Ladies Lunch - Lore Segal

Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories by Lore Segal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The late Lore Segal's brilliant collection Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories is gloriously relatable if you're past sixty and/or have ever known a New Yorker, witty throughout, particularly from these five women who have been meeting every other month for the last thirty years. The titular story is worthy of laughter and tears as the women undergo changes in life and health and abilities. The characters are treasures and they even try meeting on zoom during COVID.

At the restaurant, Hope "opened the door into the ladies' room and saw, in the mirror behind the basins, that her hair was coming out of its pins. She took the pins out and stood gazing a the crone with the grey, shoulder-length hair girlishly loosened. Hope saw what Diane Arbus might have seen. She gazed, appalled, and being appalled pricked her interest. 'I've got an agenda: the Arbus factor in old age.' Hope looked forward to saying to jack the next time it would be convenient for Jeremy and Nora to arrange lunch for them at the Café Provence (chosen because it had bathrooms on the street floor)."

Also poignant is the story "Making Good" about a group of Jews meeting visiting Austrians in a "Bridge Building Workshop" to face off against anti-Semitism and Holocaust anger in the windowless basement meeting room under Rabbi Samuel Rosen's reform synagogue."


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