The Dearly Departed

Everyone in King George, New Hampshire, loved Margaret Batten, part-time amateur actress, full-time wallflower, and single mother to a now-distant daughter, Sunny. But accidents happen. The death of Margaret, side by side with her putative fiance, brings Sunny back to the scene of her unhappy adolescence, to the community that remembers her solely, nervously, as "the girl who golfed." Reentry is to be dreaded; there's no hiding in a town with one diner, one doctor, one stop sign, one motel. Yet allies surface: The country club opens its doors to its former Orphan Annie caddie. High school classmates, even the tormenters, have grown up nicely, matured in unforeseen and gratifying ways. Maybe, Sunny begins to think, she wasn't as beleaguered as she felt she was; maybe her mother's life was richer than anyone suspected; and maybe the man at the funeral-the one with her face, her flyaway hair, her golf swing-is the halfbrother she doesn't know she needs.

Elinor Lipman writes with the wry authority of a latter-day Jane Austen. The Dearly Departed is another perfect blend of social comedy, pointed wit, and precise pacing from our last urbane romantic.