“Let’s Not Do That Again” is a political comedy of manners that reads like the love child of Page Six and a long episode of “Veep.”

The opening scene is perfection. We meet the eponymous heroine of Diane Johnson’s latest novel, “Lorna Mott Comes Home,” as she rides in the back of a taxi, en route to the train station in Lyon.

“Tell me,” Kurt Vonnegut asks Jane Marie Cox, his future wife, “would you enjoy living with me, sleeping with me, leading a carnival life?”