University director Jane Mackenzie is dismayed when her injured husband falls for Delia, a beautiful writer who has recently joined the center's staff, a situation that is complicated when Jane develops feelings for Delia's husband. By the author of The Truth About Lorin Jones. 40,000 first printing. Like Lurie's "The War Between the Tates," this is a comedy of adultery with a comedy of academia thrown in. Alan, a professor of architectural history at a college that sounds like Cornell (where Lurie teaches), married Jane because she reminded him of a classical building-"order, harmony, and tradition"-but, when his life is yanked askew by a back injury, he can't stand her orderliness anymore. Enter a femme fatale, in the form of a visiting fellow-a poet, all Pre-Raphaelite hair and vatic utterance. The inevitable happens, and, thanks to Lurie's psychological acuity, so does much that wasn't inevitable. Jane leaves Alan, but she comes by every day, depositing a microwavable meal, to his fury and his relief. (Otherwise, what would he eat?) Alan is the most likable character, but, as in the best comedies, everyone gets justice, and no one escapes it. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker The Miami Herald sums up critical reception best: " Truth and Consequences isn’t art. It isn’t even vintage Lurie. It’s a good copy, but for an author this deliciously sly and nimble, that’s not quite good enough." The Pulitzer Prize–winning author seems to be repeating herself here, and not always in a fresh or exciting way. Worse, a few critics accuse her of not caring about her central couple, making it doubly hard for readers to care who ends up with whom. Still, you can’t miss flashes of Lurie’s brilliance. And a case could be made for her spot-on skewering of the tension between artistic egos and their bossy caregivers. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. Pulitzer Prize winner Lurie is a poison-pen satirist who particularly enjoys skewering academics and writers. In this tightly wound, fairy-tale parody about the ruthless self-regard of creative people and the revenge of the good and steadfast, Lurie toys with the conventions of romance. Jane is not plain, but she is self-effacing now that Alan, her once charming architectural historian husband, has become a cranky invalid because of a painful back injury. Jane directs his bucolic college's humanities center, where Alan now has a fellowship and an office, along with the best-selling writer, Delia Delaney. Beautiful and sexily outfitted, Delia is plagued with migraines and waited on by her hunky, low-key husband, Henry. But this allegedly helpless vamp is a true steel magnolia who has accepted pain as the price for art, a bargain she encourages Alan to embrace, along with her creamy self. Meanwhile, Jane and Henry discover a more aboveboard love. Lurie is wickedly entertaining as she mocks everything from the ego of the artist to the bossiness of the meek, and everyone lives happily ever after. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Alison Lurie is the author of many novels, including The War Between the Tates, The Truth About Lorin Jones (winner of the Prix Femina Étranger), Foreign Affairs (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and The Last Resort. Her most recent book was Boys and Girls Forever: Children’s Classics from Cinderella to Harry Potter. She teaches writing, folklore, and literature at Cornell University and divides her time between Ithaca, New York, and Key West, Florida. Alison Lurie teaches writing, folklore, and literature at Cornell University. "The best thing you can do, always, is tell the truth and take the consequences." That's what Alan MacKenzie's father used to tell him, but now that Alan is in his early fifties and carrying on an affair with "the famous writer Delia Delaney, the author of Womenfaith (spiritual essays), Dreamworks (poetry), and Moon Tales (modern fairy stories)," he isn't giving his father's advice the time of day. He's been married to pert, perky Jane for 16 years, but the bloom fell off that rose a while back, certainly during the 16 months he's been wracked by debilitating back pain. Delia offers him something new and exciting and even makes him feel better, so with all that coming his way, what's a lie or two between husband and wife? Of course, Jane is lying, too, and so is Delia, and so is Henry Hull, her lover (sort of) and companion. They're all living in what the nonpareil songwriter/singer/pianist Dave Frishberg calls "a blizzard of lies," or, as Jane imagines it, "a pit of lies." By this point, she's escaped the house she and Alan share not far from the campus of Corinth (read: Cornell) University and fled to her parents' house. The pit just gets deeper and deeper: "She would have to drive to her house and collect her makeup and her hairbrush, which would mean seeing Alan again and trying not to get into another conversation full of lies, his lies of fact and her lies of o