A hysterical phone call from his ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend Henry Archer's life. Henry is a lawyer, an old-fashioned man, gay, successful, and lonely. Thalia, his stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage, is now twenty-nine, an actress, hopeful and estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother. Hoping it will lead to better things for her career, Thalia poses as the girlfriend of a former sitcom star and current horror-movie luminary who is down on his romantic luck. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry's Upper West Side townhouse, she finds a champion in her long-lost father, and he finds new life-and maybe even new love-in the commotion.
George Newbern narrates Elinor Lipman's entertaining comedy with zest and an appreciation of its mix of improbability and realism. The blend of screwball and social humor focuses on Henry, a sympathetic retired lawyer who came out as gay late in life. His comfortable life on New York's Upper West Side is upended by a needy ex-wife, a handsome home design expert who lives with a mensch of a mother,
