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Start giftingThe Private Lives of Pippa Lee
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Learn moreAt age fifty, Pippa Lee seems perfectly content. The devoted wife of a successful publisher and proud mother of grown twins, a consummate hostess to the literati and an admired and trusted neighbor, her life seems to lack for nothing. But when she and her eighty-year-old husband move to a quiet retirement village, the routines and distractions that have upheld Pippa's flawless feminine persona begin to crumble away. And under the surface, her surprisingly gritty and adventurous past is beginning to break through.
When Pippa finds herself acting out strange yearnings in her sleep, she gradually allows the voice of her lost self to come through into her consciousness, recounting a wild and reckless youth full of experimentation and heartbreak, passion and guilt. We learn how she ran away from home to escape the manic-depression of her pill-popping mother, only to fall into drugs herself among the loose New York art crowd. Leaving a trail of broken hearts and messy affairs behind her, it is only when she meets the older Herb that she discovers her longing for security and resolves to steal him from his wife in order to settle down and create a family of her own.
Written with quirky humor, intelligence and compassion, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a wise and acute portrait of the many lives behind a single name.
Rebecca Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and is married to Academy Award–winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. She lives in New York City with their two sons. Her feature film, Personal Velocity, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and her latest movie, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, received rave reviews.
Bernadette Dunne is the winner of more than a dozen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.
Reviews
“Miller’s quietly devastating examination of ageing, love and loyalty is never less than compelling.”
“Wise and irreverent.”
“[Miller] delves into the fraught relationships of families, particularly mothers and daughters, exploring the ways one woman deals with life’s surprises.”
“Strikingly unconventional.”
“Dreamy, elegant…Miller’s astute, beautifully nuanced novel explores the unpredictable consequences of choosing to live a safe but emotionally compromised life.”
“Miller is a luminous writer…Gazing into these multiple private Pippas is like opening a series of Russian dolls, each intricately wrought, self-contained, and self-revealing.”
“Miller stands on her own with Pippa Lee as she has with much of her previous work…One is reminded of T. S. Eliot’s play The Cocktail Party, masquerading as drawing room comedy, to lure us into deeper waters.”
“Vivid, brave and experimental.”
“Magnificent…Miller’s depiction of her title character’s tangled universe is so nuanced, so lovingly detailed, that it’s impossible not to get drawn in.”
“[A] promising first novel…Pippa’s struggle to break the ‘chain of misunderstandings and adjustments’ that passes from parent to child is moving…The story’s held together by Miller’s sincere and intelligent protagonist.”
“Miller brings a simmering intelligence and verbal flair to this deft exploration of the courage required to own your own life.”
“[A] beautifully layered and subtle novel of identity…hesitatingly wise in all sorts of ways.”
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