From Library Journal
The Ladies' Man is three things: the title of Lipman's newest book; a description of the main male character, Nash Harvey; and the book's weakness. The basic premise of the book is that Nash Harvey, n? Harvey Nash, has a crisis of conscience over an engagement he walked out on 30 years ago. He returns to Boston to see Adele Dobbin, his spurned fianc?e. Nash's visit teaches Adele and her two unmarried sisters a new lesson "about dignity being less important than love." Nash is a shallow smooth talker, seemingly addicted to lust and unfamiliar with love. The difficulty with the novel is that while Lipman (The Inn at Lake Devine, LJ 2/1/98) characterizes Nash so well, in doing so she creates a central character who is most unsympathetic. Furthermore, Lipman has Nash cut a romantic swath through the lives of other women during the course of the novel, creating a large cast of female characters, none of whom are fully developed. A book of moderate appeal.ACaroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ont.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A romantic comedy of errors by the novelist whose previous labors in this vineyard (Isabels Bed, 1995, etc.) have established her as a master hand. Harvey Nash is the sort of fellow your mother warned you about. Genial, good-hearted, and sincere, he genuinely likes the company of women and is attentive to their moods and concerns. All the worse for the women who fall for him, then, since hes an incorrigible bachelor who cant commit himselfalmost literallyon pain of law. Harvey left his native Boston quite abruptly on the evening of March 11, 1967and its no coincidence that that was the night his engagement to Adele Dobbin was to have been announced at a big party at the Copley Plaza. When he stopped running, Harvey found himself in California, where he settled in Los Angeles (as Nash Harvey) and established a successful career in advertising. Almost 30 years later, he has a live- in girlfriend, Dina, who wants (very badly) to settle down and get pregnant. But, again, Harvey just cant see his way clear. So now he reverses course and heads back to Boston to look up Adelebut not before hooking up with Cynthia John, a sharp-eyed investor who sits next to him on the plane. In Boston, Adele is still unmarried and lives in a kind of bitch-goddess convent with Lois and Kathleen, her equally unattached sisters. Shes understandably less than thrilled to find Harvey on her doorstep, but Lois (who always had a thing for him) tries to welcome him back into the fold. Meanwhile, Dina is cruising beaches and coffee-bars in search of an (unwitting) semen donor, and Harvey and Cynthia are having some drama of their own. The course of true love is seldom a straight line, true enough. But can it be a series of overlapping circles? Funny, dumb, good-natured, predictable, and slick: Lipman knows what she wants to do and does it very well. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Advance praise for The Ladies' Man
"Elinor Lipman is that rarest of things, a charming and funny writer who is also very wise. But your spouse will hate you for reading this book; you'll stay up late nights, shaking the bed with laughter."
--Arthur Golden
"I have not read an American writer who can do what Elinor Lipman does: take a poignant situation and transform it, in a moment of instant recognition, into something as wryly perfect as a New Yorker cartoon. The Ladies' Man is full of charm, verbal sparkle, and funny, genial sex. I adored it. Every page. Definitely her best."
--Anita Shreve
From the Inside Flap
tselling author of The Inn at Lake Devine ("Rivals her own best work for its understanding of the way smart, opinionated people stumble toward happiness"--Glamour) and Isabel's Bed ("It's Fannie Farmer for the soul . . . delivered in a delicious style that is both funny and elegant"--USA Today) comes a darkly romantic comedy of manners that confirms Elinor Lipman's appointment to the Jane Austen chair in modern American sensibility.
Thirty unmarried years have passed since the barely suitable Harvey Nash failed to show up at a grand Boston hotel for his own engagement party. Today, the near-bride, Adele Dobbin, and her two sisters, Lois and Kathleen, blame Harvey for what unkind relatives call their spinsterhood, and what potential beaus might characterize as a leery, united front. The doorbell rings one cold April night. Harvey Nash, older, filled with regrets (sort of), more charming and arousable than ever, just in from the Coast, where he'
From the Back Cover
Advance praise for The Ladies' Man"Elinor Lipman is that rarest of things, a charming and funny writer who is also very wise. But your spouse will hate you for reading this book; you'll stay up late nights, shaking the bed with laughter."
--Arthur Golden
"I have not read an American writer who can do what Elinor Lipman does: take a poignant situation and transform it, in a moment of instant recognition, into something as wryly perfect as a New Yorker cartoon. The Ladies' Man is full of charm, verbal sparkle, and funny, genial sex. I adored it. Every page.
Definitely her best."
--Anita Shreve
About the Author
Elinor Lipman is the author of seven books: the novels The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, The Dearly Departed, The Ladies' Man, The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel's Bed, The Way Men Act, Then She Found Me, and a collection of stories, Into Love and Out Again. She has been called "the diva of dialogue" (People) and "the last urbane romantic" (Chicago Tribune). Book Magazine said of The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, "Like Jane Austen, the past master of the genre, Lipman isn't only out for laughs. She serves up social satire, too, that's all the more trenchant for being deftly drawn."
Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, Gourmet, Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times’ Writers on Writing series. She received the New England Booksellers' 2001 fiction award for a body of work.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One
In the months before Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler, the three Dobbin sisters established their custom of arranging empty glass bottles like bowling pins inside their apartment door. They adopted the idea from Life, from a spread illustrating how women living alone near the crime scenes were petrified and taking precautions. The practice continues decades after the Boston Strangler confessed and died in prison, because the Dobbin sisters are cautious and intelligent women who expect the worst. The last sister to turn in checks the locks, latches the chain, and sets the booby trap of ten near-antique bottles that once held ginger ale, sarsaparilla, and root beer brewed by a defunct soft-drink company.
And what's the harm? It allows three women to sleep peacefully without sedatives, without surprises, and without expensive motion detectors. If Richard Dobbin, their brother, occasionally trips a false alarm, it is viewed as his own fault, his own stubborn resistance to calling ahead. He claims to forget between drop-in visits that they still arrange the bottles nightly. He has a key; he thinks he will slip in, sleep on the couch, leave a note on the kitchen table for the earliest riser, and be welcomed enthusiastically. The chain stops him, but, as designed, the door opens enough to trigger the pandemonium his sisters count on.
"It's me," he yells. "What's going on? It's me."
"Richard," says one, then each of the other sisters, hurrying into their bathrobes. "Let him in. Undo the chain. It's Richard."
"There've been some copycat murders on the north shore," explains Adele, the oldest, turning knobs and unhooking chains. "We've started setting our burglar alarm again."
"Jesus," says Richard, knocking over the last row of standing bottles. "I guess it works."
Adele asks him not to swear in the hallway.
"Can you stay?" asks Lois, the middle sister.
"Think I was popping in for a visit at ten forty-five?" Richard answers.
"Where's Leslie?" asks Kathleen.
"Home," he says, in a way that suggests home was not peaceful when he left.
"Is everything okay?" Kathleen asks.
"Fine."
Always good hostesses, they choose masculine striped sheets and brown towels from the linen closet; one sister disappears down the long central hall in search of a guest pillow and blanket. Kathleen offers to take the daybed and give their taller, bigger brother privacy and a real bed.
They range in age from Adele, fifty-three, to Richard, who is forty-four. No one is currently married or spoken for. Social lives vary from moribund (Adele's) to overactive (Richard's); in his sisters' opinion, he flirts too easily and cohabitates prematurely. Without evaluating their brother's capacity for monogamy, they assume he'd be happier if he settled down.
As for the sisters, it could have been different: There were many beaus in any given year, and a distribution of graces that made no one redheaded sister the most in demand. Adele had brains and the most classically pretty face. Lois had height and good bones, while Kathleen had-still has-wavy hair and the greenest eyes. Outside the immediate family, the unstudied explanation for their shared spinsterhood is what happened to Adele decades ago at age twenty-three: an engagement broken, unceremoniously and unilaterally, by an unsuitable boy
Today they consider themselves career women, with nice clothes and with jobs that provide either satisfaction or high seniority: Adele raises money for public television, Lois works for the Commonwealth, and Kathleen sells lingerie in her own shop downtown. Richard is the family underachiever, which is not acknowledged or even thought, because he is tall and charming, quite good-looking, adds new friends without dropping his old ones from high school or college, owns his own tuxedo, and has been an usher at no fewer than ten buddies' weddings. He delivers subpoenas for a living, and cultivates the understanding that it is a career that straddles law and law enforcement.
So picture the household: three adult sisters and a displaced brother on an unseasonably cold April night with a dusting of snow deposited by a passing squall. Richard will have settled into the den on the daybed, where the sisters usually watch their programs. He's made himself a cheese sandwich with relish on dill-cheese bread, which he doesn't like but eats cheerfully after fixing the TV's tint, which the women never adjust, even if the actors' faces are orange.
The downstairs buzzer rings after the sisters have returned to their rooms. They wait, assuming it is Richard-related, or the buzz of a careless visitor who has hit the wrong bell. In any event, they don't panic or even get out of bed, because Richard, an expert on getting into places where he's not welcome, is there in case of danger. The buzzer rings again, more insistently
"Richard?" Adele calls from her room.
He is watching television, so Adele tries again, louder.
"What?"
"The door. See who it is."
"Want me to buzz 'em in?"
"You don't buzz anyone in unless you know who it is," says Adele.
"It's probably one of his friends," says Kathleen. "They have a sixth sense about when Richard is visiting."
"It's probably Leslie," Richard says. "I better go down."
Richard puts his shoes on without socks, and takes the elevator to the lobby in his trousers and undershirt. On the other side of the glass door, squinting in from the vestibule, is a man, a stranger, tall, with a high forehead and wavy gray-brown hair. He is tanned, and his shoes are beautifully shined. It seems to Richard that this man with a Burberry raincoat over his arm is both rich and benign, that Richard can open the door and ask if there's been some mistake at this hour; that this is not a copycat murderer.
"Yes?" says Richard.
The man says, "Good evening."
"You rang Three-G?"
"The Dobbins."
"That's us," said Richard. "And you are . . . ?"
"I was hoping to see Adele. If she's in."
"It's late," says Richard. "So why don't you come back in the morning? No, they work in the morning. Give 'em a call after work."
"Richie," says the man, putting out his right hand as if peacemaking were in order. "It's Nash Harvey. I went with Adele a long time ago."
Richard peers into the man's gray eyes, and sees that it is true. "Harvey? Jesus Christ-what, like twenty-five years ago? The guy who disappeared?"
"Nineteen sixty-seven."
Richard is famously good-natured and optimistic, so he feels only curiosity and mild delight. "Some brothers might punch you in the nose right now. Or worse," he says.
Nash releases Richard's hand.
"Nah," says Richard. "I don't mean me. I was speaking hypothetically."
"Do you think she'll see me?"
"You're a brave man, Harv," says Richard.
"I've been on the West Coast."
"I know," says Richard. "Lois spotted your name on a box in a video store."
The intercom squawks, "Richard?"
"It's okay," he answers.
"Who is it?" asks the voice-Adele's.
"An old friend of mine. Didn't realize the time. He's going to a hotel."
She hesitates then says, "The Holiday Inn on Beacon Street probably has rooms available. Tell him we'd offer him a bed but we're full up."
Nash opens his mouth, presumably to acknowledge the suggestion of hospitality, but Richard releases the button as if it had pricked his flesh.
"Wasn't that her?" asks Nash.
"They all sound alike over the phone."
Nash asks if they all live together, but Richard ignores the question. "Go back up to Beacon," he says, "then right, toward Kenmore, not even a half mile on your left. It's nothing fancy, but it's clean."
Nash asks if they could talk, man to man, tomorrow. Is Richard free for lunch?
Richard says, "My schedule's my own."
"One o'clock. Is Jack and Marion's still open?"
"Gone. Closed at least a dozen years. Maybe more."
Again, "Richard?" squawks from the intercom,
"I'll call you at the hotel," Richard confirms before reassuring Adele that he is on his way up.
On the other side of the country, it is 73 degrees Fahrenheit and still light. Dina Dorsey-Harvey walks her Yorkies on a sidewalk that borders both highway and Pacific Ocean. Nash has gone home to Boston, where the Weather Channel map shows the dark green radar that means snow. Serves him right: Boston. Ridiculous. She hopes he'll have to circle Logan. Or crash. She could accept that, hating him for today's announcement. She'd be a young widow. Technically, a young roommate/lover/relatively longtime companion compared to the fits and starts that were Nash's previous liaisons.
The dogs are sniffing everything with greater interest than usual, and she is letting them. People on walks used to smile at the puppies, but it seems that no one does anymore. Women pushing strollers want Dina to smile at their human babies, whom they consider more compelling, and more of an achievement than owning animals. Runners and in-line skaters are too intent, too self-important with their golden retrievers and Labradors to see Daisy and Tatiana as anything but moving obstacles to be sidestepped.
The separation is less than twelve hours old. Nash had said, upon waking up, "I'm leaving for Boston this morning."
"Good," she had said, still annoyed from a disagreement the night b...
Beth Fowler does a masterful job reading Lipman's romantic comedy of errors with its five distinct stories involving the perversities of male-female relationships. Fowler reads in an even, declarative style, projecting and enunciating clearly. Though there are a plethora of female characters, Fowler easily distinguishes them, providing a unique, consistent voice for each. Thirty years ago Harvey Nash, now known in California as Nash Harvey, changed the lives of the three Dobbin sisters. When he returns to Boston, he is once again a potent catalyst in their lives. Like an old bathrobe, this commentary on the human condition is warm and comfortable. And--it's funny. S.C.A. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
