The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

by Elinor Lipman

Book Overview

Dr. Alice Thrift, a surgical intern at a Boston hospital is book-smart but people-hopeless. Luckily Leo Frawley, R.N. and Sylvie Schwartz, M.D. take on the task of guiding Alice through the narrow... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375724591
• ISBN13: 9780375724596
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Elinor Lipman at her wittiest best

I've read several of Lipman's other novels (The Inn at Lake Devine, The Dearly Departed), but this was by far the best. The main character is Alice Thrift, M.D., medical resident and social misfit. In the first page of the book, Alice gives away the ending by reporting that her marriage didn't last and that her husband was a liar. Although these facts are disclosed up front, all is not revealed, as Alice's full story slowly unfolds over the course of the book. What really makes this novel shine is the truly clever and positively comical dialogue between Alice and the various people who show up in her life: her mother, her roommate Leo, Leo's family, Leo's girlfriend Meredith, her new-found friend Sylvie, and of course, her acquaintance, boyfriend, fiance, and eventual husband, Ray. Although I knew what would happen with Alice and Ray in the end, I thoroughly enjoyed journeying with them from the very beginning to that point.

Light, Bright and Funny

This was my second Elinor Lipman novel (Dearly Departed was my first). Her prose is witty and effortless. Her humor is unforced but ever present. An absolutely delightful, light yet literate read.

Witty romp about a social misfit's metamorphosis.

Alice Thrift, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, is an unhappy intern in a Boston hospital. Her ineptitude with people is legendary. She says whatever pops into her head, no matter how inappropriate. This is not a good characteristic for a doctor, who is expected to be tactful with her patients. In addition, her romantic life has been on the back burner for years, while she works brutal hours in her pursuit of a career in medicine. Alice lives platonically with her roommate, a male nurse named Leo Frawley. Leo is extremely popular with everyone and he is thoroughly at ease with himself, qualities which Alice sorely lacks. Suddenly, a new man enters Alice's life. Ray Russo, a chocolate fudge salesman, comes to Alice for a consultation, and it soon becomes apparent that Ray may have romantic designs on the harried intern. Will Ray bring Alice out of her shell at last? Will Alice learn to think before she speaks? "The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" is a winner. The characters, dialogue, and plot are sharp and witty, and at times I laughed out loud at a particularly amusing line. What makes this book stand out is that the reader grows to care about Alice and roots for her to succeed both in medicine and in love. Lipman brings every character to hilarious life. These include Alice's frustrated parents, her cynical friend, Sylvie Schwartz, and her unctuous and opportunistic boyfriend, Ray Russo. "The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" is one of Elinor Lipman's best. From the first page to the last, it is fast-paced, brisk, sophisticated, sexy, and thoroughly entertaining.

A real original!

This is my first Elinor Lippman novel. I perused it while waiting in line to buy Harry Potter and ended up buying it as well. It's fun, intelligent, and most of all, real. I'll try to explain. This story is a cut above the usual "chick lit" novels because the author makes such interesting choices for her characters, the setting, the plot, the tone, everything!Alice Thrift is like no other heroine and the author's technique in portraying her is one of the finest examples of the craft of showing without telling. Alice scores quite low on the emotional intelligence scale. She's lonely, isolated from herself and others, a veritable automaton. She does, however, nurse a secret crush on her roommate, a guy who everybody loves (and who loves everyone else at least for one night). This is never blatantly stated, you really have to know how to read and pick up on the clues. How refreshing! At the same time, Alice is wry and incredibly honest, ill-equipped to deal with others who are not as forthcoming and above-board. However, never fear, she is not a wilting lily needing rescue from a white knight. OH no. After bull-headedly careening into a relationship with a cad, she figures out how to make him show his true colors by the end of the story in a very satisfactory way. The details of her residency, a run-in with a prima-donna surgeon, smack of realism. You can practically smell the betadine. Unlike most fictional doctors, Alice realistically suffers from sleep deprivation and makes a mistake that isn't too bad but her overweaning desire for perfection makes it seem horrendous. I can't think of another novel that gets across the humiliation of making an unprofessional mistake so accurately. The cad, Ray Russo, reminds me of several guys that almost made it past the first date with me and went on to wreak havoc in the lives of my friends. Guys with a certain amount of charm that can't disguise the icky energy they exude. It doesn't take a bloodhound to smell the lies, but it does take some experience, something that poor Alice Thrift just doesn't have. Add to that a large dose of loneliness and it completely makes sense that Alice would get mixed up with a guy who *says* all the right things (he really does) while somehow his actions never add up. How many times have you asked your girlfriends which they believe, words or actions? Ms. Lipman portrays this dilemna with surety and finesse. She never gets heavy handed and injects a lot of fun with the quirky supporting characters such as Alice's iconoclastic neighbor. All in all, this is a fine, funny story of contemporary people dealing with human issues as old as humanity by an author who really knows her craft. She manages to take these themes of love, friendship and career to new and underused areas. I look forward to reading the rest of her novels.

deliciously classic lipman

Thank God, more Elinor Lipman! Her latest gem is the story of the initiation into simple humanity of Alice Thrift, a brilliant but socially-challenged surgical resident who has all the instinctive people skills of a chilly stethoscope. The paradoxical inversion of Lipman's usual lucidly insightful heroines works to perfection here; Alice's cluelessness is itself a kind of x-ray vision and Lipman is as hilariously wise about men and women as ever. Alice's insanely persistent suitor, the sublimely slimy Ray Russo, is a perverse delight; watching the twists and turns of the courtship is like watching a car wreck in slow motion, but it dawns on us slowly that this is precisely the car wreck Alice needed. The novel's minor characters are realized wonderfully, and the delicious unfolding process of naive Alice's education in the intricacies of actual human beings is pure joy. I can't agree that this falls short of Lipman's usual wonders; it's simply a delightful read, laced with laugh-out-loud dialogue pitched to perfection and all the treasures of Lipman's effortlessly graceful style. She is our Jane Austen and hurray there's more of her now to read.