Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move
By Sandra Fish, Special to the News
Book
in a nutshell: The story line is simple: Midwestern girl leaves her
comfortable home for a new, risky job on the national scene and the streets
of Manhattan. But here's the twist: It all happened at age 44.Lanpher's memoir of learning to love New York City encompasses far more than just her big leap from Minnesota Public Radio to Al Franken's left-leaning Air America Radio talk show. She recollects a childhood in a tight-knit Mid-western town as she embarks on finding her place in the ultimate metropolis. She recounts her conversion to feminism in sixth grade; her joy at getting married; her sorrowful acceptance of divorce.
The stories of Lanpher's life are peppered with insight from the works she's read: Manhattan Memoir, by Mary Cantwell; E.B. White essays and even The Joy of Cooking.
At times, Leap Days can be painful. Lanpher is brutally honest about her life - from barfing in an airplane on an early newspaper assignment to the heartache of infertility.
Best tidbit: When Lanpher confesses her homesickness to a Korean manicurist, she's told: "DON'T BE BIG BABY."
Pros: Lanpher's descriptions of life in the Midwest will touch the heart of anyone who's ever lived there. She writes of the corn and soybean fields that seem endless in that rural landscape; of ice fishing on freezing nights beneath a wide-open sky; of Midwestern preachers who begin sermons with a joke. And she contrasts those memories with the new-found wonders of shopping at Newmarket in Union Square; watching the snow fall on Manhattan for the first time; us-ing the Empire State Building as her new North Star.
Cons: Don't expect any dish on Franken and his show. Lanpher devotes only a few scant pages to her new job, which she left after about a year and a half. (But she stays in Manhattan.)
Final word: Chicks will dig it - especially middle-aged broads. Lanpher's story is funny, sad and insightful, all at once. She leaves us wondering what her next chapter holds.