Definitely a must read for anyone who enjoys a book about close friendships that stand the test of time. To read my review in its entirety please visit http://www.bookreviewsandmorebykathy.com/2012/03/20/gossip-by-beth-gutcheon/ ( )

"You can still do plenty of damage by failing to imagine other people's realities." (page 64)

Set amid the elegant milieu of New York City's social elite, this is an absorbing tale of friendship, loyalty, foiled expectations, and the invisible threads that bind people together but also tear them apart. Lovie French was a scholarship girl at an elite boarding school in the 1960s and never quite fit in. Nevertheless, she made a few lifelong friends and social contacts that helped her set up a dress shop on Madison Avenue and allowed her access to a social class that would otherwise have been closed to her.

In some ways, Lovie is similar to Nick Carroway in The Great Gatsby, an omniscient narrator with proximity to a world to which he doesn't fully belong and which both attracts and repels him. Gutcheon does a wonderful job depicting this world, from the apartments and clothing of her characters to their vacation homes and social clubs. Her characters are fully drawn and develop naturally over time. The tone and style of the novel are pitch-perfect in terms of making the reader feel as though they are listening to a story direct from Lovie's mouth - it's conversational and free-flowing and very natural.

The reader is made aware at the very beginning that something major is going to happen, and probably not something good, but I forgot about those early clues as I fell into the story. And when the something did happen, it was shocking and made me sit up and realize there was more to the story than I had expected. There is a very dark edge to the glittering world Gutcheon describes, but it's easy to be blinded by all the sparkle and shine.

"Did you know that the origin of the word gossip in English is 'god-sibling'? It's the talk between people who are godparents to the same child, people who have a legitimate loving interest in the person they talk about. It's talk that weaves a net of support and connection beneath the people you want to protect." (page 18) ( )

Loviah "Lovie" French doesn't have upper crust roots, but she finds herself wrapped up in their lives nonetheless when she attends Miss Pratt's boarding school. There she meets her best friends, Dinah and Avis. Dinah came to Miss Pratt's on scholarship, like Lovie, but found her social savviness gave her what she needed to hobnob easily with the wealthy and the powerful which eventually translated to a career penning clever gossip columns about New York City's elite. Avis, whose social pedigree was far higher than Lovie and Dinah's, was quiet and awkward at Miss Pratt's, but her study of art helped her to rise to prominence in the New York art world. While Avis and Dinah are starting their own dysfunctional families, Lovie takes a much older lover and opens a dress shop.

Unfortunately for Lovie, despite the fact that Dinah and Avis are the best of friends to her, they can hardly stand the sight of each other as a result of the most minor of social faux-pas years ago. When Dinah's son, Nick, falls in love with Avis's daughter, Grace, it seems like the perfect match to Lovie, since she is like a well-loved aunt to each. However, the relationship forces Avis and Dinah into each other's orbit with unexpectedly disastrous consequences.

Gossip is a detailed story of the slow disintegration of two well-off families told from the unique perspective of an unmarried friend. Telling the story from Lovie's perspective is a clever device, giving readers the view of an outsider who has never been married or had children but also an insider as the friend to all parties who is bearing witness to family tragedy. Interesting, too, is the look at the things Lovie has both lost and gained by choosing never to marry, and to pin her hopes on her married lover.

I had mixed feelings about Gossip. I loved Gutcheon's style, how she takes readers into a lifestyle they know little about and makes it feel genuine. I loved how she was able to work several angles, depicting the dysfunction of married life for the two friends as well as Lovie's more unique heartache. Also, it was interesting to read a story that comes from the perspective of women who are aging past their prime. It's not a demographic that has much storytelling time dedicated to it. On the other hand, many of the characters in this novel become more and more off-putting the better you came to know them. It often seemed that Gutcheon was headed in too many directions and leaving me feeling unfocused. It seemed as if I were missing things because I was paying more attention to Lovie's storyline when I should have been picking up something about Dinah's, for example. The tragedy is heavily foreshadowed but when it finally came to pass, I found that I didn't care enough for the characters to be emotionally involved in it.

While Gossip might not end up being my favorite of Gutcheon's books, it definitely had plenty enough ingredients to tempt me to tap into more of her work. Her writing is artful and has a great flow, her characters, for better or worse, certainly come to life, and her ability to convey several different uniques experiences at once is uncanny. I'm looking forward to more! ( )

Loved this book and haven't read anything by beth in a long time… The story had a slow start but took the time to really develop the characters, and then I couldn't put it down. Right up to the end… surprise, but should have seen it coming and I was sad to have it end. I would love to see a sequel. ( )

Sometimes a title and a cover don't do a book justice. In the case of Beth Gutcheon's novel, Gossip, this is especially true. The cover treatment and title suggest a lighter, frothier tale than the one told here. This stunningly, meticulously constructed novel is actually shot through with a dark and troubling undercurrent.

Lovie French owns an exclusive dress shop in New York. Her clientele is wealthy and discriminating and they rely on Lovie as much for her discretion as for her fashion sense. And she is nominally of the world of the women she dresses, having attended the same tony boarding school they all did, albeit as a scholarship student, and maintaining her closest friendships from that time in her life as well. Lovie is, in fact, the original thread that connects outrageous gossip columnist Dinah and old family respectable Avis, two polar opposites who accept each other on sufferance only because of their similar relationships with Lovie.

Spanning several decades in New York City, from the bohemian sixties to our post 9/11 world, Lovie's tale weaves backward and forward through time offering glimpses into the privileged life, ever evolving friendships, and the changes in the world over that sixty year span. From the roots of the animosity between Dinah and Avis to the riveting climax, we follow these three women through the relationships of their lives: marriage, divorce, parenthood, work, and enduring friendship. Their closeness waxes and wanes through the years as they withhold and keep secrets from each other but they never lose their connection, no matter how stretched or frayed it might be at times. And when Dinah's beloved son Nicky, Lovie's cherished godson, and Avis' daughter Grace fall in love and marry, the connection between these three women is cemented even further.

Told mainly from Lovie's perspective, the reader has to question her reliability as a narrator. While relating some pieces of her own life, she is certainly more focused on the lives of her friends, the domestic dramas and disappointments of their worlds. Her circumspection about her own long-standing affair with a married man and her rise in the fashion world are seemingly less interesting for her recounting purposes than the public dramas of her friends and they allow Lovie to highlight and reinforce her decades old second-class citizen who doesn't fit in feelings. There's just a dash of schadenfreude in her telling. As she unfolds the story, explaining why the novel opens with Dinah in the back room of her shop for privacy, she drops delicate hints about where the story must ultimately lead. There is a barely there ominous undertone throughout the novel and the reader's sense of foreboding increases as the story progresses.

This is a book of the small and everyday and the ways in which these tiny moments can come together to create a shocking whole. Gutcheon has captured this segment of New York society, the wealthy, the privileged, the glitterati so well, showing the undercurrents, the banality, and the trials of the lives of its members. She has created very different and yet equally interesting characters in all of the women. Each of them is fully fleshed out and real feeling. The writing throughout is precise and every word is freighted with deliberate intention which helps to slowly, almost imperceptibly, ratchet up the narrative tension. Readers may be lulled by a sense of not much happening but in fact this is not the case. There is an inexorable march to the stunning conclusion. Well worth the time spent between it's covers, this book will get under your skin and into your head until you have finally turned that last page. ( )