Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Lisa Zeidner, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 798 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Amazon.com
Writing about grief has been the death of many a novelist--artistically speaking, that is. Even the most earnest attempts to describe this taxing and tenacious emotion can dip into bathos and rhetorical wire-pulling. In Layover, however, Lisa Zeidner gives grief its due, and does so with such wit and high style that the reader's (occasional) tears are mixed with a kind of elation. Exactly what is Claire Newbold mourning? Mostly the death of her young son, which has taken place some time before the novel opens. In response, she's withdrawn from her husband (a no-less-shattered surgeon) and her job (a sales rep for a medical-supplies company), allowing herself just the faintest purchase on her old existence: "Right now, I realize, I was just floating. Trying to float. Skimming over my life, letting life tickle my feet. I had no plans to glide off entirely." Gliding off entirely, however, is exactly what she does after learning of a single infidelity on her husband's part. In the middle of a business trip she cuts off all contact with home and lurches into a sex-and-self-discovery spree.

Sneaking in and out of hotel rooms without registering--which, let's face it, is the final eradication of identity for any business traveler--Claire first seduces an 18-year-old, then manages to get in bed with the boy's father. Zeidner records these trysts with superb, hypersensitive relish, finding fresh ways to write about that topic, too. "Sex is a story you know the ending of," she notes. "More or less the same story with the same ending, every time. Yet we want to keep hearing it, the way a child listens to a fairy tale, vigilant for variation." Still, Layover is anything but a bedroom farce. As Claire bounces between erotic encounters, she is unraveling before our eyes, and Zeidner's real subject turns out to be not body but soul:

I'd discovered grief's trade secret: once you burrow that deep into yourself, you simply have a better nose for pain. Truth is, hardly anyone is happy. Not even the people with nothing wrong. They're all hunkered down in the bunker of self, in self's fragile failure.

Customer Reviews (66)

Good
I picked up this book pretty much at random at the bookstore recently and I was not disappointed. This is the story of Claire, who after losing her son to a freak accident can't seem to be able to cope with her grief. She is a travelling saleswoman who goes from hotel to hotel hoping to connect with people but just seems to slowly disconnect from her own world. After her husband admits to having had a fling at a conference, Claire sort of decides to just stay in hotels where she can sneak in for free and not go back to her old life. What follows is the interesting story of someone desperately trying to get to grips with her grief and her emotions. That goes from hooking up with near strangers to desperate phone calls to her therapist. It is a really good story, well written, with a daring and touching heroine. Not for everyone but recommended nonetheless.

Want good or great "chick lit"?Stick with Jane Austen.
This was my first look into the increasingly popular "chick lit" fiction arena.It's also become my last, because this was one terrible book.Words fail to describe, and I can't bring myself to recall the dull, lifeless, insipid text.

Should I allow one bad reading experience to keep me from the genre?Perhaps, if you consider the praise heaped on this clunker!Instead, if you're into semi-fictional accounts of women, adolescent or otherwise, stick with Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott.They are referred to as "classics" for all the best reasons.

Terrible!
The only reason I did not give this book one star is because the beginning of it was very well-written.Had the tone and pacing remained the same, it could have been great.However, the middle and end of the book were atrocious!The author was attempting to wax philosophic in a gritty, detatched voice, but merely succeeded in writing a story completely devoid of plot or purpose.I agree with the reviewer who said that mothers who had lost a child would find this book insulting.Yes, everyone deals with loss in different ways, but bedding a teenager AND his father as a means to heal the pain is just disturbing.I kept hoping there was a padded room and a straight jacket waiting for her at the end of the book.I would have been satisfied if she'd ended up with a prescription for Xanax; after reading this book I feel like I need one!

Sex as an Rx for cynicism
Lisa Zeidner's "Layover" is lean and more than a little mean, largely because it's from the point of view of Zeidner's first-person protagonist, Claire Newbold, whose only child was killed in a car accident some time before the story begins. It's about battling the urge to escape from grief into cynicism, but don't be put off. Zeidner has a light touch and a sharp sense of humor, and she'ss anything but maudlin.

Claire is middle-aged, a traveling saleswoman of high-tech medical supplies. Early in the novel she begins a hotel-hopping journey of self-discovery that jeopardizes her job, marriage and sanity. What sets her off is a confession by her surgeon husband that he has had an affair with a woman colleague, and what helps bring her back from the brink are sexual encounters with an 18-year-old boy and then with the boy's father. Zeidner manages to make both encounters believable.

There's good dialogue and sharply amusing observations about American life at the end of the 20th century, but the biggest surprise is the skill with which Zeidner writes about sex. "Layover" is playfully and insightfully erotic, a quality most American writers can't seem to imagine, let alone capture on the page.

I didn't quite like Claire - she's smug and intolerant of human frailties, a vagabond with a big bank account - but I believed her grief and admired the way Zeidner handled her struggle to overcome the sense that she and everyone else are doomed to suffer in solitude. Claire wants to return to normal life but is plagued by the feeling that she knew her husband"so well I couldn't see him anymore. I knew him the way I knew myself. All of our years together - they weren't money in the bank. They were cash in a mattress that could burn."

"Layover" is funny and sad, smart and brave. Read it if you like fiction that explores what it means to be human.

Poignant
This book was not what I expected it to be, necessarily. It wasn't one of those books to be read in a single sitting, but the story really drew me in. I thought that the character development was brilliant, as least as far as Claire was concerned. I genuinely wanted to know what was going on in her mind and what was going to happen to her next. This book is very insightful, and written very cleverly. I know that I won't hesitate to read other works by Zeidner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

question to the author
I have a roommate bearing the same name as your title. I believe in fate and karma. That names belong to one but share similarities with others. I am interested in learning more about your story of alexandra but this site is very,very vague. I have a feeling that this book could resemble her life in someone elses life. Please mail me a description of your book and where i can acquire a copy.

jtaylor420@shaw.ca ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Dynamic and interesting but not always appetizing.
You have to give Zeidner credit for how very different this book is from her close to bestseller Layover. Although there is one similar focus- how to con the system, either purposefully or "accidentally" (in Layover, it's hotel rooms, in Limited Partnerships it's banks...) the style is VERY different. More detailed, less first-person narration, more intertwined weaved in subplots. I have to wonder if the clunky name of this book isn't what kept people from buying more copies. In any case, it reminded me a bit stylistically of the author of "Virgin Suicides" and "Middlesex."

My complaints?
1) Overall, it needed a more romantic tone. The dry humor doesn't work so well in this book- it makes the characters lives seem unimportant.
2) The characters themselves came across as tacky. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Extraordinarily Well Done!
As a displaced native of the Brandywine Valley and a frequent visitor, I found this book to be a delicious portrayal of a unique area. The photography is generous, rich and superb. The reader feels as if he istruly a part of the spectacular rolling hills and historic homes that makethe Brandywine a treasure. The text is informative and accurate. Afterreading this book, one will indeed have an "insider's" view ofthe region and its special composition of residents, history and naturalbeauty. Through many years, I have collected several volumes related to theBrandywine Valley. This one is by far my favorite. I have purchased severalcopies as gifts for friends who cherish the area as much as I, many of whomare long-time residents of the region. They all have related their pleasureand joy with the content of the book. In summation, an excellent effortwhich I highly recommend. Well done! William Sydnor ... Read more

Product Description
Associated Writing Programs (Norfolk Va), c1983, paperback, 240 pages, includes fiction by John Dufresne, Marion Winik, Richard Krawiec, Bill Macomber etc, FICTION POETRY ... Read more

Product Description
POETRYFOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE VOLUME CL NUMBER 2 MAY 1987Contents:MAXINE KUMIN Marianne, My Mother, and MeJOHN BENSKO The Implied AuthorMEKEEL MC BRIDE My Story as Told by Someone ElseThe Earliest MapsSALLY BENNETT SEGALL Finding the LionSUSAN HAHN Small GreenOral InterpretationALISON STONE Spofford HallBrandeis Senior YearSHARON OLDS May 1968After Making Love in WinterJ. ALLYN ROSSER In the (Subjunctive) MoodThe Dropping of a NameRICHARD SPEAKES Mama Loves Janis JoplinCode of EthicsCoin LaundryAssociationMALCOLM GLASS SuperstitionsJEANNE MURRAY Coming into HistoryWALKER In vocation To Convince a BabyAlready Twelve Days OverdueTo Come Out of the WombSYDNEY LEA Over BrognoLIZ ROSENBERG Where Were You?My Husband Takes SomePhotographs of MeFathers and SonsBetween Men and WomenLisa Zeidner A BombSandra M. Gilbert Six Poets in Search of a History (Commentary) ... Read more