“A gifted storyteller...her characters are intelligent, brave, and witty...human and real.”
—Susan Isaacs, New York Times Book Review
The critically acclaimed author of Good-bye and Amen, Leeway Cottage, and More Than You Know, Beth Gutcheon returns with Gossip, a sharply perceptive and emotionally resonant novel about the power of knowing things about others, the consequences of rumor, and the unexpected price of friendship. A story set among the rich, famous, and well-dressed of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Gossip is a bravura display of this exceptional author’s breathtaking talents, addressing important themes of motherhood, friendship, and fidelity. Every reader who admires the strong, character-driven women’s fiction of Sue Miller, Alice Hoffman, Elizabeth Berg, and Kaye Gibbons should lend an ear to Beth Gutcheon’s Gossip.
The owner of a small high-end dress shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Loviah "Lovie" French is the one to whom certain women turn when they want to dish in the dressing room—including Lovie's two best friends since boarding school, Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf.
Outspoken Dinah made a name for herself as a columnist covering New York's most fabulous; shy, proper Avis rose to prominence in the art world with her quiet manners and hard work. Despite their deep affection for Lovie, they have been allergic to each other for decades, uneasy acquaintances who are unwillingly bound to each other when Dinah's favorite son and Avis's only daughter fall in love. At the center of their orbit is Lovie, who knows everyone's secrets and manages them as wisely as she can. Which is not wisely enough, as things turn out—a fact that will have a shattering effect on all their lives.
"[Gutcheon] writes poignantly, but with a sharp comic edge, about female friendship, the bleakness of fate and the disappointments fo lvoe; and her grasp of the profound connection between clothes and emotion--a theme inexplicably neglected in the moderl novel--recalls Nancy Mitford at her more seriously frivolous."
