Summary

In her newest well-tuned, witty, and altogether wonderful novel, bestselling author Elinor Lipman dares to ask: Can an upper-middle-class doctor find love with a shady, fast-talking salesman? Meet Alice Thrift, surgical intern in a Boston hospital, high of I.Q. but low in social graces. She doesn't mean to be acerbic, clinical, or blunt, but where was she the day they taught Bedside Manner 101? Into Alice's workaholic and wallflower life comes Ray Russo, a slick traveling fudge salesman in search of a nose job and well-heeled companionship, but not necessarily in that order. Is he a conman or a sincere suitor? Good guy or bad? Alice's parents, roommate, and best friend Sylvie are appalled at her choice of mate. Despite her doubts, Alice finds herself walking down the aisle, not so much won over as worn down. Will their marriage last the honeymoon? Only if Alice's best instincts can triumph over Ray's unsavory ways. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Author Biography

Elinor Lipman is the author of The Dearly Departed, The Ladies’ Man, The Inn at Lake Devine, Isabel’s Bed, The Way Men Act, Then She Found Me, and Into Love and Out Again. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Gourmet, Salon, Self, More, and Yankee Magazine. She has taught writing at Simmons, Hampshire, and Smith colleges, and won the 2001 New England Book Award for fiction. She lives in Massachusetts.

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Excerpts

1 Tell the Truth You may have seen us in "Vows" inThe New York Times: me, alone, smoking a cigarette and contemplating my crossed ankles, and a larger blurry shot of us, postceremony, ducking and squinting through a hail of birdseed. We didn't have pretty faces or interesting demographics, but we had met and married in a manner that was right for SundayStyles: Ray Russo came to my department for a consultation. I said what I always said to a man seeking rhinoplasty: Your nose is noble, even majestic. It has character. It gives you character. Have you thought this through? TheTimeshad its facts right: We met as doctor and patient. I digitally enhanced him, capped his rugged, haunted face with a perfect nose and symmetrical, movie-star nostrilsand he didn't like what he saw on the screen. "Why did I come?" he wondered aloud, in a manner that suggested depth. "Did I expect this would make mehandsome?" "It's the way we've been socialized," I said. "It's not like I have a deviated septum or anything. It's not like my insurance is going to pick up the tab." Vanitas vanitatum: elective surgery, in other words. He asked for my professional opinion. I said, "There's no turning back once we do this, so take some time and think it over. There's no rush. I don't like to play God. I'm only an intern doing a rotation here." "But you must see a lot of noses in life, on the street, and you must have an artistic opinion," said Ray. "If it were I, I wouldn't," I said for reasons that had nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with the nauseating sound of bones cracking under mallets in the OR. "Really? You think the one I have is okay?" "May I ask why you want to do this now, Mr. Russo?" I asked, glancing at the chart that told me he'd turn forty in a month. "Let's be honest: Women like handsome men," he said, voice wistful, eyes downcast. What could I say except a polite "And you don't think you're handsome enough? Do you think women judge you by the dimensions of your nose?" Next to me he smiled. The camera mounted above the monitor played it back. He had good teeth. "I haven't been very lucky in love," he added. "I'm forty-five and I don't have a girlfriend." "Is your date of birth wrong?" I asked, pointing to the clipboard. "Oh, that," he said. "I knock five years off when I'm filling out a job application because of age discrimination, even at forty-five. Bad habit. I forgot you should always tell the truth on medical forms." "And what is your field?" "I'm in business, self-employed." I asked what field. "Concessions. Which puts me before the public. Wouldn't you think that if everything was okay in the looks department, I'd have met someone by now?" I hated this partthe psychiatry, the talking. So instead of asserting what is hard to practice and even harder to preach in my chosen fieldthat beauty's only skin deep and vastly overratedI pecked at some keys and moved the mouse. We were back to Ray's original face, bones jutting, cartilage flaring, nose upstaging, a face that my less scrupulous attending physicians would have loved to pin to their drawing boards. If it soun