‘These ladies are perfect company’ The Times
‘Lore Segal has the sharp analytic eye of a born writer’ The New York Times Book Review
‘There is humour even in the most heart-breaking of her stories’ Telegraph
Five close friends in their 90s meet – as they have for decades – for their monthly ‘ladies lunch’, to puzzle, and laugh at, the enigmas and affronts of ageing. When one of their number is placed unhappily in a home the others conspire to spring her.
Lore Segal’s witty, yet poignant, short story, Ladies’ Lunch, appeared in the New Yorker in 2017, when she herself turned ninety. It was followed by four New Yorker sequels. For this sparkling collection, Segal returns to her group of erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians in Upper Manhattan offering startling insights into friendship and mortality.
In the book’s Other Stories, Segal includes tales from her acclaimed and prizewinning oeuvre to illuminate the hinterland of her characters – one of whom, like her, was a Kindertransport refugee.
Beautifully crafted and profound, these stories distil the spirit of one of America’s great authors to show us what a long life might bring.
A propos de l’auteur
Lore Segal (1928- 2024) was born in Vienna and at the age of ten was evacuated to London on the Kindertransport. She settled in New York in 1951 and began writing for the New Yorker, remaining a regular contributor for over sixty three years.The author of five novels and story collections, Segal has won an American Academy Award (for Her First American), and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (for An Absence of Cousins, under its original title Shakespeare’s Kitchen) plus numerous prizes for her short stories, including the O.Henry Award (twice).Sort of Books also publish Segal’s novella, Ladies’ Lunch (2023), and republished her 1964 novel Other People’s Houses about her time in Britain as a child refugee.