The Inseparables by Stuart Nadler is the story of three women, and as the title suggests, their lives are entwined. The title is also shared by an infamous book written by the eldest of the three, Henrietta who was once a professor of women’s studies and feminist ideology. When her restaurateur husband opens a restaurant outside of Boston, she leaves her position to support the endeavor and begins writing her novel which is scandalous for its time and critically panned by reviewers. Now although she’d like to forget that she ever wrote it, Henrietta, recently widowed, has agreed to have the book reprinted for its 25th anniversary because she needs money. Her position is doubly humiliating.
Meanwhile, Henrietta’s daughter, Ooona, an intensely hardworking orthopedic surgeon moves back home with her mother because she’s fed up with her stoner husband who enthusiastically left his job as an attorney to raise their daughter. Now Lydia is at boarding school, but Spencer is still unemployed. Couples therapy hasn’t helped and is about to hurt in an unexpected way when their therapist romantically pursues Oona, and Oona makes bad choices.
If that’s not dicey enough, Lydia is being suspended from her school for the nude photo that a classmate tricked her into taking and is spreading virilely among the student body and across the internet. Each woman draws strength from the other two. Think high-jinks rather than desperate circumstances because Nadler liberally infuses his work with laugh out loud humor. Light enough to take to the beach, yet still quite moving.
