The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, by Rebecca Miller

Pippa Lee is the 50-something third wife of 80-year-old publishing powerhouse Herb Lee. Herb has decided to sell their apartment in Manhattan and their Sag Harbor house and move to a retirement community, where Pippa is a youngster compared to her neighbors. On the surface, Pippa seems to be a serene woman dedicated to taking care of her family, but problems become apparent when she starts walking, eating, smoking, and driving in her sleep.

After 63 pages of third-person narrative that is, frankly, a bit dull, Miller changes gears, allowing Pippa to narrate her own back story, her private lives--her childhood with a smothering and speed-addicted mother; her seduction of a teacher at the local private school; her escape to New York, where she lived with her aunt, whose lesbian lover drew Pippa into the world of S&M clubs; and drug-addled years with three male artists and another woman, with the two women rotating as "girlfriends" of the three men. When she meets Herb, he pulls her out of that morass, though his life has its own complications that end up scarring Pippa. Still, she feels that marrying Herb is her "last chance at goodness," and she throws herself into acting the part of the good wife. Eventually. she and Herb have twins--Ben and Grace, who elicit perhaps Pippa's first true feelings. But her relationship with Grace is troubled, continuing a pattern of mother-daughter challenges that is generations old.

In the final section of the book, Miller returns to the present and the third-person. Without giving away any surprises, much happens, much of it not stretching credulity. I'm not sure whether Miller is suggesting at the end that Pippa is on her way to becoming an authentic person for the first time, but I do not believe it. Although she's been through new traumas and shrugged off some old guilt, she is still hollow and her strategy for finding something to fill herself up echoes too closely the teenage flight to New York to convince me of any growth.

The writing in the book is competent, although occasionally too contrived. Pippa's story also feels contrived--she does not read as a real person, and by the end of the book I really didn't care what happened to her. The portions of the book I found most interesting had to do with parent-child relationships; had Miller done more with those relationships, I might have found the book more rewarding. But as it is...not recommended.

Favorite passage:

It was so lonely, knowing things about her children that they no longer remembered. Layers of experience eroded from their minds but petrified in her own.

Of interest:

Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and is married to actor Daniel Day-Lewis. (I didn't know either of these things until I had finished the book.)