Rachel to the Rescue

November 3, 2020
Understandably discombobulated after being summarily fired from her job in the Trump White House, Rachel Klein steps off the curb at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and into the path of an SUV driven by a woman who, it would turn out, is having an affair with the president. Regaining consciousness in the hospital, Rachel discovers that, in addition to her concussion and broken ribs, she's also become the center of a media and administration frenzy. Suddenly, she's getting flowers from Ivanka and interview requests from Buzzfeed. Parlaying this into a new job working for flamboyant muckraking journalist Kirby Champion and a new relationship with the cute guy in her neighborhood wine store, Rachel finds herself positioned as a key player in her boss' mission to get the dirt on Trump's affairs. With the light, frothy touch that her fans have come to expect from her witty comedies, most recently Good Riddance (2019), Lipman dreamily integrates the tastelessly tawdry world of the Trump administration with the upbeat buoyancy of modern love in this timely political satire.

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May 17, 2021
Lipman (Good Riddance) takes a satirical, strange, and erratic ramble through the Trump presidency. In Washington, D.C., 20-something Rachel Klein, daughter of doting, paint store–owning parents, lands a job in records management at the White House, which consists mainly of taping back together memos ripped up by Trump, the “shredder-in-chief.” An email Rachel sends complaining about the president gets her fired. Then she’s hit by a car, and while recovering in the hospital, she learns from a BuzzFeed article that the driver was Veronica Hyde-White, Trump’s optometrist. Rachel then takes a job doing research for “muckraker” author Kirby Champion, who is writing a book about Trump, and learns about a bizarre love quadrangle involving Veronica; Veronica’s husband, Simon; Simon’s real estate agent lover; and the president. The light, playful tone makes for an odd juxtaposition with the political satire (“It was bad enough getting knocked unconscious by a speeding car, but why did it have to be driven by a woman who was having sex with the president of the United States?”). Readers may get a kick out of the wild romp, but those for whom the Trump term felt darker than fodder for frothy fiction may want to look elsewhere.