Lipman, Elinor. Isabel’s Bed. New York: Washington Square Press, 1995.
Reason read: Lipman’s birth month is in October. Read in her honor.
Harriet Mahoney gave twelve years of her life to a man who just left her to marry a woman he’s only known for a few months. Adding insult to injury, he kicks Harriet out of the house she has shared with him as his common law wife for all those years. Dejected but determined to land on her feet, (without her parents’s help…she is over forty, after all!) Harriet takes a job in the seaside town of Truro, Cape Cod, to ghost write celebrity Isabel Krug’s tabloid story. Everyone knows Isabel was the femme fatale using a vibrator in a married man’s bed. Everyone knows the married guy’s wife stormed into the bedroom and shot him dead. Everyone knows because the trial was a sensation full of titillating details, but Isabel wants the world to know her side of the story (it’s even more sordid) and because she isn’t shy, she’s willing to tell all. Harriet is in for the ride of her life working with feisty Isabel…until the not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity widow comes knocking.
This is a fun read but a bit silly at times.
Line I really liked, “My taste buds strained in their direction” (p 276).
Author fact: Lipman is from Lowell, Massachusetts. Same as Hey Jack Kerouac.
Book trivia: So. This story is supposed to take place in Cape Cod. One character is supposed to have a wicked Boston accent. He does…for the most part. It comes and goes.
Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Isabel’s Bed.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Elinor Lipman: Too Good to Miss” (p 146).
~*LunaSea*~ 