My Latest Grievance
Review by Harper Hall
My Latest Grievance
by Elinor Lipman
Houghton Mifflin
$24.00
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"I wanted to be cool. I wanted my father to drive a car and wear a suit to work. I wanted my mother to read Vogue, color and straighten her gray hair, wear high heels, cut the crusts off sandwiches. I knew from television that families were supposed to live in houses, to sleep uninterrupted by fire drills or homesick freshmen, and eat by themselves in dining rooms that didn't seat a thousand.”
These are the lamentations of Frederica Hatch, the heroine of Elinor Lipman’s latest novel. Frederica is the 16-year old daughter of Aviva Ginsberg Hatch, Ph.D. and David Hatch, Ph.D. professors and houseparents at Dewing College, an all girls school in Brookline, Massachusetts. Frederica’s home is the college dorm she shares with her parents. “I didn’t exactly raise myself, especially with five floors of honorary sisters living above me at all times. But there was the omnipresent ID card around my neck granting me entrance to all buildings and all meals, with or without a parent. Aviva and David were busy with their classes, their advisees, and increasingly their causes.” As a result of her unconventional upbringing, Frederica feels wronged by her parents and longs for a normal life. On her 16th birthday she receives a gift from her father’s first wife, Laura Lee, of which she has had no previous knowledge. Frederica soon learns the truth of her parents’ affair and her father’s previous marriage. Laura Lee then surprising shows up at Dewing to accept a position as the housemother of the neighboring dorm. In the months to follow Laura Lee entangles the Hatches in a string of controversies that threaten the reputation of the college and impose a heavy burden on Frederica and her well-meaning and over-involved parents. “It was at that precise moment…that I saw clearly at last. I had adopted a woman who stole, told lies, wore funny clothes, seduced college presidents, sneaked wine into the dining hall, read while she walked and proposed to priests. I had saluted and indulged her quirks because unconventional behavior was the foremost quality I had been raised to admire. But now it seemed so undeniable and diagnosable: that Laura Lee French was, professionally speaking, nuts.”
My Latest Grievance is an enjoyable, sharp-witted comedy just in time for the long summer days ahead.
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