Margins
The Dearly Departed book cover
The Dearly Departed
2001
First Published
3.61
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages

With her trademark humor and warmth, the beloved author of The Ladies' Man and The Inn at Lake Devine explores going home again; about finding light in the dark corners of one's inhospitable past; about love, golf, and DNA. Everyone in King George, New Hampshire, loved Margaret Batten, part-time amateur actress, full-time wallflower, and single mother to a now-distant daughter, Sunny. But accidents happen. The death of Margaret, side by side with her putative fiancé, brings Sunny back to the scene of the unhappy adolescence she thought she’d left behind. Reentry is to be dreaded; there’s no hiding in a town with one diner, one doctor, one stop sign, one motel. Yet allies surface; even high school tormentors have grown up in unforeseen and gratifying ways. Just possibly, Sunny begins to think, she wasn’t as beleaguered as she felt she was. And maybe her mother’s life was richer than anyone suspected. Add to the mix a chief of police whose interest in Sunny exceeds his civic duty, and you have the makings of an irresistibly beguiling tale from an author who writes with all the wit and wry authority of a latter-day Jane Austen.

Avg Rating
3.61
Number of Ratings
1,375
5 STARS
15%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
36%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Elinor Lipman
Elinor Lipman
Author · 19 books
Elinor Lipman is the author of 11 humorous novels about contemporary American society; essay and short story collections, and a book of rhyming political tweets.. Born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, she graduated from Simmons College where she studied journalism. She lives in Manhattan, and received the New England Book award for fiction in 2001. Her first novel, "Then She Found Me," was adapted for the screen, starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. Her fourth novel, "The Inn at Lake Devine" was adapted for the off-off Broadway stage by Tongue in Cheek Theater. In 2011-2012, she held the Elizabeth Drew chair in creative writing at Smith College.
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