Executive Times
		2007 Book Reviews
		My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman
Rating:			**
		(Mildly Recommended)
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	Incomplete Elinor Lipman is a talented novelist whose eighth work, My Latest Grievance, will bring pleasure to many readers. The narrator of this novel is Frederica Hatch, who grew up on the college campus where both parents taught and were leaders of the teacher’s union. Lipman’s satirical take on the parents, their politics, their childrearing and family interactions represents the high point of the book. Frederica is more caricature than character, and the momentum of the novel stalls often. In college, I’d grade the work “incomplete.” Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 4, “The First Family,” pp. 20-23: I had something like a friend on campus, fellow teenager Marietta Woodbury, the rude and fast daughter of our new college president. Each visit to the executive manse was an exercise in my best behavior, self-imposed, because I enjoyed confusing the First Family, forcing them— or so I hoped— to wonder how the rabble-rousing Hatches had fared so well in the daughter department. We’d met at Dr. Woodbury’s inauguration, a grand affair with presidents of most area colleges or their designees marching in academic regalia. The outgoing president was an elderly man, once a professor of theater at Yale, considered benign though increasingly dotty. He never could make the semantic adjustment from “girls” or “coeds” to “women’ which was becoming necessary in the 1970S. His chestnut brown toupee was a source of embarrassment to the board of trustees and the butt of campuswide jokes. His vagueness needed addressing when luncheon condiments began dotting his chin, and pee often spotted his fly after trips to the men’s room. My parents had loved him, mostly because the softest part of his brain was the lobe that processed labor relations. One minute after the National Labor Relations Board declared that faculty were covered by the National Labor Relations Act— forever after celebrated by the Hatch family as a holiday with cake —the Dewing Society of Professor rose from the ashes of an impotent faculty council. Day-care center? Personal days? Eyeglass coverage? Almost everything the newly certified union put on the table sounded reasonable to ex-professor President Mayhew. Before the next round of negotiations, the college’s chief financial officer had replaced his boss with his own management-minded self. Soon the quiet phase of a presidential search began, resulting in H. Eric Woodbury, who came from a small, inferior school in Maryland, just the training ground for Dewing. He passed the wining, dining, and courting of trustees with flying colors. Mrs. Woodbury promised to provide what had been absent for a dozen years during the Mayhew term: a First Lady, a hostess, a wifely presence. Except for my parents, who saw a chill ahead at the bargaining table, all of Dewing was hopeful: Dr. Woodbury had degrees from Penn and Columbia, and a slight unexplained limp that gave him the air of an injured soldier returning to civilian life on Masterpiece Theatre. I attended his induction in a flame-colored dress of a shiny, man-made material, bought for the occasion after negotiating hotly with my mother over its appropriateness, length, and future wearability. My first sight of Marietta told me that she was okay: outfitted in a suit that said “mother’s taste’ with a hemline that said “mind of my own.” She had pinned her corsage on top of her shoulder, which struck me as original and rakish. Spotting a teenage girl, me, at the punch bowl, Mrs. Woodbury rushed over. She shook my hand with her gloved one and asked what grade I was in. Would I like to come over to the house once they were settled? That girl over there in navy blue —tall for her age but also in tenth grade —was her baby, Marietta. She didn’t make friends very easily but was an interesting and talented young lady. Did I ride? “Ride what?” I asked. “Horses?” she asked hopefully. “Not so far.” “Perhaps when you go to college,” she murmured. “Many schools have stables and equestrian programs.” Before I could say that I’d hate those schools and the girls who came with them, she yoo-hooed, “Marietta! I have someone who wants to meet you!” The girl’s response was slow, defiant, but she did make her way over to us. She was one of those daunting teenage girls who could pass for twenty-five and smoked Virginia Slims. Later I would learn that I’d seen Marietta’s best behavior on display, negotiated in advance for a payment equal to a mohair sweater in a color she didn’t yet own. “You at the high school?” Marietta asked. I said yes, sophomore. “Boyfriend?” “Kind of.” Mrs. Woodbury chirped that she’d heard Brookline public schools were excellent. She and Dr. Woodbury had decided to give Brookline High School a trial, then evaluate the situation midyear. “Marietta’s an unconventional learner’ she offered. “And a little more social than we’d like.” “You can talk to my parents about it,” I offered. “They go to every PTO meeting. Well, they alternate so someone’s always on dorm duty. You could also talk to the Dewing seniors who student-teach there.” “That must be creepy’ said Marietta. I said no, it wasn’t. Maybe that was because I’d lived my whole life in a dorm, surrounded— “Do you meet their boyfriends, too? When they pick the girls up for dates?” I smiled a smile that I hoped suggested chronic residential social prospecting. Marietta said, “My father could have had a job at an all-boys’ school, but he took this job instead. Do you believe it?” “It was a secondary school!” her mother scolded. “No one accepts the job of headmaster if he can be a college president.” I knew this was my chance to reel in Mrs. Woodbury. Marietta could wait. I was popular at Brookline High, which she’d grasp as soon as she set foot in the cafeteria. I said to Marietta, “I think you’ll change your mind. The whole world is coed.” Then—quoting the catalogue — “But a woman’s college offers a unique environment of support while fostering independence and higher career goals.” I signaled to Marietta that this was public relations, so please bear with me. Her mother put her arm around my waist and squeezed. “I think we’ve discovered a treasure’ she cooed. “Marietta was dreading the move for all kinds of reasons, but here’s one we can cross off her list: a new friend.” Marietta asked, “Wanna leave?” “Can’t. I have to mingle. Want to come with me? I’ll introduce you to a couple of deans over by the hors d’oeuvres.” “Men deans or women?” Marietta asked. There’s a playfulness on the pages of My Latest Grievance that salvages the weak points of the novel. Fans of Lipman will enjoy anything she writes; other readers can approach this book with the expectation of receiving some good laughs alongside the complexity of human behavior and the messiness of relationships. Steve Hopkins, March 23, 2007
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