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Loading... My Latest Grievanceav Elinor Lipman
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kommer älska Anmäl dig till LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. 16-year-old Frederica Hatch lives in a tiny on-campus apartment with her professor parents who double as dorm-parents at a small women's college near Boston. As the daughter of a sociologist and a psychologist, both die-hard unionists, not to mention being raised around hundreds of college girls, Frederica is a little different from most girls her age. Things start to get interesting when melodramatic Rockette-wannabe Laura Lee French shows up as dorm mother for another building. She is not only eccentric but also the first wife of Frederica's father, a woman Frederica didn't even know existed mere weeks before. I was reminded a bit of Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, but I suspect that has more to do with the protagonist being the daughter of a college professor than anything else. The story is funny and a little silly. I got a kick out of it. I particularly enjoyed the bitter and sarcastic Marietta. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  Child growing up at a college where both her parents teach, gets to know the new dorm mother, who happens to be her father's former wife. Complications follow. Lots of good dialogue. Somewhat thin. (  ) AnneliM | Sep 14, 2009 | I really enjoyed this novel. There is not a lot of sturm and drang, but just people and their lives. Character driven instead of plot driven, but people are always complex and can create their own problems. Very well written. ( ) bookwormteri | Aug 4, 2009 | There is a reason Elinor Lipman gets compared to Jane Austen – like Austen, she can dissect a closed community down to its bones, but is so charming and witty about it that the process looks easy and her thoroughness is only admired in later musings. In My Latest Grievance, Lipman turns her keen eye on academia with the story of Frederica Hatch’s unconventional upbringing at Dewing College in the late 1970s. Born to a duo of bleeding heart professors-turned-dorm-parents and union activists, Frederica is raised in the dorm of their minor all-girls college in Brookline, Massachusetts. When her father’s ex-wife finagles her way into a Dorm Mother job and the bed of the college President, Dewing will never be the same. With Frederica’s as the beguiling narrator and Lipman’s wit flowing, My Latest Grievance is a novel of contemporary manners not to be missed. Also posted on Rose City Reader. (  ) ggchickapee | Jul 10, 2009 | Just like the Lipman story I read before this one, "light reading" is probably a good overall categorization. You won't lie awake at night reflecting on your life and the meaning of existence after reading this book, but it does make a relaxing break between "serious" novels. I liked the characterization of the parents - people who take everything seriously and treat their teenage daughter as though she was an intelligent adult peer. People (like me) who were younger adults in the 1970s will laugh at themselves as they recall their own experience of protests, encounter groups, and similar "dated" beliefs and practices. The ending of the book was rather a disappointment to me, because it is *so* contrary to my own experience of the way the world works (  ) oldblack | Jul 6, 2009 |  inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0618644652, Hardcover)"Almost nobody writes serious entertainment with more panache" than Elinor Lipman, wrote the Chicago Tribune. From her debut novel, Then She Found Me, which in the words of the Washington Post revived the art of "screwball comedy for the newly dawned nineties," to her most recent, best-selling The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, which the Philadelphia Weekly hailed as "the most perfect piece of prose writing to come along in quite a while," Elinor Lipman has set the gold standard by which other comic novelists are judged.Now her pitch-perfect new novel, set in 1978, introduces us to the beguiling Frederica Hatch. Born and raised in the dormitory of a small women's college, and 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. "I had no intention of blending in. I wanted to be who I'd become, the Eloise of Dewing College, the full-time residential expert in an institution that others occupied only fleetingly." Into this cozy world comes Miss Laura Lee French — a wannabe former Rockette and the new dorm mother at the college where Frederica's parents teach and live. Laura Lee proves to be the enthralling and glamorous antithesis of the Hatches, whose passion for liberal political causes is all-consuming — even Frederica's Barbie dolls have been anatomically corrected. As Frederica says, "The timing was excellent . . . Just as I was craving more attention, along came Laura Lee French, dorm mother without a day job, single, childless, and ultimately famous within our gates." "Like an inspired alchemist" (New York Times Book Review), Lipman turns this seemingly routine faculty hire into a catalyst for havoc and hilarity. For it happens that Miss French — in the distant past — was married to none other than Frederica's earnest and distinctly unglamorous father. As in her previous novels, Lipman writes "in a delicious style that is both funny and elegant" (USA Today), rendering serious subjects "through a lens of humor and hope" (Boston Globe). The results? Vintage Elinor Lipman — delightful, memorable, and touching. (hämtat från Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) Första testrundan har stängts. Gå till Open Shelves Classification-gruppen om du vill veta mer. |
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