Trudy Hopedale: A Novel

By Jeffrey Frank

On the eve of the 2000 election, the charmed life of Washington hostess Trudy Hopedale is quietly falling apart. Her daytime talk show is about to be hijacked by a younger, prettier assistant, and then there is the horrifying novel that her husband has written in secret, which contains some rather troubling implications for a former Foreign Service colleague. And what is her mother-in-law telling everyone? Trudy's dear friend Donald Frizz has benefited greatly from their friendship. A widely recognized expert on the U.S. vice presidency and a frequent guest on Trudy's program, Donald's latest scholarly pursuit is a highly anticipated biography of Garrett Augustus Hobart, McKinley's VP. Exactly who anticipates this book is hard to say, and soon Donald finds himself dodging the awkward questions of plagiarism and his sexuality, frequently during the same conversation. Amid tides of intrigue and shifting allegiances, this little town's extraordinary inhabitants swim helplessly, and alarmingly, toward their remarkable fates. With a bewitching sense of nostalgia, Jeffrey Frank has written an exquisitely funny, tender, and deeply perceptive novel that vividly invokes the simpler world of only yesterday.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416549242
• ISBN13: 9781416549246
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

DC done to a turn

Having loved Jeffrey Frank's other books, I started Trudy Hopedale with anticipatory pleasure. And then found I could not put it down. All that's been said about its clear prose, pitch-perfect tone, cracking satire is all there, but what was a special delight was the page-turning need to find out what happens to the hapless characters that inhabit's Frank special Washington. My only regret is that it was over too soon. Jill Bossert

shrewd and funny

Jeffrey Frank continues to turn out novels about Washington that are shrewd, funny and engaging. Like no one else, he skewers the futile ambitions, the pandering and the rampant egotism that drive the city. His characters are losers all (even the winners), adrift in a treacherous world of false values. Laugh at them you will. But in the end - and this is Frank's real achievement- you end up feeling real sorrow for them and thier misguided lives. A great book!