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Book Summary and Reviews of The House at Belle Fontaine by Lily Tuck

The House at Belle Fontaine by Lily Tuck

The House at Belle Fontaine

Stories

by Lily Tuck

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Apr 2013, 160 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

The elegantly conceived, intimate stories of The House at Belle Fontaine span the better part of the twentieth century and almost every continent, revealing apprehensions, passions, secrets, and tragedies among lovers, spouses, landlords and tenants, and lifelong friends. In her crisp and penetrating prose, Tuck delicately probes at the lives of her characters as they navigate exotic locales and their own hearts: an artist learns that her deceased husband had an affair with their young houseguest; a retired couple strains to hold together their forty-year-old marriage on a ship bound for Antarctica; and a French family flees to Lima in the 1940s with devastating consequences for their daughter's young nanny.

All published or soon to be in prestigious literary quarterlies including the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2011, these tales make up a crowning collection by one of our most revered American authors.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The 10 stories ... are compact, intense, and finely crafted." - Publishers Weekly

"Remarkable for its technical expertise ... Impressive work from a virtuoso." - Kirkus

"Starred Review. Tuck's agility and grace as a storyteller are quietly evident throughout her impressive collection. This is a writer atthe top of her form." - Library Journal

This information about The House at Belle Fontaine was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Diane S.

The House at Belle Fontaine
A very good grouping of stories, I love the way she writes. She is spare with her words, yet they are jarring nonetheless. These are stories of people at a crossroads, mainly women and set in foreign lands. Many times there is a choice and the choice they make determines their futures. I found the ending of one "Bloomsday in Bangkok' left me with such an incredible and horrifying image, that I actually dreamed about it last night. Don't get me wrong these are not horror stories by any means, it's just the normal creepiness one gets when confronted with different cultures. Well done.

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Author Information

Lily Tuck Author Biography

Lily Tuck was born in Paris and lived in Thailand in the early '60s. She is the author of two previous novels: Interviewing Matisse, Or the Woman Died Standing Up and The Woman Who Walked on Water. She has written numerous short stories, the most recent of which have been published in The New Yorker, Fiction, and The Antioch Review.

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