At fifty, Pippa Lee seems just fine. The devoted wife of a brilliant publisher thirty years her senior, the proud mother of successful twins, and a lovely and adored friend and neighbor, she seems to glow with feminine serenity. But when her husband spontaneously decides they should cast off Gramercy Park for Marigold Village retirement home as a “preemptive strike against his decrepitude,” Pippa finds her beatific persona unraveling in alarming ways: the truth is that the gracious woman of the present day has seen more than her fair share of the wild side. By seventeen, Pippa had lived with a Dexedrine-addicted mother, felt the first stirrings of sexuality with a school girlfriend, had an affair with a teacher, and run away from home, set adrift on a course littered with broken hearts—until she seemingly found love and security in a family of her own. And now that established world, too, is in danger. In Pippa Lee we have an unforgettable heroine, and a quirky and acutely intelligent portrait of the many lives behind a single name. Even after we’ve read it, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a story that is still unfurling.

Every woman who is facing fifty or has already moved past it will be grateful for this warm, witty exploration of the indignities and epiphanies of midlife, large and small. Suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, for instance, with a non-negotiable need to go to the bathroom. Immediately. Having to let the waistband out on every skirt you own. Discovering one day that you can no longer read the phone book. Finally figuring out what you want to be when you grow up. Realizing that not everyone you love will be here forever and neither will you. Cherishing the present as never before.

"At eighty-five, Teo, one of the world's most influential choreographers, is ready to withdraw from the bombast and romance surrounding his long and illustrious career. But then he meets Vivi, a waitress at a Tel Aviv café, and the slumbering passions of his youth are roused once more. Suddenly and unexpectedly, his desire for a woman's touch, his anguished memories of World War II, and his complex, soulful engagement with dance all come rushing back. Vivi's life will change, too, as Teo's affection forces her to confront her guilt over an illicit relationship during her days as a soldier. Soon their interactions with art, their very investment in living, will reawaken ghosts of their painful, suppressed pasts--from Warsaw to Copenhagen, from Berlin to Tel Aviv--that cry out for forgiveness and peace."--Page 4 of cover.