The Inn at Lake Devine
Elinor Lipman
1998, 253 pages
Fiction
Elinor Lipman is whip smart and funny; many people know her for her essays and her hilarious tweets about electoral politics, but her novels are also a treat. The Inn at Lake Devine is about a young woman, Natalie Marx, only 12 when the book opens, and her fascination with a Vermont inn whose proprietress responds to her mother’s request for information by writing that gentiles are the “guests who feel most comfortable here.”
In a clever but not ever pat story, Lipman, like Jane Austen, turns her formidable wit on the society of her novel: the anti-Semitic innkeeper, summer camp, overbearing parents, adult childhood friends, Catskills resorts, and much else. There is young love, an untimely death, missed connections, strategic alliances, wrongs righted and loose ends tidied, as in a Shakespearean comedy. The Inn at Lake Devine is both delightfully entertaining and thought provoking. If you’re heading to an inn or camp for the weekend, take Elinor Lipman along.
Deb Baker
Concord Public Library
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