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Ladies’ Lunch: And Other Stories
"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? Will they finally tease out who was sleeping with whom, way back when?
In story after story, Segal's voice is always hilarious and urbane, heartbreaking and profound, keen and utterly unsentimental, as she tackles life's afronts.
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? Will they finally tease out who was sleeping with whom, way back when?
In story after story, Segal's voice is always hilarious and urbane, heartbreaking and profound, keen and utterly unsentimental, as she tackles life's afronts.
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First published February 20, 2017
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About the author
Lore Segal
39 books138 followersLore Vailer Segal was an Austrian-American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
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December 2, 2023
“We need a moral: let us be patient with each other and with ourselves, and suffer the diverse paces at which we move through one another’s time and space.”
Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories by Lore Segal revolves around a group of friends in their 80s and 90s. While many of the stories have been previously published throughout the author’s illustrious career, a few are relatively newer. Through the course of ten of the sixteen short stories, we follow Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie, friends for over four decades who have a lifetime of memories they share over their luncheons, as they also confront the challenges of aging, loneliness, loss of friends and family, the COVID lockdown and much more. Though the ladies’ luncheons and their discussions form the larger part of the collection, we also get a handful of “other” stories ranging from themes of childhood memories, the Holocaust, age related ailments, and nostalgia.
Insightful, heartfelt and bittersweet, I enjoyed the author’s sharp writing, sparse prose (occasionally, a tad abrupt) and realistic characters. The tone of these stories does tend toward sad and melancholic, but the author injects a steady dose of witty observation to balance the sadness. My rating reflects my opinion of the collection as a whole. While some stories were more impactful than others, overall, I found this collection to be a thought-provoking read. My favorites among the stories were The Arbus Factor, Dandelion, Making Good and Ladies' Zoom.
Many thanks to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this book. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This book was published on September 26, 2023.
Connect with me! ✏ Instagram ✏ My Blog ✏ The StoryGraph
Ladies' Lunch and Other Stories by Lore Segal revolves around a group of friends in their 80s and 90s. While many of the stories have been previously published throughout the author’s illustrious career, a few are relatively newer. Through the course of ten of the sixteen short stories, we follow Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie, friends for over four decades who have a lifetime of memories they share over their luncheons, as they also confront the challenges of aging, loneliness, loss of friends and family, the COVID lockdown and much more. Though the ladies’ luncheons and their discussions form the larger part of the collection, we also get a handful of “other” stories ranging from themes of childhood memories, the Holocaust, age related ailments, and nostalgia.
Insightful, heartfelt and bittersweet, I enjoyed the author’s sharp writing, sparse prose (occasionally, a tad abrupt) and realistic characters. The tone of these stories does tend toward sad and melancholic, but the author injects a steady dose of witty observation to balance the sadness. My rating reflects my opinion of the collection as a whole. While some stories were more impactful than others, overall, I found this collection to be a thought-provoking read. My favorites among the stories were The Arbus Factor, Dandelion, Making Good and Ladies' Zoom.
Many thanks to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this book. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This book was published on September 26, 2023.
Connect with me! ✏ Instagram ✏ My Blog ✏ The StoryGraph
January 12, 2025
As I read through my friends’ year end wraps, I notice that many of them hone in on themes in their reading throughout the year. I am too much of a mood reader to stick to a particular theme over the course of my reading, but I have noticed that on occasion a theme follows me from one book to another even when I least expect it. The last book I read took me back to memories of my grandma. I noted to a friend in the comments that I miss her but don’t regret time I didn’t spend later on because she lived a full life. When I finish a reading month or year I try not to leave any loose ends. Yesterday I happened to read a review for a book of short stories by iconic New Yorker writer Lore Segal. While these stories appeared in other publications, mainly the New Yorker, this is her first time compiling her brilliant stories into book form. One detail that I am omitting: Segal at the time of publication was ninety two years old. She wrote about meeting her friends of five decades for lunch on a weekly and then monthly basis. Here, Segal made me think of my grandma and how she would meet friends for lunch before playing bridge. I decided to see what older ladies think about when they go out for lunch.
The first nine stories in this slim volume center around friends meeting for lunch. “Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, Bessie are long time New Yorkers; their origins in California, County Mayo, Tehran, Vienna and the Bronx might have grounded them but does not these days often surface.” Over the course of their lives, these ladies encountered one another and formed friendships. As they reached their ninth decades as long as they remained healthy, the ladies met monthly for lunch. Sometimes they were also joined by Ilka and Hope. These ladies had lifetimes of memories and just wanted to talk. These ladies appear to be New York institutions and loved parties in their youth. Bessie and Lotte, who is Lore’s alter ego, even traveled with their husbands as a foursome. The other friends were all in each other’s inner circles. Today the main parties where these women encounter each other besides the lunches are shivas. More friends passing on at their age than celebrating milestones. These women think of death and read obituaries to see if anyone they knew died. My other grandma used to do this so it is not as dark as one thinks. Thankfully, these women still have each other and are still able to meet for lunch. They will continue to do so until they lose their faculties.
I would rather read about older generations reminiscing about life than about people my age going through midlife crises. We have much to learn from our elders. Few books are written from the point of view of older people. They are dismissed as feeble minded and with one foot on the other side. Just because a person is old does not necessitate them being slow mentally or physically, and, yet, society does not take the elderly into account, shunting them aside into senior living. I love reading Miss Marple mysteries because as an older person she still has her wits and uses them to outsmart the police. A book I read at this time of year a few years ago is Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. Lillian wandered the streets of Manhattan on New Years Eve and reminisced of a life well spent. She did not have many friends at her age and walked on her own. Ladies Lunch shows women in the same age bracket. They have life issues and should be valued. With few friends left, they avail the ones that they have. I thought it was touching when Lotte’s sons moved her into an assisted living facility and her friends devised a means of getting her out. They relied on grandchildren to drive them because none of these ladies still had a valid drivers license; yet, they valued friendship and wanted to visit their friend and make sure that she was doing well. This to me is life and more touching than the average novel that I will read, probably why I primarily read nonfiction.
The second half of the book includes six other stories that should not be overlooked. The centerpiece of these was Making Good when a group of Holocaust survivors met with a group of Viennese in a bridges building program. The protagonist in this story is a former concert pianist named Margot Groszbart. From what I could piece together she sent her daughter to England in the kindertransport program and reconnected with her after the war. It could be my own imagination formulating a new storyline but that is the persona I decided upon Margot Groszbart. In the building bridges program she is paired with Greta Mindel, a younger woman the same age as her daughter. Greta Mindel is a music enthusiast and her mother had taken her to hear Groszbart before the war. Groszbart grows fond of Greta Mindel and desires forgiveness, or at least empathy. This I think had been the point of the program. Most of the survivors have years of guilt and want nothing to do with the younger Austrians. The facilitator desires that the two groups make inroads, but, as this is the oldest story in the collection, and because I had been unfamiliar with Lore Segal’s life, I do not know how this program resolves itself. I do know that in recent years both Germany and Austria have sent younger people to intern in Holocaust museums as a civil service assignment. Perhaps the Austrians in this group will be inspired to do so after participating in the bridges building program. One can only hope.
Segal ends things the way she starts, with ladies’ zoom. Even after the pandemic the older friends can still meet almost daily on the computer without having to drive. They can maintain the friendships that they have had for decades without being reliant on younger generations. Lore Segal wrote for the New Yorker for six decades. She wrote hundreds if not thousands of short stories that focused around women as they aged. Segal passed away two months ago at the ripe old age of ninety four. One of the stories in the collection grapples with Lotte/Lore’s death and how her friends can move forward at their age. I had never heard of Lore Segal before encountering an essay about this book a few days ago. She was as much of a New York institution as Helene Hanff, and the women probably would have been great friends. Friendships among women as they navigate life. That is the essence of what the journey called life is all about. I miss my grandparents’ generation, a generation where friends or couples would meet for a leisurely lunch and told stories of life well lived. More stories should be written from the point of view of older citizens, who have the knowledge of life to impart to the rest of us before it is too late. This gem is my last read of 2024. I hope that years from now I have the privilege to meet at a ladies’ lunch.
4 stars
The first nine stories in this slim volume center around friends meeting for lunch. “Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, Bessie are long time New Yorkers; their origins in California, County Mayo, Tehran, Vienna and the Bronx might have grounded them but does not these days often surface.” Over the course of their lives, these ladies encountered one another and formed friendships. As they reached their ninth decades as long as they remained healthy, the ladies met monthly for lunch. Sometimes they were also joined by Ilka and Hope. These ladies had lifetimes of memories and just wanted to talk. These ladies appear to be New York institutions and loved parties in their youth. Bessie and Lotte, who is Lore’s alter ego, even traveled with their husbands as a foursome. The other friends were all in each other’s inner circles. Today the main parties where these women encounter each other besides the lunches are shivas. More friends passing on at their age than celebrating milestones. These women think of death and read obituaries to see if anyone they knew died. My other grandma used to do this so it is not as dark as one thinks. Thankfully, these women still have each other and are still able to meet for lunch. They will continue to do so until they lose their faculties.
I would rather read about older generations reminiscing about life than about people my age going through midlife crises. We have much to learn from our elders. Few books are written from the point of view of older people. They are dismissed as feeble minded and with one foot on the other side. Just because a person is old does not necessitate them being slow mentally or physically, and, yet, society does not take the elderly into account, shunting them aside into senior living. I love reading Miss Marple mysteries because as an older person she still has her wits and uses them to outsmart the police. A book I read at this time of year a few years ago is Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk. Lillian wandered the streets of Manhattan on New Years Eve and reminisced of a life well spent. She did not have many friends at her age and walked on her own. Ladies Lunch shows women in the same age bracket. They have life issues and should be valued. With few friends left, they avail the ones that they have. I thought it was touching when Lotte’s sons moved her into an assisted living facility and her friends devised a means of getting her out. They relied on grandchildren to drive them because none of these ladies still had a valid drivers license; yet, they valued friendship and wanted to visit their friend and make sure that she was doing well. This to me is life and more touching than the average novel that I will read, probably why I primarily read nonfiction.
The second half of the book includes six other stories that should not be overlooked. The centerpiece of these was Making Good when a group of Holocaust survivors met with a group of Viennese in a bridges building program. The protagonist in this story is a former concert pianist named Margot Groszbart. From what I could piece together she sent her daughter to England in the kindertransport program and reconnected with her after the war. It could be my own imagination formulating a new storyline but that is the persona I decided upon Margot Groszbart. In the building bridges program she is paired with Greta Mindel, a younger woman the same age as her daughter. Greta Mindel is a music enthusiast and her mother had taken her to hear Groszbart before the war. Groszbart grows fond of Greta Mindel and desires forgiveness, or at least empathy. This I think had been the point of the program. Most of the survivors have years of guilt and want nothing to do with the younger Austrians. The facilitator desires that the two groups make inroads, but, as this is the oldest story in the collection, and because I had been unfamiliar with Lore Segal’s life, I do not know how this program resolves itself. I do know that in recent years both Germany and Austria have sent younger people to intern in Holocaust museums as a civil service assignment. Perhaps the Austrians in this group will be inspired to do so after participating in the bridges building program. One can only hope.
Segal ends things the way she starts, with ladies’ zoom. Even after the pandemic the older friends can still meet almost daily on the computer without having to drive. They can maintain the friendships that they have had for decades without being reliant on younger generations. Lore Segal wrote for the New Yorker for six decades. She wrote hundreds if not thousands of short stories that focused around women as they aged. Segal passed away two months ago at the ripe old age of ninety four. One of the stories in the collection grapples with Lotte/Lore’s death and how her friends can move forward at their age. I had never heard of Lore Segal before encountering an essay about this book a few days ago. She was as much of a New York institution as Helene Hanff, and the women probably would have been great friends. Friendships among women as they navigate life. That is the essence of what the journey called life is all about. I miss my grandparents’ generation, a generation where friends or couples would meet for a leisurely lunch and told stories of life well lived. More stories should be written from the point of view of older citizens, who have the knowledge of life to impart to the rest of us before it is too late. This gem is my last read of 2024. I hope that years from now I have the privilege to meet at a ladies’ lunch.
4 stars
October 22, 2023
I truly didn’t get this one. I couldn’t connect with the characters or what was going on. It was a quick read, and I was glad to be done with it. Ugh, I really wanted to like it too.
December 17, 2025
A perfect read for someone closing in on 70 myself.
I relate to these stories.
I relate to the struggle to find words, the struggles to even make a standing lunch date with old friends. I relate to the loss of a friendship and wonder what happened. I relate to the death of friends. I relate even to the long struggle with inanimate objects, like bedroom curtains that let in too much light. I relate to how once simple tasks can overwhelm an old lady.
I relate to the many changes in one's aging perspective, and abilities.
It took a little while for me to warm up to Lore's style. Her stories sometimes didn't seem to "go" anywhere. But reading on, I could see that when taken as a whole they cover a lot of living, a lot of aging, and much traversing of a mundane life. She also can be very funny.
In all the semi-linked short stories, though, there is one that was a stunning standout, "Dandelion," told by a woman remembering when she went on a mountain hike with her father. (It felt surely autobiographical.) The day was just a short time before she was sent as 9-10 year old child out of Austria while her parents remained and one assumes perished under the Third Reich. It's a painful memory for her in many ways, not just because it began as a beautiful day, the last summer with her parents but because the day also included intense childish embarrassment she felt on behalf of her father. He was cheerful, trying to be socialize with a group of robust blonde "Aryan" young people but only succeeded in being laughable to them. The story was just beautifully written. It first appeared in 2019's The New Yorker. No wonder she had such an iconic reputation. Even in her 70s, 80s, and up until her 90s she was writing and writing about important things. She died at 96, a year after this collection was published.
This book is a keeper. I plan to read it again, and more Segal's work, too. I need to live long enough to do that.
I relate to these stories.
I relate to the struggle to find words, the struggles to even make a standing lunch date with old friends. I relate to the loss of a friendship and wonder what happened. I relate to the death of friends. I relate even to the long struggle with inanimate objects, like bedroom curtains that let in too much light. I relate to how once simple tasks can overwhelm an old lady.
I relate to the many changes in one's aging perspective, and abilities.
It took a little while for me to warm up to Lore's style. Her stories sometimes didn't seem to "go" anywhere. But reading on, I could see that when taken as a whole they cover a lot of living, a lot of aging, and much traversing of a mundane life. She also can be very funny.
In all the semi-linked short stories, though, there is one that was a stunning standout, "Dandelion," told by a woman remembering when she went on a mountain hike with her father. (It felt surely autobiographical.) The day was just a short time before she was sent as 9-10 year old child out of Austria while her parents remained and one assumes perished under the Third Reich. It's a painful memory for her in many ways, not just because it began as a beautiful day, the last summer with her parents but because the day also included intense childish embarrassment she felt on behalf of her father. He was cheerful, trying to be socialize with a group of robust blonde "Aryan" young people but only succeeded in being laughable to them. The story was just beautifully written. It first appeared in 2019's The New Yorker. No wonder she had such an iconic reputation. Even in her 70s, 80s, and up until her 90s she was writing and writing about important things. She died at 96, a year after this collection was published.
This book is a keeper. I plan to read it again, and more Segal's work, too. I need to live long enough to do that.
March 4, 2017
“Ladies’ lunch” is pronounced in quotation marks. The five women have grown old coming together, every other month or so for the last thirty or more years, around one another’s table.
I really loved this New Yorker short about a group of elderly women who find their get-togethers interrupted by time and illness. Though it's a rather bittersweet read, the author keeps a sense of humor about her story. Her main character, Lotte, is a delight.
I really loved this New Yorker short about a group of elderly women who find their get-togethers interrupted by time and illness. Though it's a rather bittersweet read, the author keeps a sense of humor about her story. Her main character, Lotte, is a delight.
September 27, 2024
The first section contains nine linked stories about a group of five elderly female friends. Bessie jokes that “wakes and funerals are the cocktail parties of the old,” and Ruth indeed mistakes a shivah for a party and meets a potential beau who never quite successfully invites her on a date. One of their members leaves the City for a nursing home; “Sans Teeth, Sans Taste” is a good example of the morbid sense of humour. A few unrelated stories draw on Segal’s experience being evacuated from Vienna to London by Kindertransport; “Pneumonia Chronicles” is one of several autobiographical essays that bring events right up to the Covid era – closing with the bonus story “Ladies’ Zoom.” The ladies’ stories are quite amusing, but the book as a whole feels like an assortment of minor scraps; it was published when Segal, a New Yorker contributor, was 95.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
July 2, 2023
It's great that the protagonists are old women. Not just mature women or elderly women but properly old: over 80 and over 90, and in the course of the book, some of them do die. These are short stories, and it's the ladies who lunch who are primarily the old ones. Other short stories, though, also include old people, and the author herself was (is) over ninety when she wrote these, half of them during lockdown. Her author photo is simply fabulous, with her big round black-framed spectacles and her shock of white hair and her wise witty face.
The lunching ladies have age-typical concerns. I liked reading their relationship to their children: not the dealing with parental issues of young authors nor the parenting stories of middle-aged authors but the stories of women who are exasperated by their grown-up and themselves quite old offspring who decide things for them and move them into homes or bother them in other ways. What resonance to my own experiences with my old mother. They also all struggle with various ailments, illnesses, loss of mobility, loss of sight. In short, old age's inevitabilities. I got somewhat confused among all the different persons and names.
The ladies who lunch take up half the book. The other short stories are:
Dandelion. The narrator remembers an outing into the Austrian Alps during the 1930s pre-Anschluß when she was a little girl. A little Jewish girl, it needs to be added, which tinges this story with foreboding and melancholy.
Making Good. A hard-hitting story about a rabbi and a vicar's attempt at reconciliation. They bring two groups of people together, old Jews in New York City and younger non-Jewish Austrians.
Divorce. Four pages about ending a marriage and having a long life and then remembering.
Pneumonia Chronicles. This starts with the sentence: "My pre-existing condition was being ninety-two years old, and by taking every care to isolate me from Covid 19, my anxious children had isolated me from themselves and could not know that I had stopped eating."
Bedroom Lesson. Just a little musing about curtains.
Relative Time. A mother-and-daughter moment, written with the sharp wit and warmth that is in all these stories.
Ladies' Zoom. This revisits the ladies who lunch during lockdown and it is hilarious (and also a bit sad). "We have forty minutes, and another forty minutes if I can figure out how to work it."
The cover illustration by Adrian Tomine is very nice.
I picked this up in my brick-and-mortar Waterstone's, knowing nothing about it.
The lunching ladies have age-typical concerns. I liked reading their relationship to their children: not the dealing with parental issues of young authors nor the parenting stories of middle-aged authors but the stories of women who are exasperated by their grown-up and themselves quite old offspring who decide things for them and move them into homes or bother them in other ways. What resonance to my own experiences with my old mother. They also all struggle with various ailments, illnesses, loss of mobility, loss of sight. In short, old age's inevitabilities. I got somewhat confused among all the different persons and names.
The ladies who lunch take up half the book. The other short stories are:
Dandelion. The narrator remembers an outing into the Austrian Alps during the 1930s pre-Anschluß when she was a little girl. A little Jewish girl, it needs to be added, which tinges this story with foreboding and melancholy.
Making Good. A hard-hitting story about a rabbi and a vicar's attempt at reconciliation. They bring two groups of people together, old Jews in New York City and younger non-Jewish Austrians.
Divorce. Four pages about ending a marriage and having a long life and then remembering.
Pneumonia Chronicles. This starts with the sentence: "My pre-existing condition was being ninety-two years old, and by taking every care to isolate me from Covid 19, my anxious children had isolated me from themselves and could not know that I had stopped eating."
Bedroom Lesson. Just a little musing about curtains.
Relative Time. A mother-and-daughter moment, written with the sharp wit and warmth that is in all these stories.
Ladies' Zoom. This revisits the ladies who lunch during lockdown and it is hilarious (and also a bit sad). "We have forty minutes, and another forty minutes if I can figure out how to work it."
The cover illustration by Adrian Tomine is very nice.
I picked this up in my brick-and-mortar Waterstone's, knowing nothing about it.
March 31, 2023
I adored this book. Touching, funny, understated. The lives of 80s-something women living in New York. One line made me cry on a train on my way into work and I had to fix my makeup when I got in. I'm not sure why it resonated so much but I thought it was perfect.
December 7, 2023
Yeah I didn’t like this. The stories were jumbled and hard to understand. Maybe I was missing something? But I really didn’t care for this.
1.5 stars
1.5 stars
January 27, 2024
"Dead or alive, it turns out one cannot throw people away"
3.5/5
3.5/5
October 28, 2025
I picked this up out of a desire to experience the author's work and read something positive on the foibles of aging. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. My favorite story was Making Good, and I found the ending so profound and powerful.
So glad I read this!
So glad I read this!
November 27, 2023
Pulitzer Prize finalist, and beloved New York writer, Lore Segal pens a short story collection about five female friends who have been lunching together for over forty years. As they enter their ninth decade of life, they find that things that were important in their youth don't matter so much anymore. They limit their talk on aches and pains and try to focus on friendship, family, the future, and of course aging. Over the course of sixteen stories listeners are treated to humor, heartbreak, resourcefulness, and grim determination as these women try to avoid assisted living, figure out how to travel, and brainstorm ways to keep the whole gang together. Ladies' Lunch is narrated by Callie Beaulieu, who effuses the ladies' advanced ages and voices with wisdom, humor, and grace. Segal brilliantly showcases both incredible sharpness and wisdom in characters that sometimes forget names and misplace medications; with a perspective that younger writers can't easily imitate. Some stories shine much more than others, but seniors especially will relate and identify with the struggles of aging gracefully.
March 18, 2024
Most of the stories revolve around a group of women with with forty years of friendship, for which I quite envied them. They contend with old age, Zoom meetings, and death. There is humor tempered by the reality of aging. A delightful read.
October 29, 2023
Didn’t love it. Couldn’t connect with the characters or really understand what was going on.
Cute but 1 ⭐️
Cute but 1 ⭐️
October 1, 2023
As with all short stories, some you love, some you don’t. Some were very poignant, one was particularly funny, some just didn’t hit home.
October 21, 2023
Lore Segal, writer for The New Yorker, was 95 when she released this collection of short stories, featuring a group of women in their 80’s and 90’s who have known each other for years. These women are sharp and witty - and experiencing all that comes with making into their 9th decade. As with most short story collections, some work better than others, but I did really enjoy getting to know these women and getting a glimpse into their luncheons, their attempts to avoid assisted living, their experience being hospitalized during Covid, and more. Given that much of what I read features characters under 40, I liked exploring different perspectives and priorities.
November 19, 2023
NYT says Lore Segal has been putting out some of the best short stories in America for her whole life—and that’s a long time, seeing as she published this most recent collection at 95! Occasionally when speaking of an elderly person we use language like “they’re still sharp as a tack!” Perhaps we take for granted the wisdom sometimes delivered with a lower tempo than we’re used to when all we celebrate is maintenance of mental velocity. Segal displays both incredible sharpness and that wisdom through characters that may be forgetting names and misplacing medications, but have perspective a younger writer couldn’t easily imitate.
In this, like most story collections, some fell flat and others were downright lovely. I recommend “How Lotte Lost Bessie,” “Relative Time,” and “Ladies’ Zoom.”
In this, like most story collections, some fell flat and others were downright lovely. I recommend “How Lotte Lost Bessie,” “Relative Time,” and “Ladies’ Zoom.”
August 12, 2023
as with most short story collections, i have the tendency to go with three stars due to my mixed feelings on the work.
i was fascinated by the stories about old age and the matter of fact nature used to discuss the concept of death, but alongside that came topics that didn’t click with me.
i was fascinated by the stories about old age and the matter of fact nature used to discuss the concept of death, but alongside that came topics that didn’t click with me.
November 13, 2023
Thought I would get through this in a day. Instead it was 2 months of pain.
December 3, 2023
Wasn't what I thought it would be
June 30, 2025
Lore Segal certainly keeps it real. I think that’s what appeals to me in her writing. In an interview regarding, “Stories About Us”, her latest story published in The New Yorker, September 29, 2024, she said, “I am serious and funny. I don’t know how to be serious without being funny.”
I love reading about these ladies. The real life ladies claim the stories are not about their actual happenings but based on Lore Segal’s experiences. Her editor mentions you can see pieces of her in each lady.
I am fortunate to have a wonderful Ladies’ Lunch group. We started meeting monthly years ago and now they keep my place as I travel so when I return it’s like I didn’t miss a beat. These stories are fun for me, as I see us in them as we grow older.
Their wise ritual, followed each time they met, was allowing 20 minutes to complain how badly the world was treating them before moving to general topics. Later they used the rule to talk about their aches and pains. Sounds like a good plan.
Very grateful for the opportunity to read this book. As soon as I brought it home, I couldn’t resist opening it and immediately started reading, despite many books ahead of it on the TBR pile.
I love reading about these ladies. The real life ladies claim the stories are not about their actual happenings but based on Lore Segal’s experiences. Her editor mentions you can see pieces of her in each lady.
I am fortunate to have a wonderful Ladies’ Lunch group. We started meeting monthly years ago and now they keep my place as I travel so when I return it’s like I didn’t miss a beat. These stories are fun for me, as I see us in them as we grow older.
Their wise ritual, followed each time they met, was allowing 20 minutes to complain how badly the world was treating them before moving to general topics. Later they used the rule to talk about their aches and pains. Sounds like a good plan.
Very grateful for the opportunity to read this book. As soon as I brought it home, I couldn’t resist opening it and immediately started reading, despite many books ahead of it on the TBR pile.
March 9, 2024
The end of the “Ladies Lunch” story took a turn at the end and I surprising loved the book!!!
Other stories were fun and paired well with the titular story. Unique perspective of the older women, something I don’t see as often but tend to adore.
Thanks lily <3
Other stories were fun and paired well with the titular story. Unique perspective of the older women, something I don’t see as often but tend to adore.
Thanks lily <3
August 12, 2024
A funny book about old lady drama 😊
December 26, 2024
i don’t generally think about what it will be like to be 90
September 19, 2023
Sorry! I forgot to post this #bookreview, which I put up on Sunday. My bad! http://tcl-bookreviews.com/2023/09/17...
February 1, 2024
One of the sentences in the book goes something like « I stood in wet grass and waited for nothing » that’s what it felt reading this book. I kept wondering why is this person writing? Why is this published? The stories read like they are about nothing that go nowhere. The plus of this book is that it can serve as an encouragement for the most unsure wannabe writers, if this got published then anyone can write absolutely anything and get published.
Read
October 13, 20231/3 of the way through I quit. Bored. Over my head.
March 20, 2024
(really a 3.5-3.75) “let us be patient with each other and with ourselves, and suffer the diverse paces at which we move through one another’s time and space.” a lovely collection of short stories
August 1, 2025
This book is in two sections so I’ll talk about them separately.
Ladies’ Lunch section:
2, 3, 5, and 8 were the most compelling of the 9 segments. 2 does a good job of foreshadowing Lotte’s declining condition, 3 is a great exploration of Lotte and Bessie’s friendship, 5 is a fascinating look into Bridget and Ilka’s past during WWII, and 8 is a continuation exploring the main cast of women (Ruth, Farah, Bridget, Lotte, and Bessie), and their shared goal in this story adds an interesting lens to their relationship as a group.
Overall, a few of these stories employ different formatting and writing styles, which I usually enjoy but here it felt a bit clunky since the changes weren’t explained. I know most of these stories appeared in the New Yorker as short stories, so I’m wondering if that’s why the stories sometimes lack cohesion.
Other Stories section:
Dandelion and Making Good were easily the best stories in this collection, though Pneumonia Chronicles is good too. Dandelion follows a pre-WWII memory of the author and her father, while Making Good (the best story of the collection) follows a fictional cast, half of them or their families having been on the German side and half of them having been Jewish during WWII and being part of a “Bridge Circle” where they try to make amends as best as they can.
Dandelion was a really touching depiction of one of the author’s best memories, and Making Good handles this topic with a lot of welcomed nuance. Lore Segal herself is a Jewish Austrian who fled during WWII so it was interesting to see her write about this subject.
Pneumonia Chronicles was also interesting, following an almost current Lore Segal’s stay at a hospital. Her reflections on her roommates and experiences were fascinating.
Although the other stories weren’t nearly as memorable, it was interesting to see what other short stories Segal has written.
Though because the collection as a whole is so hit-or-miss, I’m giving it three stars.
Ladies’ Lunch section:
2, 3, 5, and 8 were the most compelling of the 9 segments. 2 does a good job of foreshadowing Lotte’s declining condition, 3 is a great exploration of Lotte and Bessie’s friendship, 5 is a fascinating look into Bridget and Ilka’s past during WWII, and 8 is a continuation exploring the main cast of women (Ruth, Farah, Bridget, Lotte, and Bessie), and their shared goal in this story adds an interesting lens to their relationship as a group.
Overall, a few of these stories employ different formatting and writing styles, which I usually enjoy but here it felt a bit clunky since the changes weren’t explained. I know most of these stories appeared in the New Yorker as short stories, so I’m wondering if that’s why the stories sometimes lack cohesion.
Other Stories section:
Dandelion and Making Good were easily the best stories in this collection, though Pneumonia Chronicles is good too. Dandelion follows a pre-WWII memory of the author and her father, while Making Good (the best story of the collection) follows a fictional cast, half of them or their families having been on the German side and half of them having been Jewish during WWII and being part of a “Bridge Circle” where they try to make amends as best as they can.
Dandelion was a really touching depiction of one of the author’s best memories, and Making Good handles this topic with a lot of welcomed nuance. Lore Segal herself is a Jewish Austrian who fled during WWII so it was interesting to see her write about this subject.
Pneumonia Chronicles was also interesting, following an almost current Lore Segal’s stay at a hospital. Her reflections on her roommates and experiences were fascinating.
Although the other stories weren’t nearly as memorable, it was interesting to see what other short stories Segal has written.
Though because the collection as a whole is so hit-or-miss, I’m giving it three stars.
November 5, 2023
Some lovely short stories in this collection, informed by more than 90 decades of living. The world needs more older writers.
The stories revolve around a group of women with a long shared history who routinely meet for lunch.
Some of the stories are too restrained, verging on cryptic, for my taste, but Segal has interesting insights and observations to share, including this one, in the last story, about the difficulty we have in disposing of pictures of people, even if we’ve forgotten who they are:
“What vestige of the idea of the sacred prevents us from erasing a human person?”
A fitting end to the story, the collection, and this review.
The stories revolve around a group of women with a long shared history who routinely meet for lunch.
Some of the stories are too restrained, verging on cryptic, for my taste, but Segal has interesting insights and observations to share, including this one, in the last story, about the difficulty we have in disposing of pictures of people, even if we’ve forgotten who they are:
“What vestige of the idea of the sacred prevents us from erasing a human person?”
A fitting end to the story, the collection, and this review.
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