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Publisher Description
Over the years, Alison Lurie has earned a devoted readership for her satiric wit and storytelling acumen. With Truth and Consequences, described by the New Yorker as "a comedy of adultery with a comedy of academia thrown in," Lurie returns with a modern social satire that recalls the best of David Lodge and Mary McCarthy as well as her own popular university novels The War Between the Tates and Foreign Affairs. BACKCOVER: "A wily, shapely tale of love's labors lost."
-Elle
"A wry, insightful, thoroughly enjoyable tale about how men and women choose their demons and their lovers, and the sacrifices they're willing to make for both."
-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Delightful . . . Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect."
-The New York Review of Books
-Elle
"A wry, insightful, thoroughly enjoyable tale about how men and women choose their demons and their lovers, and the sacrifices they're willing to make for both."
-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Delightful . . . Her characters are, as always, wonderfully imperfect."
-The New York Review of Books
8 Reviews
3.0
Siobhan146
Created over 4 years agoShare
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Elizabeth Gregory
Created about 7 years agoShare
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Jenny Bradford
Created over 7 years agoShare
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Whizard
Created almost 11 years agoShare
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“it was okay i wish the author wrote another chapter for jane, but i assume she had a happy ending. Alan is spineless, couldnt even resist "dilly" after she quite boldly hurt him.”
Josh Ang
Created over 13 years agoShare
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“A novel about middle-aged couples and the challenges of married life set in an American University. The main couple in this story Jane and Alan Mackenzie finds their picture-perfect lives threatened when Alan throws his back and becomes increasingly an invalid.
In comes the flighty and tempestuous novelist Delia Delaney who descends onto the Matthew Unger Center for the Humanities that Jane is director of. Soon Alan, a professor at the College of Architecture, finds himself seduced by this pre-Raphaelite beauty who is so self-absorbed she does not treat him like a sick person, something he finds refreshing and helps him to seemingly regain his masculine prowess.
To complicate things, Jane finds herself both repulsed and attracted to Delia's husband, Henry, black curls, broad shoulders and all.
A straightforward enough story that Lurie manages to raise above the predictable by setting it against an academic and artistic background that she seems to be familiar with and paints with some gusto and precision. It may be argued that Delia and Henry seem rather flat in contrast with the more developed character of Jane and perhaps even Alan (both of whom Lurie details with much sympathy as normal people who are battling exenuating circumstances and trying to do the right thing). But the story is engaging and the writing crisp and often humorous, with spot-on descriptions like the following, which is an observation by a minor character in the novel to explain the destructive attraction of Delia:
"Delia's not capable of multi-tasking. When she's working, she doesn't notice anything that happens around her. Or if you manage to interrupt her, then she turns her attention on you - her complete attention, like a high-powered spotlight, though usually not for long. People are drawn to it like moths, they flutter frantically against the glass,a nd then the spotlight is turned off and they fall to the ground, scorched."”
About Alison Lurie
Alison Lurie is the author of many highly praised novels, including The War Between the Tates, The Truth About Lorin Jones (Prix Femina Etranger), and Foreign Affairs (Pulitzer Prize for fiction). Her most recent book was Familiar Spirits. She teaches writing, folklore, and literature at Cornell University.
Other books by Alison Lurie
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