Product Description

Pippa seems to have everything in life. But suddenly she finds her world beginning to unravel. Amid the buzzing lawnmowers and suburban coffee mornings, she starts to wonder how she came to be in this place. The answer is a story of wild youth, unexpected encounters, affairs and betrayals, and the dangerous security of marriage. It brilliantly reveals the challenges of modern life – and all the possibilities that it holds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1602 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
"* 'Like Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections without the bitterness, mixed with Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides without the eccentricity, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing read" - Sunday Telegraph * 'Miller is a luminous writer... gazing into these multiple private Pippas is like opening a series of Russian dolls, each intricately wrought, self-contained and self-revealing.' - Olivia Laing, Observer * 'A beautifully layered and subtle novel of identity, with a wonderfully vivid sense of place and character. And it's hesitatingly wise in all sorts of ways, as well as being a deftly constructed page-turner.' - Joseph O'Connor * 'Miller's astute, beautifully nuanced novel explores the unpredictable consequences of choosing to live a safe, but emotionally compromised, life.' - Eithne Farry, Daily Mail * 'Miller writes with a natural poetic flair that's considered and free from affectation.' - Easy Living * 'With beautiful simplicity, Miller unravels Pippa's past and celebrates the stirrings of something new.' - Kerry Fowler, Good Housekeeping Book of the Month * 'Miller's prose is always sharp and visual without being overly descriptive. All of the descriptions, whether of people, places or emotions manage to be both prosaic and evocative... Although it had come to a natural and perfectly timed conclusion, I could happily have read much more about Pippa Lee and her secret lives.' - Aline O'Conner, Irish Sunday Independent"

In her debut novel, the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and wife of actor Daniel Day-Lewis considers a woman's struggle to maintain a sense of self while married to a larger-than-life, ultra-successful man.Fifty-year-old Pippa has spent the last 30 years nurturing her much older husband, esteemed independent publisher Herb Lee, and her beloved twins, law student Ben and news photographer Grace, whose independent spirit Pippa has fostered at an emotional cost to herself. When Herb sells their apartment on Gramercy Park to move to the Marigold Village retirement community in Connecticut, Pippa willingly sacrifices her comfort for his sake, as she always has. She thinks she is adapting to the imposed change of pace until she begins sleepwalking and behaving uncharacteristically while unconscious, even sleep-driving to the nearby convenience store for cigarettes she thought she quit smoking years ago. Cut to Pippa's childhood before she became a stylish yet devoted wife and mother. The only daughter, after four boys, of a small town Episcopalian minister and a mother addicted to Dexedrine, Pippa was sexually precocious and rebellious. Caught as a teen in an affair with a local teacher, she ran away to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Trish, whose lesbian lover introduced Pippa to sado-masochism. For three years, Pippa drifted around the Village bohemian scene. She met Herb through his art-buying second wife Gigi. Herb and Pippa began an intense May-September romance and married after Gigi's suicide. They have been living happily ever since until - cut back to the present - Pippa discovers 80-year-old Herb may not be too old to cheat on her. Miller (stories: Personal Velocity, 2001) has produced the "easy read of quality" that her protagonist's husband Herb claims is publishing gold. (Kirkus Reviews)

FT Magazine
An easy read of quality is exactly how Miller's poignant, funny and wise novel could be described

Daily Mail
Miller's astute, beautifully nuanced novel explores the unpredictable consequences of choosing to live a safe, but emotionally compromised, life.