Please....

...don't think I sought out this book just because the heroine is called Pippa.....or has twins......or the last name of my boyfriend.

No, that would make me disgustingly self-obsessed wouldn't it? And that isn't how this happened at all......



In fact, this was one of those delightful coincidences. I was chatting to one of my ladies, getting to know a bit about her and as it turned out she's a book publisher. She was telling me about "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" and we laughed at all the above coincidences...I told her about our modest bookclub (sadly neglected of late), and she promised to send me a copy. I forgot about it and a few weeks later here it was!

I had just finished "Stuffed" by Patricia Volk and was ready to get my teeth into something new....

This Pippa unfolded in flashback and unravelled before me. She's fifty and married to a much older man and they decide to downscale and move into a retirement home....which would throw even an eighty year old person into a downward spin, as there is a sense of waiting to die about doing so. The quiet, homogenised, gated pre-grave community life gives Pippa oodles of time to reflect on her youth, past relationships, the horrific circumstances of her affair with her future husband,her difficult relationship with their twins....in heartbreaking detail.

I read the second half while waiting for one of my boys to have his eyes operated on - and my own anguish was calmed as I got lost in this Pippa's. It sounds like a bit of a downer to a lot of you I bet, but it's actually a really exciting read, I absolutely loved it and would have no hesitation in recommending it to all of you. I've lent it to my book club companion, Jonathan, and i hope to carry on the conversation here, I can't wait to find out what he thinks about it.

I've just started "Fences and Windows" by Naomi Klein "Dispatches from the front lines of the globalisation debate"....reckon I'll be ready for a light-hearted Hollywood biography next........