Lily White - Softcover

Susan-isaacs

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140261710 ISBN 13: 9780140261714

Publisher: Penguin, 1997

Synopsis

Meet Lily White, Long Island criminal defense lawyer. Smart, savvy, and down-to-earth, Lee can spot a phony the way her haughty mother can spot an Armani. Enter handsome career con man Norman Torkelson, charged with strangling his latest mark after bilking her out of her life's savings. As the astonishing twists and reverses of the Torkelson case are revealed, so too is the riveting story behind Lee;s life.

Critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs has crafted her most dazzling novel of manners and morality. Lily White is a brilliant story of con artists and true lovers, of treachery and devotion—and of one brave lawyer's triumphant fight for justice.

About this title

Review

Susan Isaac's seventh novel is the first story of Lee White, a criminal lawyer on Long Island ensnared with a con man accused of murder. Lee is a privileged, Jewish baby-boomer, whose parents changed their name to White before her birth and then named her Lily. Her family's rise to unhappiness is directly related to their rise to affluence, and Lily tries repeatedly to liberate herself to prove herself as a wife, a daughter, a parent, and a lawyer. Though she struggles with self-doubt, Lily's strength comes from her ability to acknowledge vulnerability and overcome it. As she unravels the truth, she faces some difficult family truths and solidifies her belief in herself.

From Publishers Weekly

Marjorie Morningstar meets Nancy Drew in Isaacs's latest, which succeeds as both a coming-of-age story and a legal thriller. Her wit honed by familiarity with two milieus she knows well, Isaacs creates a character who moves between the conspicuous consumption of upwardly mobile and dying-to-be-assimilated Jews on Long Island and the criminal justice system (Isaacs's husband is a well-known attorney), where a successful trial lawyer sometimes must defend unsavory clients. These spheres are joined in Lily White, nee Lily Rose Weiss, who narrates the sections of the novel that deal with her defense of oily con man Norman Torkelson and her suspicions that his gorgeous girlfriend actually committed the crime for which he is charged, the murder of a "mark" whom he had fleeced out of thousands of dollars by promising to marry her. Running in tandem are chapters that describe Lily's self-absorbed parents' rise in the world and the ludicrous ways in which they try to fit into WASP society. It's especially ironic that when Lily weds super-WASP Jasper "Jazz" Foster, whom she has adored from childhood, the marriage succumbs to pressures that arise as much from class differences as they do from character. Irony succeeds irony when Jazz declares himself in love with Lily's sister, Robin, Lily's complete antithesis. If it sometimes seems that these parallel narratives should have been two different books, most readers will bond with Lily and gladly switch back and forth between the stages of her life. For on one level, Isaacs has created a pitch-perfect social satire; on another, while the suspense is never spine tingling, she has written a psychological thriller whose portraits of an amoral conman and his mate, of the dehumanizing effects of the prison system and of the stages of a criminal investigation are rendered with snappy authenticity. Literary Guild and Doubleday $250,000 main selections; ad/promo; simultaneous audio; author tour; rights: William Morris Agency.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140261710
• ISBN 13: 9780140261714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512