The View From Penthouse B

After losing her divorce settlement in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, Margot settles into a new penthouse in Greenwich Village with her widowed, jobless sister, Gwen-Laura Schmidt, and Anthony Sarno, a gay, recently laid-off, 20-something financier. The result, in Lipman’s thin 11th novel (after The Family Man), is a makeshift homey boarding house for lost souls. After Margot’s ex-husband Charles Pierrepont is released from a cushy prison, where he was serving time for inseminating patients at his OBGYN clinic with his own sperm, he moves into her building and begins to worm his way back into her life. Chaste Gwen-Laura decides to get back into the dating pool, but most of her suitors are more interested in sex than companionship. Meanwhile dynamic interloper Anthony tries to break the sisters out of their stalled state. Lipman’s choppy dialogue rarely delves beneath the surface, and for an author known for her sense of humor, this novel is sorely void of laughs. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME Entertainment. (Apr.)