Q&A with Elinor Lipman

 

 

 

Elinor Lipman is the author of the new novel Every Tom, Dick & Harry. Her many other novels include Ms. Demeanor. She lives in Manhattan and in the Hudson Valley.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Every Tom, Dick & Harry?

 

A: As an estate sale regular--by which I mean I check out the few that happen in-season within a 10-mile radius of where I spend weekends.  

 

Owning such a business seemed fraught to me (in real life, but lots of material for a novel). I guessed it had great potential for conflicts with difficult  homeowners, warring children, customers who wanted to barter. And maybe lots of surprises in closets and drawers.

 

Q: How did you create your character Emma?

 

A: One sentence at a time. All I knew was that she was rootless at 32 and reluctant to take the reins of the family business. 

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: One day I wrote that the owner of the bed and breakfast that was a cover for a brothel “didn’t take every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”  I thought, hmmm, that could work. 

 

Q: The writer Stephen McCauley said of the book, “Lipmanland is a world adjacent to our own except that the people there are more charming, the conversations are wittier, and love always prevails....When events are too much to handle in the real world, there are few better breaks than entering this one.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: What do I think of it? I adore every sentence. I love that he was referring to all of my books because he starts with “Over the course of 30 years…” I wouldn’t change a word and I fainted when I first read it. 

Q: Did you need to do much research to write about estate sales?

 

A: I spoke to actual owners of estate-sale companies. I thank them both in the book’s acknowledgments.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A sequel to The Inn at Lake Devine.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: It was fun to make art and art discovery contribute to Emma’s happy ending, and to make the love stories take place in two different generations.  

 

Also, Emma lives in Harrow, Massachusetts, a fictional town that was also the setting of The Way Men Act and the hometown of narrator Jane Morgan in Ms. Demeanor. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Elinor Lipman.