The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Author: Rebecca Miller

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Unabridged: 7 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/02/2008

Synopsis

At age fifty, Pippa Lee seems perfectly content. The devoted wife of a successful publisher and proud mother of grown twins, a consummate hostess to the literati and an admired and trusted neighbor, her life seems to lack for nothing. But when she and her eighty-year-old husband move to a quiet retirement village, the routines and distractions that have upheld Pippa's flawless feminine persona begin to crumble away. And under the surface, her surprisingly gritty and adventurous past is beginning to break through.When Pippa finds herself acting out strange yearnings in her sleep, she gradually allows the voice of her lost self to come through into her consciousness, recounting a wild and reckless youth full of experimentation and heartbreak, passion and guilt. We learn how she ran away from home to escape the manic-depression of her pill-popping mother, only to fall into drugs herself among the loose New York art crowd. Leaving a trail of broken hearts and messy affairs behind her, it is only when she meets the older Herb that she discovers her longing for security and resolves to steal him from his wife in order to settle down and create a family of her own. Written with quirky humor, intelligence and compassion, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a wise and acute portrait of the many lives behind a single name.

About Rebecca Miller

Rebecca Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and is married to Academy Award–winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. She lives in New York City with their two sons. Her feature film, Personal Velocity, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and her latest movie, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, received rave reviews.

About Bernadette Dunne

Bernadette Dunne has been honored to narrate the work of some of the finest fiction and nonfiction writers of our time, including Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sandra Day O'Connor. The winner of more than a dozen Earphones Awards and a three-time Audie Award nominee, she has voiced countless bestsellers, including Memoirs of a Geisha, The Devil Wears Prada, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She studied at The Royal National Theater and lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Laurie (barksbooks) on November 01, 2019

When the book begins Pippa is in her fifties. She’s one of those well-to-do perfect housewife types that everyone simply adores. She’s been married to Herb, thirty years her senior, for thirty or so years and they are the parents of grown up twins. Life is idyllic with a beach house and everything.......more

Goodreads review by Elevate Difference on January 10, 2009

What molding and stretching is required of a woman who chooses to better the quality of life of others over her own? Perhaps this type of self-sacrifice cannot be fathomed from the outside in. To be the devoted wife, the doting mother, the gracious hostess, the caring friend—where and when does she......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on March 28, 2009

The character of Pippa Lee, in her many incarnations, is a wondrous specimen of a woman. It's far too easy to say "she overcame obstacles, blah, blah, blah..." It's much more than that when it comes to Pippa. She runs straight into the fire over and over, each time emerging more and more in touch wi......more

Goodreads review by AJ on January 11, 2010

First two-thirds of the book: A+! Last part: are you kidding me with this? Pippa is 30 years younger than her husband. She is completely in love and content and happy with their clearly defined relationship. It works for them and she is at times caught off guard with how content she is. From the outse......more

Goodreads review by Andrea on November 05, 2007

This was a really good book. Very smart literature for women, IMHO. Pippa Lee, 50, is married to Herb, three decades her senior. He suddenly announces that he wants to move to Marigold Village, a retirement community, and Pippa finds her life changing in ways she can't control. We are taken into Pippa......more

Quotes

“Wise and irreverent.”  Nick Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“[Miller] delves into the fraught relationships of families, particularly mothers and daughters, exploring the ways one woman deals with life’s surprises.” New York Times

“Strikingly unconventional.” Elle

“Dreamy, elegant…Miller’s astute, beautifully nuanced novel explores the unpredictable consequences of choosing to live a safe but emotionally compromised life.” Daily Mail (UK) 

“Miller is a luminous writer…Gazing into these multiple private Pippas is like opening a series of Russian dolls, each intricately wrought, self-contained, and self-revealing.” Observer (London)

“Miller stands on her own with Pippa Lee as she has with much of her previous work…One is reminded of T. S. Eliot’s play The Cocktail Party, masquerading as drawing room comedy, to lure us into deeper waters.” Buffalo News 

“Vivid, brave and experimental.” New York Observer

“Miller’s quietly devastating examination of ageing, love and loyalty is never less than compelling.” Psychologies

“Magnificent…Miller’s depiction of her title character’s tangled universe is so nuanced, so lovingly detailed, that it’s impossible not to get drawn in.” Nylon 

“[A] promising first novel…Pippa’s struggle to break the ‘chain of misunderstandings and adjustments’ that passes from parent to child is moving…The story’s held together by Miller’s sincere and intelligent protagonist.” Publishers Weekly

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