The Grown-Ups

A wickedly entertaining novel that creates a portrait of a selfish, irresistibly attractive literary lion and of the world of the intellectually elite in which he performs.

Nobody in this wickedly entertaining novel is really grown-up. They simply live and love aimlessly in London flats and rambling houses in the country. And they round out the famous life and pretensions of Leo Ulm -- celebrated scholar, author, and television personality -- who still magnetizes his friends, wives, and lovers with his fading brilliance.

His current wife Martha, his ex-wife Charlotte (who still dreams of him), his daughter-in-law Alice and their friend Clara, and the French teacher he seduced at a Washington convention adore him, although occasionally they feel like killing him.The god of his own universe, Leo is monstrously selfish and chauvinistic. But a sudden change in Leo's status leaves all the women in his life in shock -- until they begin to wonder why they ever put up with him at all....