The View from Penthouse B

February 11, 2013
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. After Margot’s ex-husband Charles Pierrepont is released from a cushy prison, where he was serving time for inseminating patients at his OBGYN clinic with his own sperm, he moves into her building and begins to worm his way back into her life. Chaste Gwen-Laura decides to get back into the dating pool, but most of her suitors are more interested in sex than companionship. Meanwhile dynamic interloper Anthony tries to break the sisters out of their stalled state. 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. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment.

February 15, 2013

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. Margot has reason to vent publicly: her ex-husband, a fertility specialist, is doing prison time for an uberscandal. While Gwen needs to be shaken out of her grief and Margot needs to come out of her rage, both need occupation, money, and direction. Enter Anthony, their third roommate and a cupcake artist with a knack for handling older women. Anthony is essential when Gwen is determined to start a business built on the idea of the "Chaste Dates" for which she longs, and once the fertility doctor is back on the scene. VERDICT Lipman (Then She Found Me; The Inn at Lake Devine) 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

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