Lore Segal celebrates with humor and grace the friendships that stand the test of time and the particular eccentricities of aging in Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories. Featuring fictional pieces, some collected from earlier publications, as well as previously unpublished memoir excerpts, Ladies' Lunch begins with nine interconnected dramas starring five sassy New York dames who have met for lunch every other month, for more than 30 years, at one another's well-appointed Manhattan apartments.
Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie possess an enviable air of freedom about them. Appetites may be waning but their senses of humor remain firmly intact. Their spouses are long gone, apart from Bessie's second husband, Colin, whom no one can stand. Professional career women back in their day, the friends cheerfully attend shivas, wakes, and funerals, "the cocktail parties of the old" where they drink martinis and sometimes forget that they are not at an actual party.
In "Around the Corner You Can't See Around," a post-lunch conversation unspools comically in various disjointed directions while Ruth, a former attorney, ponders agenda items for the next lunch. It matters not that each friend is more concerned with her own train of thought, only that they can amicably spend the afternoon laughing in each other's company and sharing memories from the past.
The title story, "Ladies' Lunch," is a delightful example of Segal's quick and clever wit. Here, Lotte rebels against her son Samson's decision to hire a caregiver who gets in Lotte's way despite the spaciousness of her penthouse apartment. When Sam moves her into a nursing home, Lotte's friends hatch an ambitious rescue mission. The friends no longer drive, but this does not stop one of them from buying a getaway car. Miserable without her favorite unhealthy snacks, Lotte tells Farah, a retired physician, "You doctors need to do a study of the correlation between salt-free food and depression."
Now in her 90s, Segal (Shakespeare's Kitchen; Half the Kingdom) is the celebrated author of novels, short stories, and children's books written over the course of six prolific decades. In one of the half dozen pieces in the latter ("Other Stories") part of the collection, "Pneumonia Chronicles," Segal describes in entertaining, tragicomic detail an extended hospital stay during the Covid-19 pandemic and her unlikely friendship with a young male nurse that blossoms over their shared love of Anton Chekhov's short stories. As she marvels at this unexpected bonding, Segal's joy underscores a perspective that is the key to graceful, courageous aging and that permeates this entire entertaining collection. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer
Shelf Talker: Lore Segal's witty, entertaining stories set in Manhattan feature five elderly ladies who lunch--and hatch a plan to rescue one of them from a nursing home--plus other astutely rendered selections.
Congratulations to the 
Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People: Avoid Emotional Traps, Stand Up for Your Self, and Transform Your Relationships as an Adult Child of Emotionally Immature Parents