My latest grievance / Elinor Lipman

In the late 1970s, Frederica Hatch is the enchantingly outspoken daughter of brilliant college professors at a minor all-girls college in Massachusetts. Her temperate, mildly eccentric, and lovely parents, also union activists for the faculty of Dewing College, serve as houseparents at one of the dorms, where Frederica has lived her whole life. Wise beyond her years, Frederica takes it in stride when she discovers that her father was married once before and that Laura Lee French, the smashingly solipsistic first wife of Dr. David Hatch, has just been hired as housemother of one of the other dorms. Within hours of her arrival, French seduces the new president of Dewing in a flagrant affair that provides rich fuel for Frederica's hilariously dry wit and searing analysis of adult foibles. Lipman creates that rare blend of no-nonsense compassion and believable, offbeat innocence that is completely irresistible.