View from Penthouse B (Lipman) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
 [A]tender, funny story of two middle-aged sisters…The View From Penthouse B sparkles with wit. But although the sisters think of themselves as living in the poorhouse, their budgetary problems seem forced, jangling false notes that try the reader’s patience. The novel skitters over oceans of trouble like a balloon set free and carried off by the wind. Work, paychecks, mortgage payments—all these are beside the point, which, when it’s finally addressed, is poign­ant: the nature of grief and forgiveness, the desire to find love.
Dominique Browning - New York Times Book Review


Reading Elinor Lipman is like sitting down over coffee with your favorite friend. It’s all wonderful fun. Lipman sketches her characters’ foibles with amused affection and moves the plot forward with practiced ease. The heart of her story is a touching portrait of sisterly devotion. Extravagant, excessive Margot and quiet Gwen couldn’t be more different. They bluntly decry each other’s mistakes, but they are fiercely loyal and protective. It’s giving nothing away to say that both sisters get the happy ending they deserve because Lipman’s fiction always honors an implicit contract to provide reader satisfaction..
Wendy Smith - Washington Post


After losing her divorce settlement in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, Margot settles into a new penthouse in Greenwich Village with her widowed, jobless sister, Gwen-Laura Schmidt, and Anthony Sarno, a gay, recently laid-off, 20-something financier. The result, in Lipman’s thin 11th novel (after The Family Man), is a makeshift homey boarding house for lost souls.... Lipman’s choppy dialogue rarely delves beneath the surface, and for an author known for her sense of humor, this novel is sorely void of laughs.
Publishers Weekly


Gwen-Laura Consadine, widowed and still grieving after two years, moves into a swanky Manhattan penthouse at her older sister Margot's invitation. Margot's place is a bit too much for her to keep on her own now that her money has been Madoff-Ponzied away, a fact that she chronicles on her little-read blog.... Lipman hits her stride again. Middle-age love, family dynamics, and friendship makes her latest jarringly funny, touching, and vividly amusing. —Julie Kane, Sweet Briar College Lib., VA
Library Journal


Lipman's latest is a post–financial-crash comedy about a 50-ish widow and her divorced sister living together in a Greenwich Village apartment.... Will Gwen-Laura ever meet a decent man once she grudgingly enters the world of Internet dating?... The answers are not terribly surprising, but Lipman is more interested in the jokes than the characters, taking a sitcom approach. Although the author throws in plenty of contemporary social details, Gwen-Laura and Margot feel dated, closer to the world of Auntie Mame than Girls and without the edge of either. This book has more romance and less satiric bite than the author's best comic novels (The Family Man, 2009, etc.).
Kirkus Reviews