Into Love and Out Again - Hardcover

Lipman, Elinor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670811939 ISBN 13: 9780670811939

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1987

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Isabel's Bed comes a delightful collection of short stories. These wry and sassy tales illustrate the vulnerable heartbeat beneath the brash style of the eighties. Behind their professional self-assurance, Elinor Lipman's characters question and fear, search and yearn for that most elusive of commodities--love.

About this title

Reviews

Modern domestic lifewhen to have children, whom to marryis the subject of most of these 16 stories. Though Lipman, whose fiction has appeared in many magazines, displays a sense of humor and occasional streak of originality, she does not take any of her ideas or her characters very far. Seven of the stories chart the relationship of Tim and Hannah: Tim falls in love with Hannah while standing behind her on line at the Motor Vehicles Registry. When she turns around, he learns that she is nine months pregnant, but completely unattached (she had a business-trip fling with the baby's father). They fall in love and out again several timeshence the book's titlebut in spite of their attempts to remain apart from social codes, both are merely cardboard figures, symbols rather than real people. The most thought-provoking tale, "Thick and Thin," about the relationship between self-esteem and weight, is so brief it undermines its own potential. Though some of the stories do begin to touch on human truths, they remain slight and, sadly, forgettable.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lipman's short stories are filled with sweet, complex people in unusual relationships: gentle Tim, for instance, falls madly in love with unwed Hannah, who is in the ninth month of her pregnancy; sad Clair at last finds a true lover but breaks off with him because she senses parental disapproval of his low status as a supermarket produce man; Martha and Carl tenderly, tentatively exchange love and body fat. The stories, charming in a finely etched way, contain some wry, delightful twists of plot and oblique, often painful, dialogue. These people slide by each other, connecting only on occasion, their connections graced by both joy and despair, much ambiguity, and accommodation to different kinds of love. This first collection is recommended. Johanna Ezell, Mont Alto Campus Lib., Pennsylvania State Univ.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670811939
• ISBN 13: 9780670811939
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 194