Gossip

This novel follows the friendship and support among a group of five women on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is ‘god-sibling’? It is the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It is talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect.” This is a novel about all the ways we talk about one another, the sometimes fine line between showing concern and doing damage, and the difficulty of knowing the true obligations of friendship. The main character, Loviah “Lovie” French owns a small, high-end dress shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Renowned for her taste and discretion, Lovie is the one to whom certain women turn when they need “just the thing” for major life events like baptisms and balls, weddings and funerals, or when they just want to dish in the dressing room. Among the people who depend on Lovie’s confidence are her two best friends since boarding school: Dinah Wainwright and Avis Metcalf. Outspoken and brimming with confidence, Dinah made a name for herself as a columnist covering the doings of New York’s wealthiest and most fabulous. Shy, proper Avis, in many ways Dinah’s opposite, rose to prominence in the art world with her quiet manners, hard work, and precise judgment. Despite the deep affection they both feel for Lovie, they have been more or less allergic to each other since a minor incident decades earlier that has been remembered and resented with what will prove to be unimaginable consequences. Dinah’s favorite son and Avis’s only daughter fall in love and marry, and these uneasy acquaintances become unwillingly bound to each other. On the surface, Nick and Grace are the perfect match, a playful, romantic, buoyant, and beautiful pair. Over the years, as their marital commitment is strained by time and change, career setbacks, reckless choices, the birth of a child, jealousies, and rumors. Secrets surface and friendships alter, having a shattering effect on all their lives. 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. This story is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship, competition, and motherhood that explores the myriad ways we use and abuse “information” about others, be it true, false, or imagined, to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another.