The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

Book Overview

At fifty, Pippa Lee seems just fine. The devoted wife of a brilliant publisher thirty years her senior, the proud mother of successful twins, and a lovely and adored friend and neighbor, she seems to glow with feminine serenity. But when her husband spontaneously decides they should cast off Gramercy Park for Marigold Village retirement home as a preemptive strike against his decrepitude, Pippa finds her beatific persona unraveling in alarming ways:...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374237425
• ISBN13: 9780374237424
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Good Story..easy reading

This is a perfect story who are looking for a good quality read with some soft life philosphy.The book has two major points; - one is about Pippa; the perfect wife of an 80 year old power guy; a mother of two who did her best in raising her kids by basically providing them a good family life. Now she is 50, kids are not at home and don't even appreciate her much..she still has a long life infront of her and feels drowned with the suburban life of her now 80 years old husband. And her old "fun and risk taking" character starts to come to surface again...the reason why her husband first place fell in love with her... - then with the flachbacks we learn more about Pippa...the young girl. Clever and who enjoys life..who is open to risks but still clever to choose to settle at a certain time...a perfect mold, isn't it ? I do recommend this book especially to women who have at one time stopped being that young crazy fun loving risk taking irresponsible and thus sexy girl and turned into a responsible wife and mother. There is something for all of us in this story. A very good story and good reading :)

Who are you?

I liked this book a lot. Gave it as a gift in fact. It's not easily categorized. It's about a person's (female) journey through life. I think there is truth in it - an honest look at how life is for some people--people not given, or born into, the ideal circumstance. Sort of making the best out of what comes at you, and the struggle to determine who you are.

Great book by a gifted writer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book for many reasons. It offered insight to a woman who seems a little lost in her own life, being married to a successful man many years her senior and whose children are grown and gone. She fills her day doing mundane chores but seems to enjoy the monotony more for what it shelters her from than for what it is. We learn over the course of the book that Pippa was raised by a drug addicted mother and ran away from home because of that only to herself succumb to a downward spiral of drugs and aimlessness. It wasn't until she met the much married Herb, a man 30 years her senior, that she stops taking drugs and becomes a stable wife and mother. The raw intelligence of the prose is what moved me. Miller is hugely talented and some lines literally left me reeling. One is when Pippa's daughter, Grace, at a very young age said to her mother "I own you as far as the eye can see." Such statements cause Pippa to remove herself from her daughter's clutches a little, an act of tough love or selfishness? There are many questions like this that this book surreptitiously poses that made it a thought provoking delight.

An Easy Read of Quality

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and devoured it in as few sittings as possible. It is the kind of book that, for me, has too many extraordinary plot twists and character traits to seem completely realistic, but the writing was so good that I was prepared to suspend belief and just go with the story. The novel begins with Pippa Lee at 50 years old, married to a man 30 years her senior, and moving into a retirement complex. The first part of the book describes her current life, focussing on her relationship with her husband and two adult children. The second part goes back to Pippa's childhood and charts her wild and self-destructive youth up until she meets her husband and changes her life. The final portion of the book returns to the present day, where all is not right between Pippa and her family, and things have reached breaking point. I found Pippa to be an interesting if not always likeable character. She seemed to drift through life, easily influenced by others, with little conviction about what she wanted or with any kind of moral compass. Despite this, I liked Pippa. I felt she was very much a product of her childhood and was just a confused, lonely person at heart. I was also interested by a lot of the secondary characters and enjoyed how the author managed to perfectly sum up their personalities in just a few piercing descriptive sentences or lines of dialogue. Perhaps the one false note was the ending. Part of me feels that the loose ends were all tied up too neatly, within just a few pages, and perhaps the book could have gone on a bit longer to make the ending more realistic. Furthermore, there was also something that happened near the end of the book that just didn't ring true. I won't give too much away, suffice to say that there was almost a metaphysical element to the ending that I found unsatifying. Overall, I have to give this book 5 stars because it is an intelligent, sensitive novel, and also a real page turner. Who could ask for anything more?