Description

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National Jewish Book Award Finalist

The New Yorker's Best Book of the Year!

"Segal writes with welcome clarity about life’s final years, and if her characters are not always as wise as they think they are, Segal eyes them all with the unsentimental wisdom of a life spent writing wondrous stories and essays, a career spent telling the truth." - Slate

"For almost six decades Segal has quietly produced some of the best fiction and essays in American literature..."—The New York Times

Beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal, at 95-years-old, is a national treasure. Working at the height of her powers, in this story collection she turns her gimlet eye and compassionate humor on aging and life in the slow lane.

From the master of the short short comes a collection of 16 new stories featuring old friends who have loved and lunched together for over 40 years. These erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians offer startling insights into friendship, family and aging.

Can the group organize a visit to one of their number in her new, and detested, assisted living situation? Is this a fabulous party with old friends, or a funeral reception? And does who was sleeping with whom, way back when, still matter?

In story after story, Segal's voice is always hilarious and urbane, heartbreaking and profound, keen and utterly unsentimental, as she tackles aging's affronts.

About the Author

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Lore Segal is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Shakespeare's Kitchen, as well as the novels Half the Kingdom, Lucinella, Other People's Houses, Her First American and the collection The Journal I Did Not Keep. She is the recipient of the American Academy Arts and Letters Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The O'Henry Prize and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize. She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, and numerous other publications. In 2023, Segal was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives and works in New York City.

Praise For…

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National Jewish Book Awards Finalist
The New Yorker's Best Book of the Year!
A Slate Best Book of the Year!
The New Yorker's Best Books We've Read This Week
Shelf Awareness Best Books We've Read This Week
Literary Hub Books To Round Out This September
A Barnes & Noble Best Books of 2023
A Barnes & Noble Our Monthly Pick

"Myserious, mesmerizing ..."  —The New York Times

"Segal writes with welcome clarity about life’s final years, and if her characters are not always as wise as they think they are, Segal eyes them all with the unsentimental wisdom of a life spent writing wondrous stories and essays, a career spent telling the truth." - Slate

"Reading Ladies’ Lunch, one can only be thankful that Segal has not 'thrown away' her people or her memories, which have given us this indispensable road map of our final journey." — Ann Levin, The Forward

"Gemlike stories from a master of the form." — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review

"Segal brings her rapier wit to this intelligent collection...Segal’s unfailing ear and light comedic touch belie the momentous, existential nature of her subject matter. This is funny and moving in equal measure." —Publishers Weekly

"Lore Segal celebrates with humor and grace the friendships that stand the test of time and the particular eccentricities of aging...Ladies' Lunch, is a delightful example of Segal's quick and clever wit."—Shelf Awareness

"These witty, sparky tales of ninetysomething Manhattanite ladies who lunch capture the everyday stuff of ageing." —The Times

"We are lucky to have this piercing collection..."—Times Literary Supplement

Praise for Lore Segal...

"For almost six decades Segal has quietly produced some of the best fiction and essays in American literature..."—The New York Times

"Segal is a monumental writer, one of the finest of her generation..."—Kirkus Reviews

"Lore Segal has the sharp analytic eye of a born writer" — New York Times Book Review

"A marvellous and singular writer’" —Observer

"Segal has the dazzling ability to merge the mundane details of life with the arc of human emotions." — Washington Post

"Segal's ironies are serious, subtle, and profound. Her sentences are subversively shattering while seemingly quizzical and detached."—from American Academy of Arts and Letters' induction citation