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Dot & Ralfie
Dorothy “Dot” Greenbaum and Rafaela “Ralfie” Santopietro have been together for years, but as they age, their stable lives begin to show cracks. Ralfie can’t navigate the stairs in their home after a debilitating knee replacement and Dot’s heart condition throws into question the viability of their careers, their housing, and their relationship. In their late sixties with no kids to lean on, the two women must come to terms with unforeseen questions of identity, love, and family.
Dot is caring but hides hurtful secrets. Ralfie’s gruffness masks the physical and emotional pain she endures. Friends and relatives don’t necessarily offer appealing role models for their third act. Dot’s sister Susan is pushing them toward a stuffy “55 or better” community out in the ’burbs, populated by aging straights who mistake the butch Ralfie for a frumpy old man. Eighty-year-old Viola—Dot’s friend and sometime lover—lives alone and refuses help, even as she experiences a devastating fall. Rife with Hoffman’s characteristic wit, Dot & Ralfie takes a hard, sometimes painful look at elder care in the LGBTQ+ community, and the unique struggles that come with getting older outside of heteronormative structures.
Dot is caring but hides hurtful secrets. Ralfie’s gruffness masks the physical and emotional pain she endures. Friends and relatives don’t necessarily offer appealing role models for their third act. Dot’s sister Susan is pushing them toward a stuffy “55 or better” community out in the ’burbs, populated by aging straights who mistake the butch Ralfie for a frumpy old man. Eighty-year-old Viola—Dot’s friend and sometime lover—lives alone and refuses help, even as she experiences a devastating fall. Rife with Hoffman’s characteristic wit, Dot & Ralfie takes a hard, sometimes painful look at elder care in the LGBTQ+ community, and the unique struggles that come with getting older outside of heteronormative structures.
155 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 15, 2022
12 people want to read
About the author
Amy Hoffman
15 books14 followersAmy Hoffman is a writer, editor, and long-time LGBTQ community activist in Boston. She is editor in chief of Women's Review of Books and on the creative nonfiction faculty of the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College. When she is not writing, she likes reading, cooking, biking, yoga, and hanging out with her friends & her spouse, Roberta Stone. Hoffman is available to visit your book group.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Did Not Finish
September 20, 202340% of the way in, I’ve decided to bail. The story skittered across the surface of things, of themes, of the characters. All that dialogue! I’m interested in—hungry for —queer characters and stories; this one didn’t go nearly deep enough.
November 10, 2022
The only novel I've ever read about aging lesbians who face the question of whether they can continue living independently. These two witty, gritty broads helped me imagine a sliver of my own future.
January 12, 2023
A thoroughly lovely book and a quick read. It won't be my favorite of 2023, but I would recommend it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that there's so little out there that discusses the unique challenges around not only existing as a queer person, but how aging together factors into that.
It took me a while to latch onto and love any of the characters, though in part that's because they were written so realistically. I think Hoffman brought up some of the indiscretions of certain characters a bit too soon and maybe also too abruptly in the story, and it made me dislike a couple characters more than I probably should have for a while. But the dialogue manages to be crisp and witty and still entirely realistic, and I ended up loving so many characters in so many different ways by the end of the book.
Also, I've got to admit, I HATED the chapter titles. They were terrible and honestly took away from the story more than they added to it, in part because they were just random, often clunky phrases from the first couple sentences of the chapter. I had to work to get away from being irritated by each new chapter (and there are lots of chapters in this book--each chapter is only an average of a page and a half long). If this is the type of thing that irritates you, my friend, I suggest just getting into the habit of not reading them. You will appreciate the book much more.
I ended up really enjoying this book by the time I finished. It says so much about the way we grow into each other as people, no matter our sexual orientation. It says some lovely things about the way we adapt to our lives, too, especially as we age. By the end of the book, I ended up being surprised at how short it was, because Hoffman did so much with so few pages. She ties up the story nicely at the end, but I still wanted to spend more time with Dot and Ralphie and Susan and Nelson and Mrs. Tran and everyone else. These are people I want to meet at a dinner party and get a little tipsy with, maybe laughing too loudly over a Nina Simone record and just one more glass of wine.
This is definitely an important and empathy-building story about things most all of us will eventually relate to. This glimpse inside the challenges and victories of a long life together with your favorite person ends up being a beautiful tribute to living your life on your own terms in all the ways that ultimately matter.
It took me a while to latch onto and love any of the characters, though in part that's because they were written so realistically. I think Hoffman brought up some of the indiscretions of certain characters a bit too soon and maybe also too abruptly in the story, and it made me dislike a couple characters more than I probably should have for a while. But the dialogue manages to be crisp and witty and still entirely realistic, and I ended up loving so many characters in so many different ways by the end of the book.
Also, I've got to admit, I HATED the chapter titles. They were terrible and honestly took away from the story more than they added to it, in part because they were just random, often clunky phrases from the first couple sentences of the chapter. I had to work to get away from being irritated by each new chapter (and there are lots of chapters in this book--each chapter is only an average of a page and a half long). If this is the type of thing that irritates you, my friend, I suggest just getting into the habit of not reading them. You will appreciate the book much more.
I ended up really enjoying this book by the time I finished. It says so much about the way we grow into each other as people, no matter our sexual orientation. It says some lovely things about the way we adapt to our lives, too, especially as we age. By the end of the book, I ended up being surprised at how short it was, because Hoffman did so much with so few pages. She ties up the story nicely at the end, but I still wanted to spend more time with Dot and Ralphie and Susan and Nelson and Mrs. Tran and everyone else. These are people I want to meet at a dinner party and get a little tipsy with, maybe laughing too loudly over a Nina Simone record and just one more glass of wine.
This is definitely an important and empathy-building story about things most all of us will eventually relate to. This glimpse inside the challenges and victories of a long life together with your favorite person ends up being a beautiful tribute to living your life on your own terms in all the ways that ultimately matter.
October 31, 2022
A delightful, sweet, poignant novel about the trials and tribulations faced by an aging lesbian couple living in the Boston area, coping with creaky knees and heart disease and stairs and the pressures to move to "senior living" accommodation. Brimming with humor and unafraid to show older lesbians enjoying sex, this is a quick, enjoyable read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews