Having met at Ithaca University as graduate students, the millennial year of
2000 is soon approaching, Sydney Steinberg and Corinna Kipnis consider each other
their exclusive significant other. While after graduation, Corinna takes up a position
as reference librarian in her hometown library of Thompsonville, Syd hastens to finish
his graduate degree in engineering. But after some irrepressible soul-searching, he
decides on a radical change of course–he will, instead, attempt that more challenging
career in the New York financial world he has always aspired to, which, in his estimate,
will not only demand his highest level of intellectual mastery but, simultaneously, will
also position him at the very cutting edge of significant decision making. This choice
and the lifestyle it engenders set Corinna and Syd on deeply discordant life tracks and
toward life goals that prove incompatible.
In the meantime, Viktor, Corinna’s father and now professor emeritus, has
been summoned to California for a hospital visit with his cousin and boyhood hero,
Mitchell Kipnis. Despite Mitchell’s palatial Malibu home, Viktor perceives Mitchell’s
loneliness as a widower and retiree and convinces him that a prolonged vacation in
his old hometown–Thompsonville–is just what the doctor would have ordered.
Additionally, Viktor reminds Mitchell that his son Paul, has just taken a position at
Ely College in Thompsonville and would be an added companion. Mitchell consents
to this transition and eventually becomes a thoroughly vibrant part of the whole
Thompsonville scene. Inevitably, Corinna and Syd separate; and through this painful
process, Corinna actually begins to fall in love with another person–having herself
attained a depth and confidence she had never before realized. In this generational
and a career mix of interesting, well-realized characters, there are more than enough
opportunities for dynamic clashes of values and priorities–small-town community or
big-city glitz? Wealth and power or a dedication to personal development? Parents
and their children retaining familial ties between generations or opting to go it alone?
Plenty of opportunity for second thoughts. And hopefully discovering second chances
along the way, the reader might be drawn into some thoughtful reevaluation of his own
basic assumptions. And that is, of course, the best of all outcomes.
