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My Favorite Book

 I tend to read mystery novels, and Elinor Lipman is my exception. 


Lipman writes romantic comedies about outrageous characters; you know that the story will move briskly; you know that sex will play a big role. In one novel, an IVF specialist goes to jail when it's revealed that he sometimes assisted clients through "an old-fashioned method" of conceiving life. In another novel, one-third of a love triangle is consumed with sexual jealousy, and then tries to murder the triangle's other two-thirds (as in the Betty Broderick story).

A constant in a Lipman novel--as in a great deal of detective fiction--is that you have a smart, resourceful, passionate protagonist, someone you can easily root for.

I don't sit around thinking about influences, but I know that Lipman's personal essays have had a tremendous impact on me. Lipman has a book, "I Can't Complain," where she simply talks about how she and her husband address the issue of snoring, or how she discusses (or fails to discuss) human anatomy with her child, or how she anticipates the Carrie Bradshaw/John Big story might arrive at an ending. Recently, she listed major summer novels she could recall reading; through her analysis of the novels, she told a story of time passing, a story of ten or twenty summers.

Lipman teaches me that modest material--the smallest disagreement--can make an essay. You have an essay if you have two quirky people on the page, behaving in an unpredictable way. It's a gift if the reader can say, "I recognize myself in that, and the description is something I haven't really seen before."

Lipman has a new novel--"Ms. Demeanor"--arriving at the end of December. I admire her career, and the way she has lived her life, and I can't wait for the next chapter.
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