Showing results by author "Lily Tuck" in All Categories

Lily Tuck is a National Book Award winner and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist who is praised by The San Francisco Chronicle for her “knack for shaving a scene to its essence.” Set in the late 19th century, The News from Paraguay traces the colorful, ill-fated romance between an Irish courtesan and the flamboyant, self-indulgent man who becomes dictator of Paraguay. A mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction, it is reminiscent of works by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

Tuck's unnamed narrator lives with her new husband, his two teenagers, and the unbanishable presence of his first wife - known only as she. Obsessed with her, our narrator moves through her days presided over by the all-too-real ghost of the first marriage, fantasizing about how the first wife lives her life. Will the narrator ever equal she intellectually or ever forget the betrayal that lies between them? And what of the secrets between her husband and she, from which the narrator is excluded?

As the child of a German movie producer father who lives in Italy and a beautiful, artistically talented mother who resides in New York, Liliane's life is divided between those two very different worlds. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Mary Queen of Scots and an early Mexican adventurer, and pieces together their vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents.

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