Customer Reviews

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

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This is my first Elinor Lippman novel. I perused it while waiting in line to buy Harry Potter and ended up buying it as well. It's fun, intelligent, and most of all, real. I'll try to explain.

This story is a cut above the usual "chick lit" novels because the author makes such interesting choices for her characters, the setting, the plot, the tone, everything!

Alice Thrift is like no other heroine and the author's technique in portraying her is one of the finest examples of the craft of showing without telling. Alice scores quite low on the emotional intelligence scale. She's lonely, isolated from herself and others, a veritable automaton. She does, however, nurse a secret crush on her roommate, a guy who everybody loves (and who loves everyone else at least for one night). This is never blatantly stated, you really have to know how to read and pick up on the clues. How refreshing!

At the same time, Alice is wry and incredibly honest, ill-equipped to deal with others who are not as forthcoming and above-board. However, never fear, she is not a wilting lily needing rescue from a white knight. OH no. After bull-headedly careening into a relationship with a cad, she figures out how to make him show his true colors by the end of the story in a very satisfactory way.

The details of her residency, a run-in with a prima-donna surgeon, smack of realism. You can practically smell the betadine. Unlike most fictional doctors, Alice realistically suffers from sleep deprivation and makes a mistake that isn't too bad but her overweaning desire for perfection makes it seem horrendous. I can't think of another novel that gets across the humiliation of making an unprofessional mistake so accurately.

The cad, Ray Russo, reminds me of several guys that almost made it past the first date with me and went on to wreak havoc in the lives of my friends. Guys with a certain amount of charm that can't disguise the icky energy they exude. It doesn't take a bloodhound to smell the lies, but it does take some experience, something that poor Alice Thrift just doesn't have. Add to that a large dose of loneliness and it completely makes sense that Alice would get mixed up with a guy who *says* all the right things (he really does) while somehow his actions never add up. How many times have you asked your girlfriends which they believe, words or actions? Ms. Lipman portrays this dilemna with surety and finesse. She never gets heavy handed and injects a lot of fun with the quirky supporting characters such as Alice's iconoclastic neighbor.

All in all, this is a fine, funny story of contemporary people dealing with human issues as old as humanity by an author who really knows her craft. She manages to take these themes of love, friendship and career to new and underused areas. I look forward to reading the rest of her novels.

Alice Thrift, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, is an unhappy intern in a Boston hospital. Her ineptitude with people is legendary. She says whatever pops into her head, no matter how inappropriate. This is not a good characteristic for a doctor, who is expected to be tactful with her patients. In addition, her romantic life has been on the back burner for years, while she works brutal hours in her pursuit of a career in medicine.

Alice lives platonically with her roommate, a male nurse named Leo Frawley. Leo is extremely popular with everyone and he is thoroughly at ease with himself, qualities which Alice sorely lacks. Suddenly, a new man enters Alice's life. Ray Russo, a chocolate fudge salesman, comes to Alice for a consultation, and it soon becomes apparent that Ray may have romantic designs on the harried intern. Will Ray bring Alice out of her shell at last? Will Alice learn to think before she speaks?

"The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" is a winner. The characters, dialogue, and plot are sharp and witty, and at times I laughed out loud at a particularly amusing line. What makes this book stand out is that the reader grows to care about Alice and roots for her to succeed both in medicine and in love. Lipman brings every character to hilarious life. These include Alice's frustrated parents, her cynical friend, Sylvie Schwartz, and her unctuous and opportunistic boyfriend, Ray Russo.

"The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" is one of Elinor Lipman's best. From the first page to the last, it is fast-paced, brisk, sophisticated, sexy, and thoroughly entertaining.

Thank God, more Elinor Lipman! Her latest gem is the story of the initiation into simple humanity of Alice Thrift, a brilliant but socially-challenged surgical resident who has all the instinctive people skills of a chilly stethoscope. The paradoxical inversion of Lipman's usual lucidly insightful heroines works to perfection here; Alice's cluelessness is itself a kind of x-ray vision and Lipman is as hilariously wise about men and women as ever. Alice's insanely persistent suitor, the sublimely slimy Ray Russo, is a perverse delight; watching the twists and turns of the courtship is like watching a car wreck in slow motion, but it dawns on us slowly that this is precisely the car wreck Alice needed. The novel's minor characters are realized wonderfully, and the delicious unfolding process of naive Alice's education in the intricacies of actual human beings is pure joy. I can't agree that this falls short of Lipman's usual wonders; it's simply a delightful read, laced with laugh-out-loud dialogue pitched to perfection and all the treasures of Lipman's effortlessly graceful style. She is our Jane Austen and hurray there's more of her now to read.

I have tried for a while in my mind to define just what it is that is so different about Lipman's characters in this book and her others. It's hard to define, but it's something like this: She writes about the kind of people that exist so often in real life but so rarely in books---people who are not always witty, popular, gorgeous or rich, but people with interesting and meaningful lives nontheless. So many authors seem to write about the kind of people they have probably met in writer's workshops---those who are very used to analysing their feelings and writing about them! Alice Thrift is a socially inept person, very alone in the world and very lonely. We come to understand her attraction to the slimy Ray Russo very well. And to Lipman's great credit, I think we even understand Russo a little, and are able to see him as not all bad. In addition to the wonderful characters, this book is just plain funny! So many scenes are so well done---for example, dinner at Leo's house or the birth of baby Fir. I can't remember enjoying a book more lately!

Boston surgical intern Alice Thrift is a genius with an IQ in the stratosphere and a Harvard degree. Ray Russo is street educated dropped out. They meet when Ray pursues rhinoplastic surgery (a nose job).

For a reason only he knows, sweet talking Ray courts the caustic Alice, known for her terrorist bedside manner. Shockingly, the brilliant Alice, after shunning Ray's pitch as nonsense, finally capitulates. They have sex leading to her realizing that there is more to life than work. Yet ironically her work improves and she even makes a friend Sylvie Schwartz at the hospital. When her platonic former roommate registered nurse Leo Frawley and Sylvie flirt with one another, Alice feels lonely. Vulnerable, she elopes with Ray only to learn he conned her out of cash and his "deceased" first wife lives with him. Leo and Sylvie are there for Alice, who bitterly knows she failed her first life lesson.

Though Alice is not a likable character, fans will feel her loneliness and hope she makes it with someone who cherishes her and she treasures in return. Ray is a mean man while Leo and Sylvie are people the audience would like as friends. The bittersweet story line may seem rough to romance readers, but actually salutes friendship when one thinks a friend in need is a pest and prefers not to become involved, but does so anyway.

Harriet Klausner

I've read several of Lipman's other novels (The Inn at Lake Devine, The Dearly Departed), but this was by far the best. The main character is Alice Thrift, M.D., medical resident and social misfit. In the first page of the book, Alice gives away the ending by reporting that her marriage didn't last and that her husband was a liar. Although these facts are disclosed up front, all is not revealed, as Alice's full story slowly unfolds over the course of the book. What really makes this novel shine is the truly clever and positively comical dialogue between Alice and the various people who show up in her life: her mother, her roommate Leo, Leo's family, Leo's girlfriend Meredith, her new-found friend Sylvie, and of course, her acquaintance, boyfriend, fiance, and eventual husband, Ray. Although I knew what would happen with Alice and Ray in the end, I thoroughly enjoyed journeying with them from the very beginning to that point.

This was my second Elinor Lipman novel (Dearly Departed was my first). Her prose is witty and effortless. Her humor is unforced but ever present. An absolutely delightful, light yet literate read.

I love the way Elinor Lipman uses the academic setting of Boston in her novels. In this particular novel, we meet Dr. Alice Thrift, a serious and smart intern who needs some help in the social department. She is wooed by a fudge salesman named Ray Russo, who doesn't quite sweet her off of her feet. But...she marries him anyway. Her tale is witty and engaging, and the other characters in the novel all do their best to help Alice become a "normal" woman. Her roommate Leo and neighbor Sylvie make for some clever subplots, as well. This is the best Elinor Lipman book I've read since Isabel's Bed. It's entertaining, interesting, and a delightfully compelling read.

If you like Jane Austen, you have to read Elinor Lipman. Every reviewer says her books are funny and charming. But more than that, they're very smart. Her stories start where obvious novels end, then twist around and around until the final surprise. Also, she doesn't think a list of brand-name clothing passes for characterization. This one is my favorite, because while the heroine is a complete social klutz she's also totally honest and expects other people to be the same. Fat chance. She hasn't a clue, and it was just as hard for me to tell until the very end if her suitor would turn out to be a Darcy or a Wickham.

I agree that inn at Lake Divine was by far Lipman's best book. The rest have been entertainments that sort of slog on with uninspired dialogue and what I think are improbable scenes that have no ring of truth in them. I did like this story a lot, but using an emotionally frozen character as the point view makes things feel stilted and it's hard to feel any empathy for Alice. I didn't really believe the ending (which I won't give away) but I could see where it was going. All in all, this is an easy, enjoyable read. Better than some of the other crap out there, but not as smart or original as Lipman's finest work.