, self-inflicted emotional exile. Although this social misfit starts to bond with her new friends, her courtship by a traveling fudge salesman leaves her completely bewildered. At first, Alice comes off as an unsympathetic character, but the more she tries to deal with the world as a detached, clinical observer (and the more she fails), the more sympathetic she becomes. Told in the first person, Lipman's seventh novel (after The Dearly Departed) is both funny and poignant, and it is appropriate for most fiction collections in libraries of all sizes. Lipman fans and readers who enjoy the television series Scrubs will go for this similarly offbeat novel about the quirkiness of the medical world.
Library Journal
Popular for sprightly if predictable romantic comedies, Lipman stretches her boundaries in her newest by letting readers know early on that her lovers will not end up happily every after-at least not together. All work and no play Alice Thrift is a Harvard-educated surgical intern at a Boston hospital. Ray Russo is an uneducated, coarse, and sleazy fudge salesman who also claims to be a widower. Alice begins her deadpan narration by quoting the New York Times description of their wedding, letting us know right off that the marriage has ended disastrously before she retraces their courtship. Ray enters her life looking for a nose job. That he immediately begins to pursue Alice raises immediate suspicions given Alice's off-putting personality, which Lipman does almost too good a job conveying. Alice is book smart but lacks any bedside manner, sense of humor, or ability to interact with others. When she considers quitting medicine after being put on probation for falling asleep on the job, her roommate Leo, a charming and (of course) handsome male nurse, bucks her up with pep talks and pizza. She doesn't resign, and she continues resisting Ray, who won't take no for an answer. But Leo's new girlfriend is a midwife who disdains doctors, so Alice moves into a studio apartment. She succumbs to Ray's transparent seduction and begins having regular sex. Her job performance improves, she makes friends with her fellow doctor-in-training Sylvie. But needy Alice feels left out by Sylvie's mild flirtation with Leo, who is squabbling with his now-pregnant girlfriend. In reaction she elopes with Ray. At the elaborate after-the-fact wedding, Alice discovers Ray's "deadwife" is in fact a living girlfriend. Without breaking any laws, Ray has bamboozled her out of money, but she is wiser, and also happier, living now in a three-bedroom apartment with Sylvie and Leo (who may have potential as more than pal). A clever sweet tart, more tart that sweet.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Pursuit of Alice Thrift opens with the announcement of a marriage and its ultimate failure. Does knowing the outcome spoil the narrative journey in any way?
2. Alice always expresses herself in literal and clinical terms. How does the author maintain a comedic tone while her narrator is, essentially, tactless and devoid of humor?
3. No one around Alice can understand what she sees in Ray Russo. How much of that universal disapproval is based on class differences? What facts did the author slip onto Ray’s figurative résumé to prejudice his case?
4. Reviewers have noted Elinor Lipman’s "fondness for inviting peripheral characters along with their numerous subplots and intrigues to have their say." Which characters in The Pursuit of Alice Thrift best exemplify this hallmark?
5. Could The Pursuit of Alice Thrift have been set anywhere, or is there something intrinsically Bostonian about the story and its characters?
6. The author has said that this novel is, first and foremost, "about friendship, and being rescued by it." Leo Frawley might be described as the novel’s nurturer, while Sylvie Schwartz functions as its tough guy. Do you think that the author set out to challenge the readers’ gender expectations, or was she simply trying to create original characters?
7. Except for her long hair and unfashionable clothes, Alice is never described physically. How do you picture her? Did she change in your mind’s eye as she grew more comfortable inside her own skin?
8. Dialogue is all-important in Elinor Lipman’s novels. Is its most important role that of advancing the plot, developing the characters, or entertaining the reader?
9. Should Ray Russo be described as the novel’s villain, or might he be, after all, Alice’s catalyst and crucible?
10. If you could see into their futures, what will Alice, Sylvie, and Leo be doing ten years from now?
11. Novelist Carol Shields, in her biography of Jane Austen, observed, "...(M)others are essential in her fiction. They are the engines that push the action forward, even when they fail to establish much in the way of maternal warmth." How does Mrs. Thrift fit the Austen model? And how much influence does Mrs. Frawley still exert over her full-grown, independent son?
12. Alice confides to Dr. Shaw’s companion, Jackie, "I’m confused by the fact that we had, to the best of my knowledge, in the vernacular, great sex." Why is she baffled? Is it purely her lack of experience, or is it back to the sociology of Ray and Alice—that by all other standards they would be judged incompatible?
13. In Shakespeare’s plays one can rely on comedies ending in marriage. The two weddings in The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, however, are not endings in any conventional sense. What purpose do they serve in the education and evolution of Alice?
(Questions issued by publisher.)