The Ladies' Man
by Elinor Lipman
List Price: $12.00
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 037570731X
Publisher: Vintage
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are
designed to enhance your group's reading of Elinor Lipman's novel The
Ladies' Man. We hope that they will provide you with new ways of looking
at and talking about one of Lipman's most successful romantic comedies.
Like The Inn at Lake Devine,
The Ladies' Man is a mischievous tale of tangled love and second
chances--an enormously rewarding story with a winning mix of appealing
heroines, vivid writing, and wickedly funny social commentary.
Nineteen sixty-seven was a
defining year for Adele, Lois, and Kathleen Dobbin. That March, Harvey
Nash failed to attend the party at which he and Adele were to announce
their engagement. Thirty years later, the three sisters--graying, stolid,
content (albeit lonely)--blame him for what unkind relatives refer to
as their spinsterhood. But late one cold April night, the buzzer sounds
at the Dobbin sisters' apartment. It is Harvey, in out of the blue from
the west coast--where he's reinvented himself as Nash Harvey, composer
of jingles--to apologize.
After Kathleen greets Harvey
by hitting him over the head with a casserole dish, the Dobbin sisters
find themselves in the awkward position of having to look after him for
a spell. Older, seemingly filled with regrets, still as charming and arousable
as ever, he becomes a catalyst for the untried and the long overdue in
the three women's lives--though surely not in the ways he might have hoped.
Level-headed, cautious Adele, who works for a public television station,
finds herself flirting with her boss on the air during a campaign drive.
Kathleen, the shy owner of an elegant lingerie boutique, seduces Lorenz,
a sweet, unassuming doorman who lives with his father. Lois, the only
Dobbin to have embarked on the road to matrimony (and subsequently, divorce)
dusts off her girlhood notion that Harvey abandoned Adele rather than
indulge his preference for another member of the family: Lois herself.
Meanwhile, Cynthia--a bright,
sophisticated woman Nash seduced en route to Boston--discovers that Nash
is not the man she had hoped he was. And Dina, Nash's jilted lover back
in California, gets into a fender-bender with a handsome stranger. If
she plays her cards right, she may land the man of her dreams (or at least
a competent sperm donor). And if she doesn't, there may be an opportunity
to get Nash back. Sharp, sexy, unfailingly funny, The Ladies' Man
is a charming look at modern American sensibilities and the timeless pursuit
of love.
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1. Harvey Nash is certainly not the kind of man with whom most women would choose to become involved. Yet despite his oily loyalties, arrogance, and opportunism, he charms nearly all of the characters, to some degree, at some point in the novel. How does Harvey--now called Nash--make his way into Adele, Kathleen, and Lois' good graces? How does he maneuver his way into the arms of an intelligent, beautiful, and successful woman like Cynthia? What is it about this type of man that continues to be attractive to women and despite their better judgment they continue to succumb to his charm?
2. To what extent does the notion of good manners prevent the Dobbins from getting rid of Nash? To what extent are all three--on some level--curious about him?
3. How does fear threaten each female character's ability to act on her attraction to others? How does Nash confirm their fears? How does his behavior play a role in diffusing their fears?
4. How are the Dobbin sisters' loyalties to one another threatened by Nash's reasserting himself into their lives?
5. What role does Richard Dobbin play in the novel?
6. Perhaps one of the most hilarious scenes in The Ladies' Man is Cynthia's big party for Nash. How do the events leading up to the big night infuse each guest's entrance with tension? How does dialogue up the ante once the party begins?
7. How does Kathleen handle Cynthia's feelings for Nash? How does Kathleen and Cynthia's friendship effect the course of the novel?
8. Nash performs one notable and noble act in The Ladies' Man: he makes Marty Glazer jealous. What prompts this act of selflessness? Is it completely selfless? If not, how does his gesture endear him to us nonetheless?
9. How does Elinor Lipman keep us interested in so many different characters over the course of the novel? Were there characters you cared about more than others?
10. How do the characters in The Ladies' Man highlight different ways we approach--or shrink from--love today? What aspects of modern American culture make the pursuit of romance more difficult than in the past? What aspects make it easier?
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