By Laura Pulfer
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Writers love Elinor Lipman. Not that we could be blamed for hating her a little bit. She is just that good.

When Random House revs up the blurb-o-mat for dust jackets of her books, the publisher does not have to plumb the available reviews. Writers line up to praise her books in advance. "About the best trick any writer can possess is the ability to make everything look easy, even to other writers who know better," says Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls.

"In this, the age of bogus Joe Millionaires and Barbie Doll bachelorettes," writes Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone, "Elinor Lipman's The Pursuit of Alice Thrift dares to pose the question: Can the frumpy physician find happiness with the unctuous fudgemonger?"

He came to her looking for a nose job. She is an unhappy intern, hoping after her residency to perform only noble procedures in Third World countries - cleft palates, cranial deformities and the like. "I'd hand off to my less idealistic and more affluent associates the nose jobs, the liposuctions, the face-lifts, the eye and tummy tucks, and all the cosmetic procedures that make the marginally attractive beautiful."

Their courtship makes you want to scream, "Run, Alice, run." But she doesn't. She is book brilliant and everyday ignorant. Just one brief, unsatisfactory incident at camp short of being a virgin, Alice Thrift is wooed in her own bathroom by fudge purveyor Ray Russo after a fainting spell, surely one of the funniest and least erotic seductions ever.

She observes his arousal as systolic pressure.

"Sometimes," he tells her, "when this happens, it has a personal meaning."

She reassures him, "As long as you didn't hurt yourself when you fell off the toilet - that's all I'm concerned about."

So is Ray just the guy to bring the socially challenged doctor out of her isolated, workaholic shell? She could use a lighter bedside manner. "I think he wants to have sexual intercourse," she explains when asked about her relationship with Ray. So is he a gold-digger, just interested in becoming Dr. and Mr. Ray Russo? Alice says he has made her a more interesting person. And he never shows up empty-handed. A new telephone with caller ID, a new pillow, a box of candy the size of Wyoming.

Her limited - really limited - circle of friends disapprove. Her former roommate, Leo Frawley, a charming male nurse who "has a high threshold for Alice's left-footed people skills" and a rakish and pierced fellow resident, Sylvia Schwartz, snipe and frown.

Her parents are horrified.

Alice ignores them.

Because Ray has discovered Alice's sad secret. You will, too, by about the fifth page. No matter. Lipman's specialty is not mystery, it's serious entertainment.

Speaking here to parents and faculty of Seven Hills Schools at their annual Literary Luncheon two years ago, Lipman talked a bit about what she calls "pop depth, a literary cousin to political correctness." That there is no importance if the characters don't live in a trailer or at the very least an abusive relationship.

In a later interview, she says, "And what do my readers want? I believe they want to feel better when they finish a book than when they start it. They want to be amused, moved, befriended, included."

This is Lipman's eighth novel, and my favorite. So far. She seems to get better with every book.

Her characters are fresh and funny and I want to know what happens to them, even after I've closed the book. She writes eloquently and beautifully, holding familiar words up to a prism, refracting them in peculiar and lovely ways. A few years ago, she appeared at the Mercantile Library here, and I told her she was dangerous because when I pick up one of her books I can't put it down.

Even when deadlines of my own approach, even when company is coming and my house is a mess, even when it's a topic that seems heavy going. Interracial dating, for instance, in The Way Men Act or struggling with genetics in And Then She Found Me.

I love her books. And I forgive her for missed deadlines and bleary eyes and her apparent ease of excellence.

She's just that good.

---

E-mail lpulfer@enquirer.com