Lily Tuck

The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay....

"His hand is growing cold, still she holds it" is how this novel that contemplates love, after a husband's sudden death, begins. This riveting and deeply moving story unfolds over a single night, as Nina, numb with grief, sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose unexpected death is the reason for her lonely vigil. There, she recalls the defining moments of their forty-three-year-long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is...

The National Book Award winner explores the hidden dynamics of relationships with "lean, intriguing, formally inventive prose" in this collection (Kirkus Reviews). A New York Times Editor's Choice In Heathcliff Redux, the novella that begins this collection, a married woman reads Wuthering Heights-just as she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate...

An artist learns that her deceased ex-husband had an especially illicit affair years before his death. A couple living in Thailand worries about the mental stability of their best friend, a U. S. army captain. On a ship bound for Antarctica, a retired couple strains to hold their forty-year marriage together. And a French family flees to Lima in the 1940s, with devastating consequences for their daughter's young nanny.

Lily, Molly, and Inez are women of a certain age, of a certain bearing, of a certain class. Late one dire night, Molly telephones from Connecticut to catch Lily up with the news: Inez's corpse -- near-naked but wearing boots -- has been discovered propped up "like a broom" in a corner of her Soho loft. It is an occasion ripe for an all-night heart-to-heart conversation, bouncing deliriously from one evasion to the next -- until the pair of talk-crazy,...

A provocative and haunting collection from critically acclaimed writer Lily Tuck, Heathcliff Redux explores, with cool precision, the hidden dynamics and unspoken conflicts at the heart of human relationships. In the title novella, a married woman reads Wuthering Heights at the same time that she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate web of connections...