Inn
at Lake Devine
by Elinor Lipman
About the book…
In 1962 twelve-year-old Natalie
Marx's mother inquires about a room at the Inn at Lake Devine for the family's summer
vacation in Vermont. She receives the response, "Our guests who feel most comfortable here,
and return year after year, are Gentiles." This rebuff of her family and
their Jewish religion affects Natalie in ways that tie her to the Inn
for the rest of her life. The Chicago Tribune called Elinor Lipman's
novel "a punchy little comedy of manners...think Jane Austen in the
Catskills."
About the author…
Elinor Lipman was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. She
graduated from Simmons College where she studies journalism and began
writing fiction. Her first collection of short stories was published in
1987. Since then, she has written five novels. She has taught writing at
Hampshire, Simmons, and Smith colleges, and lives with her husband and
son in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Discussion Questions:
1. What fascinates Natalie most about the offensive note from
Mrs. Berry is its "marriage of good manners and anti-Semitism"
[p. 4]. Does Natalie show, later in the novel, what truly having
"good manners" might mean?
2. What does Natalie mean when she mentions the "Gentile
ambitions" [p. 65] that led her into a friendship with Robin Fife?
3. Although Eddie and Audrey Marx are both Jewish, they were
originally drawn together because of their differences. For the
spritelike Audrey, "there was something . . . about Eddie's jumbo
presence, something like a bodyguard's or a football player's, that was
normally off limits to a Jewish girl" [p. 19]. They were forced to
marry when Audrey became pregnant at nineteen. Given the circumstances
of their own history together, are Natalie's parents hypocritical in
trying to stop Natalie from seeing Kris Berry?
4. Natalie says that her sister, Pamela, in marrying a Catholic
(in a Catholic mass, no less), "used up our family's mixed-marriage
chit, even our liberal-dating chit. It was up to me to bring home the
perfect Jewish son-in-law" [p. 144]. Are Jewish parents more
insistent than others about keeping their children from marrying outside
their faith? If so, why?
5. The Inn at Lake Devine might be called a "revenge
comedy." At the end the Berrys lose the Inn, and both of their sons
take up with Jewish women. Is this a fitting comic closure for Ingrid
Berry? What about the feckless but kind Mr. Berry, who loses his
business because of carelessness in mushroom hunting? Should he have
been more active in preventing his wife's exclusion of Jews from the
hotel?
6. What are the social and class markers that Lipman uses to
create a sense of realism at the Halseeyon and at the Inn at Lake
Devine? How well do Kris and Nelson Berry respond to their weekend
immersion in Jewish culture when they visit the Halseeyon with Natalie?
7. What role does food play in this novel? How do the
significance and style of dining differ among social groups at Lake
Devine and at the Halseeyon? Does food have more meaning for the Jews in
the Catskills than it does for the WASPs in New England? What does the
desire to be a chef reveal about Natalie's character?
8. At camp, Natalie first befriends Robin Fife in the hope of
being invited by her family to the Inn at Lake Devine, but she is bored
by the dull-witted Robin who, she notes, "couldn't take, make, or
get a joke of any kind" [p. 41]. Her relationship with Robin at
fourteen could be seen as mere opportunism; how does this change when
they meet again ten years later?
9. Why do you suppose Elinor Lipman has chosen to leave
out any details of Natalie's college years, including her experience of
dating and sex?
10. The novel of the Jewish person coming of age in modern
America—the most famous examples are Philip Roth's Portnoy's
Complaint and Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy
Kravitz—is usually told from a young man's perspective. How does
the shift to a female narrator in The Inn at Lake Devine
challenge and transform this tradition?
11. Do some of the characters come across as more true to life
than others? Which of the three families—Marx, Fife, or Berry—seems
most realistically depicted? Does the role of surprise in the novel feel
realistic? Does the unexpected always work? Does it add or detract from
your enjoyment of the story?
12. This novel is based upon the reality of intermarriage and
assimilation in American life, issues that are especially painful among
the more observant Jewish communities. Lipman expertly draws the
difference between the habits of Natalie's Reform family and those of
her Orthodox friend Linette Feldman. Is it easier to feel good about the
pairing of Natalie and Kris than that of Linette and Nelson? Do you feel
that love rightly triumphs over religion in this novel?
13. One reviewer of this novel wrote, "Prejudice, in all
its many disguises, is an unusually worthy but often ponderous subject;
its very weightiness . . . often threatens to sink otherwise
well-written and well-meaning tales."1 What aspects of Lipman's
style allow her to avoid this pitfall?
14. What do you find most satisfying about the way that Lipman
brings her plot to closure?
15. In a recent interview Elinor Lipman said, "I like
novels that are funny, quirky, intelligent, and humane."2 How well,
for you, does The Inn at Lake Devine fit this description?
1 Liesel Litzenburger, "No Room at the Inn." Chicago
Tribune,
14 June 1998.
2 Online, Amazon.com, February 1999.
Questions courtesy of Random
House
