The Way Men Act

by Elinor Lipman

Overview

Melinda LeBlanc, at 30, makes an untriumphant return to Harrow, Massachusetts, her recently gentrified hometown. She’s unmarried, romanced out, designing wedding bouquets for old classmates who hadn't known a fraction of her early popularity. So why is she alone—not counting the occasional horizontal encounter—while these dull brides have found men and happiness? Libby Getchel, who designs strange dresses in the shop next door, and Dennis Vaughan, a native son who owns the hip Brookhoppers, a fly fisherman's paradise, provide friendship in mutating forms. The Way Men Act explores age-old quandary: Can you every truly go home again? Find out in this “wise and charming novel” (Cosmopolitan).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780671748418
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	02/01/1993
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.33(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Elinor Lipman started writing fiction by night while working at a teachers’ magazine by day. Her first book, Into Love and Out Again, was published in 1987; its centerpiece was seven connected stories, novella-length, which gave her the courage to try a novel. Then She Found Me came out in 1990 (eighteen years later it was adapted into a feature film), followed by The Way Men Act, Isabel’s Bed, The Inn at Lake Devine, The Ladies’ Man, The Dearly Departed, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, My Latest Grievance, and most recently, The Family Man. Her honors include the New England Book Award and the Poetry Center’s Fiction Prize. She divides her time between leafy western Massachusetts and New York City. Visit ElinorLipman.com to find out more.

Hometown:

Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York, New York

Date of Birth:

October 16, 1950

Place of Birth:

Lowell, Massachusetts

Education:

A.B., Simmons College, 1972; Honorary Doctor of Letters, Simmons College, 2000

Editorial Reviews

"With The Way Men Act, Elinor Lipman emerges as a full-fledge talent, a witty, compassionate chronicler of modern sensibility, wise without beating the reader over the head with her insights....Written in spare, sparkling prose, with not a flat or dragging millisecond." — Michael Dorris in the Boston Globe

"Elinor Lipman's language is so superb that to paraphrase would be murder. Part of the joy of this wise and charming novel is in the writing. The rest is in the thinking—smart, offbeat, funny. What a pleasure." — Cosmopolitan

"In a league with Jane Austen... Elinor Lipman's eye for social geography instantly infatuates, just as the screwball plot charms with its basic tenet of successful courtship: location, location, location." —Glamour

From the Publisher

In an enchanting second novel--a BOMC selection in cloth--Lipman traces the untriumphant return of 30-year-old Melinda LeBlanc to her recently gentrified Massachusetts hometown after a decade of unfocused living in California. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Continuing her deft exploration of contemporary social mores, Lipman ( Then She Found Me , LJ 3/15/90) focuses on the unmarried thirtysomething crowd. Melinda LeBlanc has returned to her New England hometown after failing to get an education or a husband in California. Observing and participating in the coupling and uncoupling of friends, relatives, and others, Melinda tries to understand the nature of attraction between men and women in order to achieve her own happy ending. Putting a wicked 1990s spin on the game of courtship, Lipman comes up with a winner--a wry, witty, fond look at decent people attempting to make connections with each other. This will gain new fans for the author as well as pleasing the old. Recommended for most fiction collections. BOMC selection.--Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Com munity Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.

Library Journal