Go gentle A novel

Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette) delivers an energetic caper about a woman who gets roped into blue-blooded family drama and a potential smuggling scheme. Among the terms of philosopher Adora Hazzard's fellowship at the Lockwood museum in New York City is that she provide "moral training" to owners Layla and Lionel Lockwood's tween twins. Adora, who is divorced, lives nearby in the famed Ansonia building with her surly 15-year-old daughter, Viv, where she has assembled a "coven" of fellow middle-aged single ladies who live on the same floor. The plot kicks into gear when Adora gives an extra ballet ticket to the mysterious David Ignatius "Digby" Beale, and the pair begin a romance, threatening to break the rules of her coven. Soon Digby reveals they met not by chance but because he was following her, and he wants her to deliver a sealed letter to Layla. Initially convinced Digby is attempting to recover a stolen artwork from the museum's collection, Adora sets out to investigate, and a series of increasingly alarming misunderstandings ensue. Some readers will have trouble keeping up with the freewheeling plot, but Semple's writing is as limber as ever (defining stoicism for Digby, Adora says, "It's not Keep Calm and Carry On. It's Change Your Perception So You Never Have to Keep Calm and Carry On"). There's plenty to enjoy in this rollicking adventure. (Apr.)

A TV comedy writer turned popularizer of Stoic philosophy falls in love, is swept into an international art incident, and deals with buried trauma. For starters. "In exchange for health insurance, an office overlooking a formal garden, and a cushy (for a philosopher!) income, I'm asked to research and write in the Library and, four days a week--here comes the weird part--provide moral training for Lionel and Layla Lockwood's twin tween sons." This is Adora Hazzard, daughter of self-centered Phyllis, mother of sassy Viv, spiritual trainer to the Lockwood twins' paralyzed and one-armed father, also one of three members of what she calls a "coven," an alliance of three women of a certain age, all residents of the same fancy hotel-gone-condo on the Upper West Side, who pledge to share their celery sticks (always too many in the bag for one person) and care for each other in their dotage. Into this forest of promising comic premises walks a handsome stranger named Digby, encountered in the standby line at the ballet, whom Adora bonds with via Grateful Dead references, immediately followed by a Code Red bomb scare at the Lockwood Library, where security is on high alert due to art crimes in Europe--OK, OK, no more plot summary, it's simply not feasible. Suffice it to say, as fans ofWhere'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) are well aware, Semple is not afraid to make stuff happen. Sometimes this means leaving the occasional chunk of plot hanging, as when Adora walks out on a packed Paris lecture hall awaiting her views on "The Blight of Hope: The Stoics, Nietzsche and a New Inner Freedom" just in time to catch an explosion at the Louvre and make a quick detour to solve a mystery in the French countryside. (Are those poor people still sitting there?) And there's a major chunk of distressing #MeToo backstory wedged into all this that seems like part of the idea for a different book. When another character wonders at how the miserable protagonist of that incident has aged into the "gorgeous, self-possessed woman and world-class flirt" that is Adora Hazzard, the answer is…Stoicism? Oh sure, why not. A wild mess of a plot, but a fun wild mess, punctuated by Semple's signature witty observations and punchlines. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.