"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"

"The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), by Rebecca Miller, is an eccentric little novel. Pippa, 50ish, has been married to Herb, 80, for 30 years, and they have just moved to a retirement community. Pippa loves Herb but feels out of place and vaguely unsettled in her new home. The story flashes back to Pippa's very troubled relationship with her mother, her adventures and misadventures as a very young woman, and the drama of her early years with Herb. Back in the present, various surprising events ensue, leading to some new beginnings. (I don't want to give away the plot twists.) The tone of the novel is an odd mixture of light and dark, but Pippa is an intriguing character, and the originality of her personality keeps us reading. Although I have a slight feminist reservation about mentioning the following, believing that women shouldn't be identified by the men in their lives, I will tell you that Rebecca Miller is the daughter of Arthur Miller and is married to Daniel Day-Lewis. (I resolved my concerns by realizing that I would have given you this information if the genders had been reversed; besides, the connections are just too interesting not to pass on!) Miller has also made this novel in to a movie, which I haven't seen, but may look for now.