The Ladies' Man

Soon after Nash Harvey, incurable womanizer and failing jingle composer, arrives at the Boston home of the Dobbin sisters, he is struck with a casserole dish. This isn't all that surprising, considering that Nash, onetime fiancé of Adele Dobbin, disappeared on the night of their engagement party, 30 years ago. Fresh from a failed romance with a Californian reflexologist, Nash brings chaos to the three sisters, all of whom has done the best to settle into spinsterhood. Unintentionally, he leads everyone he meets to a truer knowledge of him- or herself, and the possibilities of a brighter future. Five distinct but masterfully interwoven tales of the heart spin around the central, hilariously desperate mission of Nash, a man seeking to escape the inescapable.

Lipman writes with the wry authority of a latter-day Jane Austen or Henry James. Her work ripples with startling segues into the perversities of male-female relationships. Yet for all this insight, her characters are drawn with companionable warmth. This is not a book about the bold and the beautiful. Her cast inhabits a twilight of TV dinners, graying hair, and disastrous dates, yet they never lose their hope or their capacity for love. A gourmet casserole of a book--drama, humor, and understanding in equally generous portions. --Matthew Baylis