Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move

by Katherine Lanpher

Overview

Katherine Lanpher, whose essays have appeared in the New York Times and More magazine, officially moved to Manhattan on a leap day, transferring from a rooted life in the Midwest to a new job, a new city, and a new sense of who she was. But re-invention is a tricky business and starting over in the middle of life isn't for the feint of heart.

Katherine Lanpher's short essay on her first six months in New York—"A Manhattan Admonition" was published last August in the New York Times op-ed page and remained on their list of most e-mailed stories for weeks. Now she has written a book chronicling how her past life and loves have prepared her for unexpected discoveries in her new home. Lanpher looks back on her marriage, her early days in newspapers, and her childhood in the Midwest. And, with startling insight, she examines her new world—how beauty is defined in New York, how the landscape differs from the Midwest, and how good food and books have been constants in her life.

The tone of her essays mixes the emotional depth of Anna Quindlen with the quirky wit of David Sedaris.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821258309
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	10/10/2006
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Katherine Lanpher was most recently the co-host on The Al Franken Show. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and More magazine, as well as several regional newspapers. She hosts Liberal Arts, a performance and interview show for Air America that features a diverse roster of artists and writers. Before her midlife move she was the host of Minnesota Public Radio's Midday Show.

Editorial Reviews

Before Kathy Lanpher moved from her native Minnesota to New York City, she hadn't anticipated how far she would be leaping. When she wasn't on Air America co-hosting with Al Franken, she was struggling to adjust to her midlife-move crisis. In Leap Days, Lanpher looks back with self-deprecating wit on her early apprenticeship with NYC folkways, eating styles, and unnatural obsession with thinness. A delight for any Gothamite, adopted or native.

If Minnesota is her soulmate, New York is the lover out of her league—temporarily attained and a cause of hastily adopted habits, bursts of ego-affirming ecstasy and long stretches of profound loneliness. But forget about geography: it's Lanpher's internal dialogue—the voice in our head that's always younger than our actual age—that makes her so recognizably human…Lanpher is best as a chronicler of intangible things, fleeting moments and thoughts that are penetratingly familiar.
—The New York Times

Eve Conant

Lanpher, a journalist, spins cultural vertigo into comedy after forsaking her native Midwest for New York in 2004, at age 44, to cohost Al Franken's radio show on Air America-a gig that demands the good-natured wit and epigrammatic aplomb on display here. "I came of middle-age in Manhattan," she writes, a city in constant flux that strikes her as a fitting spot to undergo her own transitions. Recently divorced and largely friendless, she readily acknowledges the hurdles she faces in the Big Apple-compounded by the insecurity of living in a younger, slimmer city. But Lanpher finds kindness in the crowds, and her zingers (often flung at her own expense) render her narration upbeat. Though her name is linked with liberalism, her memoir's focus is more personal than political: a reflection on midlife's transition and a cultural comedy of manners, as she marks the rituals of becoming a "true New Yorker," growing savvy about everything from the corner bodega to the wheel-greasing "baksheesh." First flummoxed, then smitten, by Manhattan's "tough-love" demeanor and colorful hordes, she rehashes her "fish-out-of-water" encounters with poignant candor and unconcealed wonder, all in a quest to find a way to call Manhattan home. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Essays by a displaced over-40 divorcee with deep Midwestern roots who moves to Manhattan. Onetime Minnesota Public Radio reporter Lanpher decided as far back as her teens that she would never live in New York because "I didn't want to pay the price." The point of reference: a college acquaintance with an intimidating Park Avenue address who liked to boast that "she had her own shrink." Nonetheless, the day came: Lanpher was offered the job of co-host of Al Franken's Air America radio show and-on a leap day, Feb. 29th-made the jump, renting out her beloved, cozy house in Saint Paul and moving to an apartment in Greenwich Village. Initially, these essays have a somewhat predictable tone; she is, to all New Yorkers she meets, from cab drivers and deli countermen to cold-staring strangers, the stereotypical out-of-towner, little lost farm girl in the concrete jungle, etc. She doesn't know enough to not hail a cab going the wrong way on a one-way street; she uses odd words-like "sack" to mean "bag." As far as she's concerned, it's one egregious faux pas after another. But behind her wit and perspective, Lanpher rallies; she'll learn how to act, how to dress, how to talk like a native and properly scorn the tourists. Forcing its way into the picture, however, is some serious introspection, about her failed marriage, about her childlessness (she wonders, by choice?). Finally, after two years, she finds herself "going home" on the subway in Manhattan. Tempting fare for anyone who's ever wondered: Who am I and how did I get here?

Kirkus Reviews