Elinor Lipman is the award-winning author of sixteen books of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, Then She Found Me, became a feature film directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick. She was an Elizabeth Drew Professor of Creative Writing at Smith College, a finalist in the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof Trump poetry contest, and the author of two New York Times Modern Love essays. She divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley. You can find her online at elinorlipman.com.
Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm—or, was, until a prudish neighbor, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of house confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn't heard the end of that tattletale neighbor—whose past isn't as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane's door again? Can her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?
Lipman writes so accessibly. The chapters are very short, and Ms. Demeanor is such a quick read. You'd have thought the opposite is true—Jane is stuck at home! What could possibly be happening to her?—but the pacing of the novel, the amount of characters that interact with one another makes it a really fast read. A lot is happening: Lipman juggles the relationships between these characters and their subsequent plot points well. I genuinely didn't want to put this one down, as I kept wanting to know what happened next.
I love what Lipman does with Jane and her twin sister, Jackleen. They are compared and contrasted so well, and a lot of the best humor came from their conversations, in my opinion. I have a sister (albeit not identical), but regardless a lot of the humor still applies to what I've experienced with my own sister. What's enjoyable about that, too, is that there are two women on the cover, and the whole story revolves around female relationships. I felt like Jane's and Jackleen's relationship was getting to the heart of the novel the strongest—what it's like to be a woman today, and a woman with other female relationships.
There's so much in here that's done well. The last thing I want to mention, though, is the romance. There's Jane and Perry falling in love, which is contrasted beautifully with Jane falling in love with herself and her situation. While Jane and Perry fall in love over the food Jane cooks, I love slowly watching Jane coming to terms with where she's at, and how she wants to achieve where she wants to be. While Jane's relationship with Perry is tied to that, it isn't equal to it. I thought that was brilliantly done, and made Jane's and Perry's relationship much more fun to watch blossom.
I will definitely be keeping an eye out for future Lipman books now, and possibly diving in her previous ones. You can find Elinor online at elinorlipman.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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