Adora Hazzard, the protagonist of Maria Semple’s new novel, Go Gentle, has a lot of her life back on track after getting divorced. She and her teenage daughter, Viv, live in the Ansonia, a legendary building in Manhattan, and she’s quite happy to be there. “Even after five years,” she thinks, “I took in the city with the mawkish wonder of a recent arrival.”

On Adora’s floor in her condo are Emily Ann (“widowed lawyer”) and Minna (“divorced theater director”). Adora is a Stoic philosopher who does research, writes, and “provide[s] moral training” for the twin tween sons of the wildly wealthy Lionel and Layla Lockwood, a couple who married a few days after they met at Burning Man. They live in Lionel’s childhood home, “five combined townhouses across the street from the Lockwood Library.”

A horrible accident occurred when the twins were 5 and the family was in Aspen. Lionel “emerged with his left arm amputated and right side paralyzed,” and Layla says she’ll “stop at nothing to make my husband happy.”

With Emily Ann and Minna, Adora has formed a “coven.” There’s a condo newly available for purchase on their floor, and plans are afoot for them to buy it together. There are several advantages to this arrangement for women of a certain age, says Adora:

“Plus, we get to die at home. Plus, we’re not a burden to our kids. Plus, no Florida. Plus, compared to nursing homes, it’s a huge money saver.”

Semple’s compelling characters come at the reader fast and furious. Her descriptions are original and attracting. Here’s landscape architect Blanche, a possible new member of the coven: “Her whole air was a throw-down that said, ‘Come at me, haters.’” Regarding admission to the coven, Adora tells Blanche that they want women who “despite our age, share a dirty little secret: we’re just getting started.”

Empowering, indeed. And then Semple hits readers with a viewpoint delivered in laugh-out-loud style by Blanche. The subject is Blanche dabbling in lesbianism after her divorce because “it seemed like a solution.” In Blanche’s case, one that didn’t stick:

“Turns out, I like dick. Even though the only way I’ll get any at my age is if one falls out of the sky into my vagina.”

Into this coordinated if unusual life comes a handsome man Adora encounters at the ballet in what seems to be a chance meeting. Epic sex (dropping from the heavens only as a metaphor), international intrigue, and an active threat to the Lockwood Library and home — triggered, somehow, by a misinterpreted lunch item — soon follow.

Semple employs an interesting approach in her plot structure. Go Gentle is divided into five parts, the third of which is “The Untitled Adora Hazzard Project.” In it, readers are taken out of the present day and transported to Los Angeles in 1998, when Adora is a writer for “Laugh Riot,” a television show that calls to mind “Saturday Night Live.”

While the timeline shift may feel abrupt, it’s easy to become absorbed in this past version of Adora and all the people surrounding her, as well as in her humiliation and anguish at the hands of her writing-team bros. Plus ça change.

The information provided about a grotesque old-boys-network debacle in Adora’s past is infuriating and also essential to her story. It’s what leads her to Stoicism — and to Yale, where she met her future ex-husband.

Readers may find themselves writing down the quotations from the Stoics that Adora shares. She presents their precepts and the life lessons she’s learned from studying them in an inspiring way. Adora herself has written a book about Epictetus. An unexpected success, the work is what launched many new chapters of her life.

(Some readers might hope the book really exists and is available at a local shop. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t and it isn’t. More’s the pity.)

Stateside locales aren’t the only places Semple takes us. Adora and Viv visit Paris in a mother-daughter journey that will sound familiar to parents and their offspring (teens can be insufferable, and it’s sometimes impossible not to respond in kind). This trip across the pond also brings Adora to the “chateau Montfort” in the beautiful French countryside, a charming location for some very satisfying confrontations.

There are quirks with this novel, as there always are in tales written by human hands. Characters disappear and then reappear. The tone of the storytelling shifts. But who cares? This is a book about second chances! And female friendships! And hot romances! And secret finances! And art theft!

Wait, is that character with Interpol?

That this distinctive approach works in such a captivating and entertaining way is testament to Semple’s skill as a writer. She makes you care about Adora — a lot — and the people around her. She also makes you want to discover what’s going to happen next. It’s highly advisable to go right ahead, gently or otherwise, and find out.

Heidi Mastrogiovanni is the author of the comedic novel Lala Pettibone’s Act Two (finalist, Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Awards) and its sequel, Lala Pettibone: Standing Room Only (Chicago Review Press). Heidi is part of the triumvirate behind “The Classics Slacker Reads...” series. She is the co-ambassador for the Los Angeles chapter of the Authors Guild and a member of the Writers Guild of America. A dedicated animal-welfare advocate, Heidi lives in Southern California with her musician husband and their rescued senior dogs.