My Latest Grievance

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 show more 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. show less

It's been a while since I read a book that so thoroughly engaged me. EL does wry, gentle wit like no one else. This particular book, more so than the three others of hers that I have read, manages to sweep a collection of dotty characters into a storyline that compels the reader forward - but as always it's the narrating voice that really carries it.

One off-topic note: my book club, soccer moms all, found the parents unsympathetic. I thought this was interesting. I doubt EL intended them that way. I sometimes forget how steadfastly we suburban housewives devote ourselves to our children...to the extent that career passion is viewed as potentially selfish. I'm not saying we're right and I'm not saying we're wrong - it's just an show more interesting (and kind of rare) instance of a disconnect between author intent and reader reception. show less

Lipman's books look as if they must be 'guilty pleasure' books, but I swear they're good--Lipman has a singular voice and dry sense of humor. They're in a class of books that is hard to come by--maybe not 'literary fiction' but fun: well-written keen studies of people. Though I and others might argue that they are 'literary fiction'! If only the covers didn't scream 'chick lit'...

This is the first book I have read by this prolific author, and it has has turned out to be a resounding success. I'm often not amused by supposedly humorous writing, but [My Latest Grievance] is utterly hilarious. Much of the charm of this novel also goes to the BBC Audiobook narrator Mia Barron who does each character's voice perfectly in harmony with their individual personalities. The funniest character of the book is clueless Laura Lee French who comes to Dewing College for a job as a housemother but seems to intrude in the lives of others in a most adverse way. Her ex-husband David Hatch, David's current wife Aviva, and their sixteen-year-old daughter Fredericka play interference in an attempt to lessen the ruckus caused by Miss show more French. The author's very tight and intelligent writing makes this book a superb and delightful read. show less

This is one of the most witty, entertaining novels I have read in a while. Told through the memories of the main character, Frederica Hatch, the story's setting is the campus of a New England all girls college. Frederica was born and raised on the campus, both of her parents professors and house "mothers". She lived in a dorm and was the darling of the campus.

At sixteen, she discovered a family secret: her father, David, had been married before to his second cousin, fell in love with his current wife, Aviva (Frederica's mother), and divorced his first wife, Laura Lee. The discovery peaked Frederica's curiosity, and she soon met Laura Lee when the estranged ex-wife showed up on campus to fill the position of house mother in another show more dorm.

From the time Laura Lee arrived, havoc ensued. After an illicit affair between the married college president and Laura Lee, the president's wife attempted suicide but ended up with a child's brain. What follows brought down the president and almost brought down the Hatches and the college in the process.

Frederica's upbringing by socialist parents whose beliefs in equality made their daughter precocious and provided her with a sense of the world that all should be fair. She is at once loving, caring, and manipulative, but never for the wrong reasons. A wonderful string of characters fill this book, and all are endearing in their own ways. The story is told so well that you forget that it's all Elinor Lipman. show less

I've come to enjoy Elinor Lipman's wry humor over several of her books, and was not disappointed here. Sexual farce, academic skewering, precocious adolescent protagonist, left wing slightly dotty parents, all make for an entertaining read. This was an audiobook, read by Mia Barron to great effect. Particularly loved her voicing of the flighty Laura Lee French.

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 show more the world works show less