No Lease on Life - Softcover

Tillman, Lynne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156008602 ISBN 13: 9780156008600

Publisher: Harvest Books, 1999

Synopsis

It's 5:00 a.m. and Elizabeth Hall can't sleep. She sits at her apartment window, entertaining murderous fantasies, while on the street below morons smash bottles, flip trash cans, vomit, and dance. Elizabeth struggles heroically to keep her wits, whether fighting with her landlord, the housing agency, or simply trying to survive. Twenty-four hours later the morons are back on the street, but this time Elizabeth is ready to strike a final, defiant-and hilarious-blow. Desperately funny, dark, and altogether entertaining, No Lease on Life perfectly captures a woman and a city on the edge.

About this title

Review

"Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck gettin' dirt 'n' gritty...." The Lovin' Spoonful's song might easily be the anthem for Elizabeth Hall, the protagonist of Lynne Tillman's fourth novel, No Lease on Life. Elizabeth lives in the hottest, grittiest city of all, New York, and Tillman's novel follows 24 hours in the life of this urban heroine. Unlike many novels set in New York's mean streets, Elizabeth is neither rich nor poor, and she isn't particularly alienated or particularly crazy; her charm lies precisely in her ordinariness; she's well educated, has a job, and lives with a boyfriend she loves in a rent-controlled apartment that she likes. Elizabeth even likes her neighborhood, the rundown drug-infested East Village, and has befriended a prostitute named Jeanine and a bag lady called Gisela among others. But lately the noise in the streets--the car alarms, the breaking glass, the relentless high-decibel hijinx of the junkies and dealers in the wee small hours of the morning--has been getting to her. Elizabeth can't sleep, and as she sits staring out her window at the "morons" below, violent fantasies flit through her head.

Readers expecting a buildup to shattering violence will be disappointed. Instead Tillman delivers a quirky, tough tale of a resilient woman having a bad day. When, at the end, Elizabeth takes a little naughty revenge on her tormentors, readers can rest assured that this slightly-frayed-around-the-edges heroine will live to fight another day.

About the Author

Lynne Tillman is the author of several books, including The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory 1965-1967 and the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist No Lease on Life. She teaches creative writing at Bard College and lives in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvest Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0156008602
• ISBN 13: 9780156008600
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192