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LECH
A mother recovering from an abortion in a Borscht Belt rental. An eccentric aging landlord, haunted by a mysterious death. A grief-stricken Hasidic drug dealer. A scheming real estate agent looking for her break, her dogged daughter longing for her way out (specifically, a career as a human mermaid), and her addict boyfriend mired in it.
These lives—strangers, neighbors, family, friends—entwine and separate over the course of one fevered upstate summer, in a haunting and hilarious debut novel by acclaimed author Sara Lippmann. In her inimitable prose, she mercilessly explores the predatory side of human nature through conflicts of faith, trauma, desire, belonging, and longing—the particulars of Judaism and feminism, parenting and partying, small-town life and big blundering dreams, as well as the timeless question: How do we carry on?
These lives—strangers, neighbors, family, friends—entwine and separate over the course of one fevered upstate summer, in a haunting and hilarious debut novel by acclaimed author Sara Lippmann. In her inimitable prose, she mercilessly explores the predatory side of human nature through conflicts of faith, trauma, desire, belonging, and longing—the particulars of Judaism and feminism, parenting and partying, small-town life and big blundering dreams, as well as the timeless question: How do we carry on?
298 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2022
20 people are currently reading
686 people want to read
About the author
Sara Lippmann
7 books209 followersSara Lippmann is the author of the story collections Doll Palace re-released by 713 Books, and Jerks from Mason Jar Press. Her work has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Best Small Fictions, Epiphany, Split Lip and elsewhere. She teaches with Jericho Writers and lives with her family in Brooklyn. For more, visit saralippmann.com
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 38 reviews
September 27, 2022
this book took years off my life, is rotten with missteps, and contains everything I’ve got.
July 18, 2022
The latest (and first novel) from the amazing Sara Lippmann. Since I'm lucky enough to call Sara a friend, I can look forward to peppering her with questions about the remarkable array of characters she has assembled in this layered story.
October 27, 2022
I adored Lech, a fantastic story about a sale of land in the Catskills that is really about all the ways our humanity intersects across America. In this mountain town we see the devastation of addiction & dissatisfaction, the joys of lust and the aching, inevitable love from a mother to a child. Each of the incredible cast of characters is heartwarming, true and hilarious. I fell in deep love with all of them, flaws and all. I highly recommend this observant, sharp and interesting story of people searching and only sometimes finding.
November 10, 2022
Brilliant. Lippmann’s writing is exquisite and Lech is captivating, raw, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
October 28, 2022
This sucks. No, not the book, the lack of reviews. I had planned on scouring the reviews upon the novels completion, as is my custom. However, where the hell are they? There’s nothing to sink my teeth into. Given the quality of the novel, I am rather saddened by the pitiful reader turnout.
Lippmann’s lines are punchy like Mike Tyson in 95, with characters that unravel and re-ravel while linear yet chaotic themes present themselves then sneak away. Just read the book people, it’s worth it. How do books like Rooney’s Normal People receive trunkfuls of accolades, and this one released without hardly a notice? A dam f*****g shame, that is.
My only issue with the novel, is that scenes sometimes seemed fragmented, in that I wondered If I had skipped a page. This happened multiple times.
Sara Lippmann, thank you for writing this. Please continue
Lippmann’s lines are punchy like Mike Tyson in 95, with characters that unravel and re-ravel while linear yet chaotic themes present themselves then sneak away. Just read the book people, it’s worth it. How do books like Rooney’s Normal People receive trunkfuls of accolades, and this one released without hardly a notice? A dam f*****g shame, that is.
My only issue with the novel, is that scenes sometimes seemed fragmented, in that I wondered If I had skipped a page. This happened multiple times.
Sara Lippmann, thank you for writing this. Please continue
November 4, 2022
LECH is razor sharp and deeply moving: literary realism at its finest. Lippmann’s prose is sleek, smart, and filled with insight that often startles in its acuity. Here we find the violence of remembered trauma, both within a larger, historic context as well as on a more personal and intimate scale. Readers will see how the Holocaust and 9/11 not just echo but inhabit, and how more intimate violence, loss, judgement, burden, and expectation can hurt, harm, and haunt. The Catskills summer of LECH finds Lippmann’s cast of characters very much alive, as their individual histories intertwine to show that living through loss is the way life is. This is a powerhouse of a novel.
October 9, 2023
I loved this book. Lippmann's prose is so sharp, her characters so distinctive, everything had an hallucinatory vividness. Reading it reminded me a little of Denis Johnson’s ALREADY DEAD, like the whole story is coated in a film of ominous sleaze—I mean that in the best way. Set in the Catskills and told from multiple POVs, including the titular character, Lech, it involves shady real estate dealings, a self-destructive young mother, a mystery drowning, Hasidic Jews, big mistakes and second chances. I really envy her succinct sentences, deadpan humor, and the unforced way her metaphors land. Now I want to read her previous book, JERKS.
December 20, 2022
Fearless, shocking, funny. A great debut novel by a writer I've admired for years. I love the multi-POV and the focus on the lower middle class. This is a novel you can live inside of for a few days (I deliberately stretched it out), and when it's over you're bereft.
October 29, 2022
This debut novel describes one Catskills summer in the life of five main characters (and a host of others) as they try to move forward in the best ways they know how, despite challenges thrown at them by drugs, divorce, poverty... in short, life's challenges. Lippmann's words are careful and surprising; you'll want to read the novel slowly to enjoy the sentences (and because, as an author, she doesn't handhold you). The characters are never predictable and humanistically flawed. A fine study in POV, characterization, and line-level prose.
October 28, 2022
I freaking loved this book. Sara captures humanity like no one else. I loved every one of these characters—these deeply flawed and incredibly real humans—and the web that brilliantly connects them. I am so sad it's over. Bravo!
October 28, 2022
Every sentence, a karate chop, and in the end an enduring connection to a place and the people who inhabit it. Exhibit A on why we should all seek out and read small presses.
February 16, 2023
Initially, I wanted to write “Absolutely nothing happens in this book,” but I know that’s not true. A lot of development occurs among the handful of characters we get to experience life with over a couple of summer months. But I will say, nothing happened in this book that overly excited me.
I don’t know Sara Lippmann. I don’t know if she’s from a small, rural town, but this book reads like she isn’t. I’m tired of small town America being portrayed this way: dirty, drug-filled and hopeless. All of the characters are sad, tired and lonely. It makes for quite a depressing read. Sure, old Ira starts to come to grips with his fatality and Paige runs away, but it doesn’t feel like much development really happens to anyone.
This book was initially hard for me to get started with. Lippmann’s writing style is one to be appreciated, but I’m not crazy about the story. I’m between a 2 and 3 star rating on this one but because there were some parts I liked, I’ll give it a 3.
EDIT: I looked it up. Lippmann’s from Brooklyn. Makes sense.
I don’t know Sara Lippmann. I don’t know if she’s from a small, rural town, but this book reads like she isn’t. I’m tired of small town America being portrayed this way: dirty, drug-filled and hopeless. All of the characters are sad, tired and lonely. It makes for quite a depressing read. Sure, old Ira starts to come to grips with his fatality and Paige runs away, but it doesn’t feel like much development really happens to anyone.
This book was initially hard for me to get started with. Lippmann’s writing style is one to be appreciated, but I’m not crazy about the story. I’m between a 2 and 3 star rating on this one but because there were some parts I liked, I’ll give it a 3.
EDIT: I looked it up. Lippmann’s from Brooklyn. Makes sense.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2025
This one didn’t work for me very well, which is disappointing on a couple of levels.
In this literary, indie-published book, we are following a variety of characters living near the Catskills. Ira is sort of a lecherous protagonist who rents out a room in his house and gets a little too close to the women in his orbit. (We’ll come back to the “lech” thing in a moment.) Noreen is a real estate agent with shady morals and a daughter trying to get away from her. Said daughter, Paige, is a young adult with a past of sexual assault and a present of substance abuse and she just wants to get away and start over somewhere else. Meanwhile, young mother Beth is fleeing to Sullivan County (and Ira’s rental specifically) due to a recent abortion. Finally, the most slight of narrators is Tzvi, a drug-dealing Hasid whose mother died at the lake buttressing Ira’s property some years back. Her story kinda looms large in an atmospheric sort of way.
Maybe I’m leaning too much into calling Ira lecherous simply because of the title. Lech, in religious Jewish parlance, could refer to the phrase “Lech lecha,” which comes from Genesis. Gd is telling Abraham to “go forth” into a new land. (Lippmann helpfully provides the Hebrew and English on the first place of the novel.) This book is sort of about Ira learning how to “go forth” at last. He’s divorced, abandoned by his daughters, and stuck in this place where there’s a bad association due to the sudden death of the Hasidic mother, Chaya Bloch.
(On a ridiculous and tangentially related note, thanks to the title and associations, I had Debbie Friedman’s “L’Chi Lach” song rolling in my head as I read this book, which is decidedly not the right tone. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WrS...)
It took awhile for me to get a grasp of the story because the writing is very insular. Oh, my shame and lack of attention span. On an academic level, I understood why maybe I should care about these characters. They defied genre stereotypes with regards to always having to be plot-first, as if we always have to be “on” and responding to shiny stimuli all the time. On the other hand…this did not defy literary fiction stereotypes with regards to the high dosages of misery porn. Yes, people are thinking about drugs and poverty and shitty relationships because life sucks, yo.
“For the right reader, this jigsaw of a novel will be pleasure,” says my good friend, Kirkus. I guess I’m not the right reader. The Judaism of this book was distilled into a distrusted, cloistered community with drug problems. Tzvi felt especially superfluous (I don’t think any of his chapters spanned even to a full page.) He’s a reminder that somewhere in the past, tragedy struck, and it’s his mother, but it’s not really his story. Everyone else is dealing with the loss of Chaya more tangentially, but they’re the ones truly in frame.
“What was interesting to me on a superstructural level were characters who are so self-absorbed in their own insular situations that they don’t see each other,” Lippmann said in an interview with the Chicago Review of Books. “Later, it was important to watch where their stories intersect or run parallel, completely missing each other. The novel was driven but the question of how to build this life, yes, but also by the way our stories, both the pressing ones and the subterranean ones, resonate through sheer proximity.”
…maybe I should be more honest, or more forgiving of myself regarding the stories I’m interested in reading. Yes, I like some character beats on these pages, or the occasional advancement where the overarching theme seemed to come together. Yes, there’s part of me that thinks I should be “smart” and like this novel more. But there’s only so many hours in a day and so many books to read. Maybe I should allow myself to fall head over heels for what I want to rather than what I “should.”
But fun fact: Lippmann finally got her act together and started this, her first novel, during NaNoWriMo one year. I’m writing this review during NaNoWriMo 2025! May I follow her inspiration with my own writing. :D
In this literary, indie-published book, we are following a variety of characters living near the Catskills. Ira is sort of a lecherous protagonist who rents out a room in his house and gets a little too close to the women in his orbit. (We’ll come back to the “lech” thing in a moment.) Noreen is a real estate agent with shady morals and a daughter trying to get away from her. Said daughter, Paige, is a young adult with a past of sexual assault and a present of substance abuse and she just wants to get away and start over somewhere else. Meanwhile, young mother Beth is fleeing to Sullivan County (and Ira’s rental specifically) due to a recent abortion. Finally, the most slight of narrators is Tzvi, a drug-dealing Hasid whose mother died at the lake buttressing Ira’s property some years back. Her story kinda looms large in an atmospheric sort of way.
Maybe I’m leaning too much into calling Ira lecherous simply because of the title. Lech, in religious Jewish parlance, could refer to the phrase “Lech lecha,” which comes from Genesis. Gd is telling Abraham to “go forth” into a new land. (Lippmann helpfully provides the Hebrew and English on the first place of the novel.) This book is sort of about Ira learning how to “go forth” at last. He’s divorced, abandoned by his daughters, and stuck in this place where there’s a bad association due to the sudden death of the Hasidic mother, Chaya Bloch.
(On a ridiculous and tangentially related note, thanks to the title and associations, I had Debbie Friedman’s “L’Chi Lach” song rolling in my head as I read this book, which is decidedly not the right tone. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8WrS...)
It took awhile for me to get a grasp of the story because the writing is very insular. Oh, my shame and lack of attention span. On an academic level, I understood why maybe I should care about these characters. They defied genre stereotypes with regards to always having to be plot-first, as if we always have to be “on” and responding to shiny stimuli all the time. On the other hand…this did not defy literary fiction stereotypes with regards to the high dosages of misery porn. Yes, people are thinking about drugs and poverty and shitty relationships because life sucks, yo.
“For the right reader, this jigsaw of a novel will be pleasure,” says my good friend, Kirkus. I guess I’m not the right reader. The Judaism of this book was distilled into a distrusted, cloistered community with drug problems. Tzvi felt especially superfluous (I don’t think any of his chapters spanned even to a full page.) He’s a reminder that somewhere in the past, tragedy struck, and it’s his mother, but it’s not really his story. Everyone else is dealing with the loss of Chaya more tangentially, but they’re the ones truly in frame.
“What was interesting to me on a superstructural level were characters who are so self-absorbed in their own insular situations that they don’t see each other,” Lippmann said in an interview with the Chicago Review of Books. “Later, it was important to watch where their stories intersect or run parallel, completely missing each other. The novel was driven but the question of how to build this life, yes, but also by the way our stories, both the pressing ones and the subterranean ones, resonate through sheer proximity.”
…maybe I should be more honest, or more forgiving of myself regarding the stories I’m interested in reading. Yes, I like some character beats on these pages, or the occasional advancement where the overarching theme seemed to come together. Yes, there’s part of me that thinks I should be “smart” and like this novel more. But there’s only so many hours in a day and so many books to read. Maybe I should allow myself to fall head over heels for what I want to rather than what I “should.”
But fun fact: Lippmann finally got her act together and started this, her first novel, during NaNoWriMo one year. I’m writing this review during NaNoWriMo 2025! May I follow her inspiration with my own writing. :D
September 15, 2023
Overall I enjoyed this almost as much as Jerks, at times even more thanks to the longer format allowing the story to breathe and expand. The ending still managed to come abruptly (despite my seeing that I was nearing the end of the book), and just like that it was over. After a few days of pondering, however, I now think the ending is exactly what it needed to be, and I realized it was more conclusive than I had originally given it credit for.
I like Lippmann's writing very much, with a style that is both extremely descriptive while simultaneously removing all the extraneous stuff. There is no spoonfeeding here -- context comes in subtle gestures, fleeting moments. But it's there, and I think this style really helps move the story along, particularly a story like this which is much more about memory and realization than action.
I look forward to checking out more of her work beyond the two I've read thus far.
I like Lippmann's writing very much, with a style that is both extremely descriptive while simultaneously removing all the extraneous stuff. There is no spoonfeeding here -- context comes in subtle gestures, fleeting moments. But it's there, and I think this style really helps move the story along, particularly a story like this which is much more about memory and realization than action.
I look forward to checking out more of her work beyond the two I've read thus far.
April 15, 2025
It was good, but it wasn't satisfying.
Overall, an interesting and engaging read. Short and snappy, this book gets straight to the point and, for the most part, keeps you hooked. The characterization was really something too, every character we met felt real. The writing style is fresh, but it's so packed with metaphor and writer-type-writing that I think it often trips over itself. I get that this book isn't supposed to give you answers or a clear narrative, but I was often confused about what had even happened, and so it was hard to really get into it, especially because when I would pick it back up I felt like I had no memory of what I'd read before, due to my confusion. It was also difficult for me to get any sense of the gravity of any one scene or event because I couldn't really tell what was real. It felt like the story was happening around me, but my head was underwater, and I couldn't quite hear. Fitting, in some ways, I suppose.
Overall, an interesting and engaging read. Short and snappy, this book gets straight to the point and, for the most part, keeps you hooked. The characterization was really something too, every character we met felt real. The writing style is fresh, but it's so packed with metaphor and writer-type-writing that I think it often trips over itself. I get that this book isn't supposed to give you answers or a clear narrative, but I was often confused about what had even happened, and so it was hard to really get into it, especially because when I would pick it back up I felt like I had no memory of what I'd read before, due to my confusion. It was also difficult for me to get any sense of the gravity of any one scene or event because I couldn't really tell what was real. It felt like the story was happening around me, but my head was underwater, and I couldn't quite hear. Fitting, in some ways, I suppose.
July 15, 2023
3.5 took me a while to finish this. I do really like character-driven books, which this definitely falls under that category. It follows several different characters through a summer in upstate New York. I thought the writing was good and I did enjoy the book, it just took me a minute to finish. I like how each character kinda resolved themselves in a way - Paige moving away, Noreen getting the deal, Ira coming to peace with his life and dying, Beth at the end showing her motherhood by saving her son when she’s been battling with her previous abortion, and Tzvi (to me, the elusive character of the book), didn’t have much of an ending. Regardless, the writing was good and the ends to the characters lives were satisfying.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 6, 2023
Sara Lippmann has written the perfect summer book. Reading it literally feels like jumping into a lake on a hot, sticky day and curling your toes in the silt at the bottom. The silt and the stickiness are important here—this isn’t exactly a happy story. It’s told from the perspective of several different characters in small-town upstate New York—an alcoholic real estate agent hoping to make a killer deal and her teen daughter desperate to run away, a bewildered mother vacationing from an unhappy marriage and her irresponsible goofball of a landlord—all surrounding a lake where a young Jewish mother drowned years ago. It’s not a total downer—parts of the book are very funny. But you’ll probably cry, too, in a cathartic way. I loved it.
This review was originally published on my blog.
This review was originally published on my blog.
November 20, 2022
DEEP WATERS! Lippmann has never been anything but astounding in her mastery of language and characters! LECH takes us to The Catskills for a remarkable depth of five characters who are full-bodied and utterly indelible! I am a HUGE FAN of her writing and LECH takes me into uncharted waters of her debut novel, although she butterfly's((if you're a swimmer you're still with me here) through those 300 pgs. of mesmerizing life stories and scenes because she's been composing and juggling and weaving unforgettable stories for lifetimes! Get a few copies so you can spread the wealth of her brilliance! LOVE LOVE LOVE! WOW!
February 5, 2023
It has been a long time since a reading experience resonated like this for me. I fell for the book's entire cast of characters, but what I loved most about Lech is the way each of these flawed, varied people are humanized and cared for beyond any hierachy of financial or social status. There is no hierarchy in this book. Rich or poor, everyone is fucked up and beautiful and broken. The writing is brilliant, vivid, tangible. It's a physical book, a political book, a hiliarious, rich, vibrant picture.
February 12, 2023
Rarely do I not care for a book, I can always find something redeeming about it but I did not like this one at all. I kept reading in hopes that something would happen, people would transform themselves, none of that happened. The author uses so many words...words upon words... some to me didn't even make sense (maybe I am just not hip enough- who knows?) The characters were awful people who always made poor choices and kept putting themselves in bad situations. There was a thread of a theme although it never fully fleshed out. I closed the book and just felt sad...
October 6, 2023
There is no book like Lech and no writer like Sara Lippmann. From the very beginning of this intricately woven story, you'll be hooked by the cast of characters, the pacing, and the razor sharp language. The ways in which these characters are defined by place, and by their own flaws, are moving both on an individual sentence level and as part of the magical whole of Lech. This is a story in which no one can escape home or help but walk the tightrope of loss and living -- and it's a gift to bear witness every wild step of the way.
September 13, 2023
Wow, I really liked this book. Often books dip traumatize too much trying to have character development, and I think Lippman does a good job avoiding that. The trauma in this book is the central motivation for change, and we read how these characters achieve or fail to achieve their goals. While this book has some trigger warnings: I think reading from their perspectives working towards “salvation” can help us in a lot of ways.
February 26, 2025
Throughly enjoyed this beautiful ode to Sullivan County and its people. A cast of very different characters, ranging from hipsters from the city to Orthodox Jews, collide one summer against the backdrop of a lake in the Catskills. The novel totally immerses you in its world; I kept looking up and being surprised it wasn't summer and I wasn't upstate. The prose is absolutely stunning. Line after line, this one breaks your heart while also making you laugh out loud. I didn't want it to end.
January 20, 2023
Looking Hard at a World Seen in Passing
I’ve always wondered how the jagged pieces of America fit together in the Catskills: the hard-time locals, the weekend people, the Hasidim. What happens when they collide in slow motion. Sara Lippmann shows us a world we’ll never forget. Brava!
I’ve always wondered how the jagged pieces of America fit together in the Catskills: the hard-time locals, the weekend people, the Hasidim. What happens when they collide in slow motion. Sara Lippmann shows us a world we’ll never forget. Brava!
March 27, 2023
Incredible story-telling here, with the author rendering a solar system of characters that revolve around each other - attracted, repelled, glancing, colliding. It shouldn't be possible to get this much feeling into this few pages, but somehow Lippmann pulls it off. And the writing is so alive, so tight and intense it's feels like being plugged into an electrical current. Highly recommend.
December 27, 2022
I fell for the intimate characterizations in this book. Reading felt like participating in someone else’s dreams. Lippmann’s sentences alone are ethereal. I loved the braiding of the narratives, the sensory details. I was transported.
February 2, 2023
Throttling through interpersonal calamities
Riding into a town near you
An air of fatalism pervades
Among the ground dwellers
Of Upstate New York
They howl out, uncertain
The rising sun reminds them
They are overwritten
The plot hackneyed.
Chris Roberts
Riding into a town near you
An air of fatalism pervades
Among the ground dwellers
Of Upstate New York
They howl out, uncertain
The rising sun reminds them
They are overwritten
The plot hackneyed.
Chris Roberts
March 3, 2023
A few parts of this book amounted to nothing, and some parts could have been given a bit more room to breathe -- but pretty stunning on the whole, and such a specific feeling of haze all the way through.
January 15, 2023
I so admire the writing here— sharp, intentional, raw. The story was really interesting to follow from the various characters, haven’t read something like this in a while.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 38 reviews