Two sisters recover from widowhood, divorce, and Bernie Madoff as unexpected roommates in a Manhattan apartment Unexpectedly widowed Gwen-Laura Schmidt is still mourning her husband, Edwin, when her older sister Margot invites her to join forces as roommates in Margot’s luxurious Village apartment. For Margot, divorced amid scandal (hint: her husband was a fertility doctor) and then made Ponzi-poor, it’s a chance to shake Gwen out of her grief and help make ends meet. To further this effort she enlists a third boarder, the handsome, cupcake-baking Anthony. As the three swap money-making schemes and timid Gwen ventures back out into the dating world, the arrival of Margot’s paroled ex in the efficiency apartment downstairs creates not just complications but the chance for all sorts of unexpected forgiveness. A sister story about love, loneliness, and new life in middle age, this is a cracklingly witty, deeply sweet novel from one of our finest comic writers. “Her worldview? Her enthusiasm, her effortless wit? Just a few of the reasons we love Elinor Lipman.”– Boston Globe When meek and mousy middle sister ­Gwen-Laura is suddenly widowed and left with an empty, expensive New York City apartment, her baby sister, Betsy, suggests a win-win solution: move in with their older sister, Margot, freshly and scandalously divorced and burdened with a luxury penthouse she can no longer afford, thanks to Bernie Madoff. As different as chalk and cheese, Gwen and Margot nonetheless become compatible roommates, their differences mitigated by the addition of a third tenant, a cupcake-baking, Lehman Brothers–layoff victim: twentysomething Anthony. As Margot takes to cyberspace to rant about her reversal of fortune in a blog, Gwen reluctantly also turns to the web in an effort to get back into a dating game that has changed dramatically in the 30-plus years she’s been out of circulation. Loosely inspired by events in the author’s own life (I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays) popular comedic novelist Lipman’s (The Family Man, 2009) latest evokes the lonely world of the mature, newly single woman with a sweet and comforting touch. --Carol Haggas Two sisters recover from widowhood, divorce, and Bernie Madoff as unexpected roommates in a Manhattan apartment Unexpectedly widowed Gwen-Laura Schmidt is still mourning her husband, Edwin, when her older sister Margot invites her to join forces as roommates in Margot s luxurious Village apartment. For Margot, divorced amid scandal (hint: her husband was a fertility doctor) and then made Ponzi-poor, it s a chance to shake Gwen out of her grief and help make ends meet. To further this effort she enlists a third boarder, the handsome, cupcake-baking Anthony. As the three swap money-making schemes and timid Gwen ventures back out into the dating world, the arrival of Margot s paroled ex in the efficiency apartment downstairs creates not just complications but the chance for all sorts of unexpected forgiveness. A sister story about love, loneliness, and new life in middle age, this is a cracklingly witty, deeply sweet novel from one of our finest comic writers. Her worldview? Her enthusiasm, her effortless wit? Just a few of the reasons we love Elinor Lipman. Boston Globe Since Edwin died, I have lived with my sister Margo in the Batavia, an Art Deco apartment building on beautiful West Tenth Street in Greenwich Village. This arrangement has made a great deal of sense for us both: I lost my husband without warning, and Margot lost her entire life s savings to the Ponzi schemer whose name we dare not speak. Though we call ourselves roommates, we are definitely more than that, something on the order of wartime trenchmates. She refers to me fondly as her boarder ironic, of course because no one confuses a boarding house with an apartment reached via an elevator button marked PH. . . .