Pursuit of Alice Thrift (Lipman) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The great accomplishment of The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is Lipman's ability to chart the course of this mismatch in an utterly persuasive way, and this in turn relies on Alice's justification of her involvement with a guy who becomes creepier and creepier with each passing chapter. It's not love that possesses Alice (conveying a mad attraction of opposites would be a far simpler task) but loneliness, the desire to feel normal, to feel as if she has a life—which turns out not to mean what Dr. Alice Thrift, despite her tremendous I.Q., once thought it did.
Karen Karbo - New York Times Book Review

Elinor Lipman reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse, and The Pursuit of Alice Thrift is no exception.
Susan Salter Reynolds - Los Angeles Times

In her new novel, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift, returns Lipman to the very peak of her form. Like the brilliant British writer Barbara Pym, Lipman creates small domestic spheres in which characters are neither famous nor magical. They are simply, wonderfully, memorably human and therefore complicated and compelling.
Deirdre Donahue - USA Today

Snappy wit, a clever plot and the sheer fun of a book you can't put down await readers of Lipman's (The Inn at Lake Divine) eighth novel, surely her best to date. The eponymous Alice is a sleep-deprived surgical intern at a Boston hospital. A graduate of MIT and Harvard and a congenital workaholic, she's also devoid of social skills, a sense of humor or elementary tact. Though miserably unequipped with self-esteem, Alice is an intelligent, well-brought-up offspring of upper-middle-class parents. Why, then, does she fall prey to the romantic blandishments of Ray Russo, a vulgar loudmouth and con artist who-it turns out-lies every time he opens his mouth? That Lipman can make this story plausible, and tell it with humor, psychological insight and rising suspense, is a triumph. Despite her roommate Leo's description of Ray as " a slimeball who won't take no for an answer," Alice fails to see through her conniving beau because she's achingly lonely and because he remains devoted when she's put on probation for falling asleep while assisting in the OR. It's easy for her to dismiss the concern of family and friends as simple snobbery-which, in some cases, it is. Lipman's knowledge of hospital routine, especially the bone-weary lives of interns and residents, is a major reason that the plot moves along as smoothly as if on ball bearings. The dozen or so supporting characters, from Alice's horrified parents to her good friends and fellow residents, are vividly three-dimensional. Lipman's eye for social pretense has never been so keen—or so cruel. There's a dark moral here—that class differences cannot be breached—but readers will appreciate the candor. If ever a novel can be lifted intact from page to silver screen, this is one. From the leads to the character parts, there are juicy roles for Hollywood's best.
Publishers Weekly

Surgical intern Alice Thrift is, by her own admission, a wallflower. Her mother prefers to think of her as socially autistic. But no man—or woman—is an island, and before Alice knows it, her male roommate, a neighbor, and a kindly doctor begin to drag her from her lifelong, self-inflicted emotional exile. Although this social misfit starts to bond with her new friends, her courtship by a traveling fudge salesman leaves her completely bewildered. At first, Alice comes off as an unsympathetic character, but the more she tries to deal with the world as a detached, clinical observer (and the more she fails), the more sympathetic she becomes. Told in the first person, Lipman's seventh novel (after The Dearly Departed) is both funny and poignant, and it is appropriate for most fiction collections in libraries of all sizes. Lipman fans and readers who enjoy the television series Scrubs will go for this similarly offbeat novel about the quirkiness of the medical world.
Library Journal

Popular for sprightly if predictable romantic comedies, Lipman stretches her boundaries in her newest by letting readers know early on that her lovers will not end up happily every after-at least not together. All work and no play Alice Thrift is a Harvard-educated surgical intern at a Boston hospital. Ray Russo is an uneducated, coarse, and sleazy fudge salesman who also claims to be a widower. Alice begins her deadpan narration by quoting the New York Times description of their wedding, letting us know right off that the marriage has ended disastrously before she retraces their courtship. Ray enters her life looking for a nose job. That he immediately begins to pursue Alice raises immediate suspicions given Alice's off-putting personality, which Lipman does almost too good a job conveying. Alice is book smart but lacks any bedside manner, sense of humor, or ability to interact with others. When she considers quitting medicine after being put on probation for falling asleep on the job, her roommate Leo, a charming and (of course) handsome male nurse, bucks her up with pep talks and pizza. She doesn't resign, and she continues resisting Ray, who won't take no for an answer. But Leo's new girlfriend is a midwife who disdains doctors, so Alice moves into a studio apartment. She succumbs to Ray's transparent seduction and begins having regular sex. Her job performance improves, she makes friends with her fellow doctor-in-training Sylvie. But needy Alice feels left out by Sylvie's mild flirtation with Leo, who is squabbling with his now-pregnant girlfriend. In reaction she elopes with Ray. At the elaborate after-the-fact wedding, Alice discovers Ray's "deadwife" is in fact a living girlfriend. Without breaking any laws, Ray has bamboozled her out of money, but she is wiser, and also happier, living now in a three-bedroom apartment with Sylvie and Leo (who may have potential as more than pal). A clever sweet tart, more tart that sweet.
Kirkus Reviews