The Books: “The Pursuit of Alice Thrift” (Elinor Lipman)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

alicethrift.jpgI read this wonderful book last year. Alice Thrift is a medical intern – in surgery – a rather macho field … and she is having a tough tough time of it. She was an A student, but other than that – unremarkable. She finds the job stressful, she is condescended to by the head surgeon, and she also is kind of a humorless person – who is unable to look within herself and calm herself down. And yet even with all that – you just love this character. The whole “picking up on social clues” thing is WAY over poor Alice Thrift’s head. She doesn’t “get the joke”. Ever. So life always seems to be going on outside her orbit. She looks around at her fellow interns, and doctors and nurses – and watches their rapport – and wonders how on earth they do it. Alice’s mother – an invasive nosy woman – tells her daughter, blatantly, that she thinks she has Asperger’s Syndrome. She leaves pamphlets about Asperger’s lying around. Alice’s mother had a VERY close relationship with her own mother – who dies during the course of the book – and wonders why she can’t share that closeness with her own daughter. Closeness of the kind Alice’s mother wants is horrifying to Alice. Like when Alice is sitting on the toilet and wants to close the bathroom door – her mother gets hurt. “Why can’t we continue our conversation as you urinate? Why must you shut me out? My own mother never shut me out! Are you menstruating now, Alice? My mother always was aware of when I was menstruating. It is that kind of closeness I want us to have. I want us to talk intimately through the night about our FEELINGS.” Alice couldn’t imagine anything worse than staying up all night with ANYONE to talk about “feelings”. She doesn’t get the whole “feelings” thing, anyway.

The book opens with Alice getting married. She marries this obviously horrible playa type guy – who tells her he is a widower. She marries him for various reasons – he comes on hard, seems unfazed by her so-called Asperger’s, and also – her family kind of pooh-poohs him because he’s a traveling salesman. Through various twists and turns, she marries him. You know it’s a horrible mistake.

And yet let us not forget that this book is a comedy. Lipman writes comedies. Before the marriage to this horrible guy, Alice lives with a guy who is a nurse at the hospital. They are just roommates. His name is Leo. Leo was looking for a roommate – who was NOT a nurse, because of the whole gossip grapevine thing – and if he had a “sleepover” with a lady-friend, he didn’t want it to be all around the hospital. Alice wouldn’t know how to gossip if you gave her a pamphlet … so she fits the bill. Alice and Leo, in their own way, become friends. Leo is SUCH a great character. He is much beloved at the hospital – kind of a star – everyone likes him, he’s good at what he does, and he actually likes his job – which Alice finds baffling. She can’t stand her job – and the hours, and the stress. Leo kind of takes Alice on – not as a project, but just … he tries to loosen her up. He’s a GUY. Boston Irish. Comes from a huge Catholic family. He’s handsome. He’s funny. His mother is insane, and has religious iconography all over her house. You know. The usual. Totally not the kind of guy you would see with a plain Jane picked-last-for-kickball type like Alice. But Leo – Leo is kind. Leo treats her with humor. He also tells her the truth. About what she needs to work on, in her personality … but he also backs off when she tells him to back off.

The story has many intersecting plot-lines … Alice’s courtship with Ray, the horrible widower … Leo’s responses to that … Leo’s girlfriend (a snotty midwife) … Alice moving out on her own … and befriending a girl down the hall named Sylvie – really, it’s Alice’s first friend. There are family issues, and job issues (Alice falls asleep during surgery while holding the retractor) … but gradually, you begin to realize – and it’s subtle at first, you can’t tell which way the book will go – gradually, it becomes apparent that the book is going to be about Alice and Leo.

And it couldn’t be more romantic. And humorous.

Alice, the humorless surgeon. Leo, the handsome masculine male nurse. She gets MARRIED to the other dude … who is also an awesome character (in his horrible-ness – you know, he says stuff like, “Want to have a sleepover, Alice?” And when she wonders what that means – because she’s Alice and she doesn’t pick up on courtship cues – he says, “You know. Your snatch, my cock, we’ll be up all night.” !!!!! Even with my brief description of the book, you can probably tell that that kind of language will not go over well with Alice. )

Here’s an excerpt. Leo, her roommate, is trying to get to know her better. I love Leo. Leo and Alice are going to throw a party … this discussion ensues:

I love how Leo treats her. He’s kind, but he also doesn’t bullshit or condescend. He sees something in Alice.

EXCERPT FROM The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

This is what we imagined: nurses and surgical residents conversing in civilian garb. RNs impressing MDs with their previously underappreciated level of science and scholarship. Exhausted doctors sipping beer while sympathetic nurses circulated with pinwheel sandwiches. Doctors asking nurses if they could compare schedules and find free Saturday nights in common.

When every nurse accepted our invitation and every resident declined, Leo and I had to scramble to provide something close to even numbers. I volunteered to call my medical school classmates who were interning in Boston – there were two at Children’s, some half dozen at MGH, a couple more at Tufts, at BU.

“Friends?” he said.

“Classmates,” I repeated.

I know what was on his mind: my unpopularity. That the words party and Alice Thrift were oxymoronic, and now Leo was experiencing it firsthand. I said, “Let’s face it: I have no marquee value. My name on the invitation doesn’t get one single warm body here, especially of the Y-chromosome variety.”

“We’re going to work on that,” said Leo.

“On the other hand, since I’m not known as a party thrower, my invitees will expect a very low level of merriment.”

Leo said, “Cut that out. It’s not your fault. We’re aiming too high. Interns are exhausted. If they have a night off, they want to sleep.”

I said, “That’s true of the average man, from what I’ve read.”

“And what is that?” Leo asked.

“I’ve heard that men will go forth into groups of women, even strangers, if they think there’s a potential for sexual payoff.”

“What planet are you living on?” Leo asked. “Why do you sound like an anthropologist when we’re just bullshitting about how to balance our guest list?”

We were having this conversation in the cafeteria, Leo seated, me standing, since I usually grabbed a sandwich to go. He didn’t think I ate properly, so after he’d rattled a chair a few times, I sat down on it.

“If I called my single brothers, not counting Peter,” he said, “and they each brought two friends, that would be six more guys.”

“Is Peter the priest?”

“No. Joseph’s the priest. Peter doesn’t like women.”

“Okay. Six is a start.”

I unwrapped my cheese sandwich, and squeezed open the spout on my milk carton. “I know someone,” I finally said.

“Eligible?”

I nodded. So eligible, I thought, that he was pursuing Alice Thrift. “Not young, though. Forty-five. And widowed.”

“Call him. Forty-five’s not bad. Maybe he could bring some friends.”

I said, “Actually, he’s the one leaving those messages.”

“He’s been crooning Sinatra on the latest ones,” said Leo. “What’s that about?”

“Trying to get my attention.” I took a bite of my sandwich.

Leo said, “No lettuce, no ham, no tomato?”

I pointed out that I never knew how long lunch would languish in my pocket before consumption, so this was the safest thing to take away.

Leo paused to consult our list of women. Finally he said, “I see a few of my colleagues who would be very happy with a forty-five-year-old guy. And even more who would pounce on the widower part. How long ago did he lose his wife?”

“A year and a day.” I looked at my watch’s date. “As of now, a year and two weeks.”

“Call him. Tell him you and your roommate are putting together a soiree of hardworking primary-care nurses, who – studies have shown – sometimes go out on the town looking for a sexual payoff just like the males of the species.”

I said, “I wasn’t born yesterday. I know people have sexual relations on a casual basis.”

Leo studied me for a few seconds, as if there was a social/epidemiological question he wanted to ask.

I said, “I’ve had relations, if that’s what your retreat into deep thought is about.”

“I see,” said Leo.

“In college. Actually, the summer between my junior and senior years. I was a camp counselor and the boys’ camp was across the lake.”

“And he was a counselor, too?”

“An astronomy major at MIT, or so I believed. He knew all the constellations.”

“Sounds romantic,” said Leo.

I said, “Actually not. I had wondered what all the fuss was about, so I decided to experience it for myself.”

“And?”

I swallowed a sip of milk and blotted my mouth. “Not worth the discomfort or the embarrassment or the trip into town for the prophylactics. And to make it worse, he expected follow-up.”

“Meaning?”

“That we’d do it again.”

“What a cad,” said Leo.

“I found out later he wasn’t an astronomy major at all, but studying aerospace engineering. And in a fraternity.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

I said no, never.

“So that would be … like five years ago?”

I shrugged. After a pause, I wrapped the remains of my sandwich in plastic and put it in my jacket pocket.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” said Leo.

I said I had to run. Would catch him later – I had the night off so I’d do some vacuuming.

“Alice?” he called when I was a few paces from him. I returned to the table.

“I want to say, just for the record, as a fellow clinician, that the fuss you’ve heard about? With respect to relations? The stuff that, according to movies and books, supposedly makes the earth move and the world go round? Well – and I say this as your friend – it does.”

I didn’t have an answer; wasn’t sure whether his statement was confessional or prescriptive.

“What I’m getting at,” he continued, “is that you might want to give it another shot someday.”

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