Lily Tuck
Author of The News from Paraguay
About the Author
Lily Tuck is the author of four novels, including the National Book Award winner The News from Paraguay, and Siam, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, and a collection of stories. She divides her time between New York City and Maine.
Works by Lily Tuck
Associated Works
Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (2009) — Contributor — 71 copies, 2 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Tuck, Lily
- Birthdate
- 1938-10-10
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
biographer
editor - Awards and honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship
- Agent
- Georges Borchardt, Inc.
- Short biography
- Lily Tuck was born in Paris, France, to an American family. During her childhood, she also lived in Uruguay and Peru, and in Thailand as an adult. She has said. "Living in other countries has given me a different perspective as a writer. It has heightened my sense of dislocation and rootlessness...I think this feeling is reflected in my characters, most of them women whose lives are changed by either a physical displacement or a loss of some kind." Her novel The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction.
She has published six other novels, three collections of short stories, and A Woman of Rome, a biography of Italian novelist Elsa Morante (2002). She has also edited numerous anthologies. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Fiction, and the Antioch Review. She now divides her time between New York City and Islesboro, Maine. - Nationality
- USA
France (birth) - Birthplace
- Paris, France
- Places of residence
- Peru
Bangkok, Thailand
New York, New York, USA
Maine, USA
Members
Reviews
(22) Brutal. Haunting. I am continually blown away by new horrors of the Holocaust that are revealed to me through art. This story is mainly imagined from some actual records and real photograph of a 14 year old Catholic Polish girl whose farming family was relocated during the German occupation for the purpose of having Germans relocate and populate the country. In the words of Nazi leaders which are quoted and sourced - children who looked Aryan were salvaged and sent to German families show more for "Germanification." If not - you went to a work camp which ultimately means a concentration camp. In this novel Aushwitz. The girl, Czeslawa, was real. The soul-crushing photograph on the cover is her intake picture at the camp. Only a few facts are known about her - her prisoner number, her mother's name, where she was from. The author imagines her life and her last days. It is a gut punch.
The writing is powerful, poignant, spare but incredibly effective. The narrative jumps around in time, in perspective, in form, even. At times more history of what the Nazi's were doing in Poland; and at times imagined details from the Czeslawa's life. Her jacks, her obsessing over her dog, her chicken with the light blue eggs, Anton. As the women grow sicker and lose hope - their musings become so pathetic. I had to shut the book at times. It is a quick read despite being a bit elliptical the author does achieve dramatic tension and one is compelled to keep reading.
This is really good. Just a half star off for being more of a novella. I much prefer long novels, though I think aesthetically this is probably the length it needs to be. This is tough to read. One keeps staring at this unknown girls real face on the cover over and over. She never had a chance... show less
The writing is powerful, poignant, spare but incredibly effective. The narrative jumps around in time, in perspective, in form, even. At times more history of what the Nazi's were doing in Poland; and at times imagined details from the Czeslawa's life. Her jacks, her obsessing over her dog, her chicken with the light blue eggs, Anton. As the women grow sicker and lose hope - their musings become so pathetic. I had to shut the book at times. It is a quick read despite being a bit elliptical the author does achieve dramatic tension and one is compelled to keep reading.
This is really good. Just a half star off for being more of a novella. I much prefer long novels, though I think aesthetically this is probably the length it needs to be. This is tough to read. One keeps staring at this unknown girls real face on the cover over and over. She never had a chance... show less
Exquisitely written story of a mostly loving marriage through vignettes as the wife looks back on their years together while at her husband's deathbed - from National Book Award Winner Lily Tuck[b:The News from Paraguay|77691|The News from Paraguay|Lily Tuck|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348259939s/77691.jpg|1325348] He is a mathematician and the book is peppered with his explanations of probability, time, numbers, Einstein. Nina is an artist and their contrasting disciplines show more enliven the marriage (and the story)in this quiet dream of a novel. show less
Beautifully and sensually lush, highly intelligent and emotionally charged. A retrospective from the wife's POV after her husband suddenly dies. Philip is a brilliant but narcissistic mathematician and she is a painter.
They live active social lives full of the mysteries of math, art, music literature, love and sex, travel, parenting, fine dining and lots of drinking.
While they are very close, he always tries to coerce her into understanding complex the mathematical theories he teaches to show more his college class. Is he simply sharing what excites him or is he showing off his capabilities and letting her know he is the MAN, the math man that is. Oddly, and quite shocking, he is also a bit of a slob leaving his dirty clothes on the floor for her to pick up.
How Tuck controls the many different moving parts of this complicated couple, their dialog, actions, and thoughts so gracefully and poetically amazes me.
Coincidentally, I am also reading Maria Popova's The Universe in Verse which is about the juxtaposition of science and poetry displaying the awesome splendor of our world and universe AS WELL as the many worlds and universes that surround us.
Another coincidence is that on page 126 of "I Married You.." there is a reference to quantum mechanics reminding me of another book I recently read, a sci-fi novel, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. It goes fully down the rabbit hole of the potential of creating multiple lives and multiple universes.
I'm definitely impressed with Lily Tuck even if I didn't understand all the math possiblities. Wish I did. Her writing, characterizations, plot and depth of details is captivating. show less
They live active social lives full of the mysteries of math, art, music literature, love and sex, travel, parenting, fine dining and lots of drinking.
While they are very close, he always tries to coerce her into understanding complex the mathematical theories he teaches to show more his college class. Is he simply sharing what excites him or is he showing off his capabilities and letting her know he is the MAN, the math man that is. Oddly, and quite shocking, he is also a bit of a slob leaving his dirty clothes on the floor for her to pick up.
How Tuck controls the many different moving parts of this complicated couple, their dialog, actions, and thoughts so gracefully and poetically amazes me.
Coincidentally, I am also reading Maria Popova's The Universe in Verse which is about the juxtaposition of science and poetry displaying the awesome splendor of our world and universe AS WELL as the many worlds and universes that surround us.
Another coincidence is that on page 126 of "I Married You.." there is a reference to quantum mechanics reminding me of another book I recently read, a sci-fi novel, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. It goes fully down the rabbit hole of the potential of creating multiple lives and multiple universes.
I'm definitely impressed with Lily Tuck even if I didn't understand all the math possiblities. Wish I did. Her writing, characterizations, plot and depth of details is captivating. show less
Just finished this book a few minutes ago, so these are the off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts. This book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2004, and I can see why. It's very well written with short but vivid chapters; very action-packed, and evocative of a time and place most people know nothing about. It was fascinating. But, heavens, it was horrifying. As JMT mentioned, it's about a Paraguayan dictator who declared war on Brazil and other neighboring countries. War is never pretty, show more and Tuck certainly doesn't try to glorify it in any way. She shows just how awful it was, and in the Paraguayans' case, it was horrendous; before the war, the country had over a million citizens. After the war, less than 200,000. But it wasn't the large scale annihilation that got to me, it was the small acts of cruelty. The unnecessary evil. The baseness to which humans descend. I like to think that people, on the whole, are good and kind by nature. Stories like this one make me question that basic philosophy.
All said, I think this was a very good book and one I'm glad I read. Even if I did find it troubling. show less
All said, I think this was a very good book and one I'm glad I read. Even if I did find it troubling. show less
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- Works
- 14
- Also by
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- #15,495
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 57
- ISBNs
- 81
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