Another from my favorite Elinor Lipman. Her humor is there but it verges on too many improbable coincidences. But I still laughed. It’s the story of three sisters, two make up most of the book. One sister (Margot) is divorced from her obstetrics MD (Charles) for malpractice (he’s in jail) and was then scammed by Madoff so she’s broke. The other (Gwen) is widowed and not flush either. So she moves in. They take in another boarder (Anthony, temporarily unemployed) on a whim, to further save on house hold expenses. Gwen is unable to get on with her life, Margot is unable to get over her bad luck, Anthony is gay and looking for love. They are very companionable and want to help each other. Gwen is trying to start a dating service that doesn’t involve sex. No go. The husband gets out of jail and moves into the basement penthouse servant’s apartment, which happened to be owned by his brother-in-law as a NY crash pad. And so it goes. In the end, Charles is forgiven, Gwen finds a husband, Anthony finds love. As I said, too neat.
