Long Time No See [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Susan. Isaacs (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Harper Large Print (2001)
• ISBN-10: 0066214041
• ISBN-13: 978-0066214047
• ASIN: B001IAKY16
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,586,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

First, here's what the critics say::

AFiction done well and done with a difference...A sophisticated storyteller, with a wry view of the world.@ - Washington Post


AJane Austen brought up to date...Highly amusing.@ - Atlantic Monthly


ASusan Isaacs is a witty, wry observer of the contemporary scene.@ - New York Times Book Review

ASardonic humor and dead-on commentary.@ - Houston Chronicle


ASusan Isaacs knows the art of dialogue the way J.S. Bach knew the art of the fugue.@ - Seattle Times


Blockbuster writers tend to be no more than terrific storytellers. Susan Isaacs=s talents go far beyond that. She is a witty, insightful, and elegant writer.@ - Mademoiselle

AI can think of no other novelist--popular or highbrow--who consistently celebrates female gutsiness, brains and sexuality. She=s Jane Austen with a schmear.@ Maureen Corrigan- National Public Radio Fresh Air


AWho....., is our best popular novelist? The nominee for this quarter is Susan Isaacs....[She] is a comic realist, an astute chronicler of contemporary life in the tradition of....Anthony Trollope.@ - Sun Sentinel



Susan's biography

Susan Isaacs, novelist, essayist and screenwriter, was born in Brooklyn and educated at Queens College. She worked as an editorial assistant at Seventeen magazine writing everything from book reviews to advice to the lovelorn. In 1968, Susan married Elkan Abramowitz, then a federal prosecutor. She became a senior editor but left Seventeen in 1970 to stay home with her newborn son, Andrew. Three years later, she gave birth to Elizabeth. During this time she freelanced, writing political speeches as well as magazine articles.

In the mid-seventies, Susan got the urge to write a novel. A year later she began Compromising Positions, a whodunit set on suburban Long Island. It was published in. Her second novel, Close Relations, a love story set against a background of ethnic, sexual and New York Democratic politics (thus a comedy), was published in. Her third, Almost Paradise, was published in 1984. All of Susan's novels have been New York Times bestsellers. Her fiction has been translated into thirty languages.

In 1985, she wrote the screenplay for Paramount's Compromising Positions, which starred Susan Sarandon and Raul Julia. She also wrote and co-produced Disney's Hello Again. The 1987 comedy starred Shelley Long and Gabriel Byrne.

Her fourth novel, Shining Through, set during World War II, was published in 1988. The film adaptation starred Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith. Then came Magic Hour January 1991, After All These Years in 1993. Lily White in 1996 and Red, White and Blue in 1998. In 1999, Susan came out with her first work of nonfiction, Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen. During 2000, she wrote a series of columns on the presidential campaign for Newsday. Long Time No See, a sequel to Compromising Positions, came out in September 2001. Anyplace I Hang My Hat, was published in 2004. Past Perfect is her eleventh novel.

Susan Isaacs is a recipient of the Writers for Writers Award and the John Steinbeck Award. She serves as chairman of the board of Poets & Writers and is a past president of Mystery Writers of America. She is also a member of the National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Coalition, PEN, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the International Association of Crime Writers, and the Adams Round Table. Besides writing innumerable book reviews, Susan has also written about politics, film and First Amendment issues. She lives on Long Island with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ms. Isaacs continues the story, twenty years later, September 11, 2001

By 

Moe811 (New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Long Time No See: A Novel (Hardcover)

Judith Singer, housewife/detective is now twenty years older. Her husband, the egocentric Bob has been dead for two years, a half day after running the NY marathon in just over 4 hrs. She is teaching history at a small catholic college and seems depressed bored and lonely. Then, just like twenty years ago, a headline catches her eye. A woman in her community of Shorehaven has disappeared without a trace. She finds it interesting, but does nothing until a body is found in the woman's swimming pool months later. Presumably, the body is that of Courtney Logan. Judith rather impulsively offers her services as a researcher to the grieving husband, and is rebuffed at the door. Shortly thereafter, his father, organized crime figure, Fancy Phil Lowenstein, shows up in her garage and asks for her help in solving the crime. This brings Nelson Sharpe, now in Special Investigations, back into her life and her investigation.

All of the old characters from Compromising Positions are back, twenty years older. I was interested to find out how they all changed. The mystery in this book was much better than the last, and that one was very good. It was an excellent Long Island suburban mystery.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great for an Isaacs Devotee.... BUT., October 17, 2001

By 

D. Rizzo (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Long Time No See: A Novel (Hardcover)

First, let me say that After All These Years and Shining Through, two books by this author, are two of my favorite books in life... very high praise from an English teacher and natural lifelong voracious reader.

While this sequel to Compromising Positions does somewhat satiate my desire for witty and vibrant Isaacs writing, it leaves me wistful. With this book, Isaccs does her ribald, creative, liberal thing... but like heroine Judith Singer, she's now somewhat predictably paced, a little too readily familiar, and -- dare I say it? -- just a touch YAWN.

Is this author running out of ideas? Must she resort to the vague glimmers of already-told anecdotes and slightly faded allusions? I could almost say Judith's lines with her in this reprise of Compromising Positions... and I figured out the who-done-it well before the end (read After All These Years if you want an amazingly witty murder mystery by this woman... it's a much better illustration of what she can do!).

Don't get me wrong, the mystery itself is terrific, with a powerful punch at the end, when the evil villain emerges. So why does it fail to totally satisfy? I wish the author had saved this idea for a stimulating NEW heroine... someone not quite so liberal, not quite so Semitic, not quite so like all her other heroines. Someone like... Cass, in After All These Years. She's highly intelligent, she's well educated, she's affluent, she's conservative, she's black, she's DIFFERENT.

Oh, and with Nelson, the heroine's adulterous partner in days gone by, expect little of their initial forbidden lustful thrill... Nelson is older, too. It's nice that these two post-menopausal, pre-Medicare folks gained their long-awaited closure, but then I doubt that Judith would either need or much benefit from a twice married, thrice fathered cop-boyfriend, despite Isaacs's efforts to establish Judith's loneliness as a widow and emptiness with "only" her Ph.D. and two grown, successful children.

Most people would have it so good.

Anyway, it's a good -- if not totally fulfilling -- read if you're a devoted Isaacs fan... if you're not yet, don't let this book try to turn you on to her. But read After All These Years. Read Shining Through. Don't watch the movie! Seriously! You'll LOVE them.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Staccato badinage en masse turned me off..., July 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Long Time No See (Mass Market Paperback)

Overwritten, the story gets lost in the irritating machine gun
jokey-ness that passes as "wit." Don't they edit these
so-called "best-selling" writers? I really wanted to get into
a juicy story...stuck it out for a few chapters...but was utterly defeated by the neverending "shtick." Sometimes it works.
Here it does not. The author is carried away with her
"style," which is, basically, just a smartass stand-up
routine which, unfortunately, does not stand up. Yawn.