Throughout Lily Tuck's career, she's been praised by critics for her crisp, lean language and sensuous explorations of exotic locales and complex psychologies. From Siam to Paraguay and beyond, Tuck inspires readers to travel into unfamiliar realms, and her newest novel is no exception. Slender, potent, and utterly engaging, I Married You For Happiness combines marriage, mathematics, and the probability of an afterlife to create Tuck's most affecting and riveting book yet.
"His hand is growing cold, still she holds it" is how this novel that tells the story of a marriage begins. The tale unfolds over a single night as Nina sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose sudden and unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. Still too shocked to grieve, she lets herself remember the defining moments of their long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a highly accomplished mathematician--a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love. As we move through select memories--real and imagined--Tuck reveals the most private intimacies, dark secrets, and overwhelming joys that defined Nina and Philip's life together.
Throughout Lily Tuck's career, she's been praised by critics for her crisp, lean language and sensuous explorations of exotic locales and complex psychologies. From Siam to Paraguay and beyond, Tuck inspires readers to travel into unfamiliar realms, and her newest novel is no exception. Slender, potent, and utterly engaging, I Married You For Happiness combines marriage, mathematics, and the probability of an afterlife to create Tuck's most affecting and riveting book yet.
"His hand is growing cold, still she holds it" is how this novel that tells the story of a marriage begins. The tale unfolds over a single night as Nina sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose sudden and unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. Still too shocked to grieve, she lets herself remember the defining moments of their long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a highly accomplished mathematician--a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love. As we move through select memories--real and imagined--Tuck reveals the most private intimacies, dark secrets, and overwhelming joys that defined Nina and Philip's life together.
Born in Paris, Lily Tuck is the author of four previous novels: Interviewing Matisse or the Woman Who Died Standing Up, The Woman Who Walked on Water, Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man, which was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and The News From Paraguay, winner of the National Book Award. She is also the author of the biography, Woman of Rome, A Life of Elsa Morante. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, and are collected in Limbo, or Other Places I Have Lived. She divides her time between Maine and New York City.
A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe
Chicago Tribune
National Post
Publishers Weekly "One of the most beautiful love songs in novel
form you'll ever read . . . Tuck is a genius with moments . . . Her
ability to capture beauty will remind readers of Margaret Yourcenar
and Marguerite Duras."--Los Angeles Book Review "[A] moving
narrative . . . Poetic and absorbing . . . The final passages, as
dawn breaks in thie new widow's life, as re a rare and elegant
affirmation of the transcendence of love."--The Daily Beast
"Beautiful . . . Tuck produces spare prose that doesn't sacrifice
tension or emotion in its economy. . . . An artfully crafted still
life of one couple's marraige." --Boston Globe "Sweet, tender and
compelling."--Chicago Tribune (Best Books of the Year) "This slim
brush of a book manages to accomplish in a mere 200-plus pages what
many novelists try to do in twice the verbiage. . . . Examines the
disguises and surprises that energize a lasting marriage." --The
Seattle Times "An elegant vigil . . . A poised, readable, immediate
novel."--The Guardian "Luminous . . . Spare but deep." --NPR "A
magical, truthful tale." --Huffington Post (Best Upcoming Books for
Fall) "Captivating . . . Absorbing . . . Strikes a chord."--The
Washington Post "Fearless and absorbing . . . What Tuck has
captured so deftly is the essence of a bereaved wandering mind,
with its detours and tangents. . . . Intense, brutal, and
stunning." --The Portland Press Herald "The writing is lyrical and
striking, vividly capturing the nature of memory and the way in
which love, though never simple, is contained and proven in the
small, indelible moments of our lives. . . . This slim, magnificent
novel is rarefied by its heartbreaking immediacy, and the moving,
aching stream of consciousness chronicles not only the psychology
of shock and mourning, but also the minute-by-minute way in which
Nine begins to put life as she knows it in the past tense."
--BookPage "A breathlessly mannered, affecting new work . . .
Small, vital snapshots make up two lives closely shared, and
beautifully portrayed in this triumph of a novel."--Publishers
Weekly (starred review) "A tender look at marriage, mathematics,
life and death, and the intricacies of love . . . I Married You for
Happiness elegiac and joyful simultaneously--a love letter to this
marriage and to the idea of marriage in general." --Book Browse
"Tuck's crisp writing is a joy."--Kirkus Reviews "A full and
satisfying potrayal of a marriage . . . Great fodder for readers
who enjoy pondering life's larger questions."--Library Journal
"Affecting, original . . . Rich in sentiment, poignancy, and
honesty."--Booklist "Tuck is an elegant, spare writer who limns her
characters in a few swift sentences. . . . Her ability to work
mathematical concepts into a literary novel is impressive. . . .
For the unmarried, I Married You for Happiness will do what great
fiction does: draw you into another's life, allowing you to inhabit
it vicariously, emerging with an increased understanding of
something previously unknown. If you are happily married, your
worst fears about your spouse predeceasing you will be miserably,
brightly illuminated, the better you may see them in the harshly
brilliant light of quality fiction." --PopMatters
In this audio edition of Tuck's latest novel, when artist and homemaker Nina discovers the dead body of her mathematician husband, Philip, she ruminates over the peaks and valleys of their marriage, as household objects-e.g., a well-worn jacket, the table setting for an uneaten dinner-trigger vivid memories including everything from youthful courtship in Paris to adultery, angst, and the trials of parenthood. Barbara Caruso's nuanced narration and crisp delivery match the author's prose and her command of language. Additionally, Caruso's tone-which conveys shock too recent to manifest itself as screams and the simultaneous experience of fatigue and insomnia-captures the essence of Nina. Highly recommended for fans of contemporary literary fiction. An Atlantic Monthly hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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