National Book Award winner Lily Tuck has lived a life that often informs her stories. She was born in Paris, has lived in Thailand, Uruguay and Peru, and now resides in New York City and Maine, providing plenty of fodder for her characters and their adventures. 

That's perhaps more evident in her latest book, The Double Life of Liliane, than ever before. The semi-autobiographical novel follows the introverted, observant Liliane through some of her most formative years. Following her parents' divorce, the child lives a life divided between her German-born, movie-maker father, Rudy, who lives in Italy, and her artistic mother, Irene, who has places in Paris and New York.

The Double Life overflows with fraught relationships, with Liliane in many ways pulled between her parents. Irene saw Rudy merely as a means of escape. Rudy, on the other hand, loved Irene and continues to question Liliane about her mother's welfare long after the divorce.

The novel's structure is atypical, composed of scenes that provide glimpses into the lives of Liliane, Irene, Rudy and their family rather than a straight narrative. Using photos and documents as well as text, Tuck braids together family history that spans multiple continents and generations. Tales of World Wars, immigration and new marriages are intertwined with smaller moments in a girl's life, such as schoolwork and friends.

Through its sprawling recollections and period photos and documents from Tuck's personal collection, she creates an intimate portrait of a life that, much like her own, has spanned continents.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The daughter of a German movie producer father residing in Italy and a stunning, artistic mother who prefers New York, Liliane finds solid ground by reconstructing the stories of family members ranging dramatically from Moses Mendelssohn to Mary, Queen of Scots. The richly mosaicked narrative that results allows National Book Award Tuck to explore issues of self, family, and our place in the world.

Winner of several O. Henrys, as well as a National Book Award for The News from Paraguay, Tuck here offers a fictional autobiography that presents her rich life in vignettes both personal and historical. Born in Paris in the late 1930s to German film producer Rudy Solmsen and his beautiful, difficult wife, Irene, the author was a bright yet shy child, shuttled between continents after her parents' marriage collapsed (her mother relocated to New York, her father to Italy). The metanarrative moves back and forth in time, entwining pieces of world history (Genghis Khan; Josephine Baker; Mary, Queen of Scots; and the mid-20th-century Mau Mau Uprising, to name but a few) with the intricate facts of Tuck's family tree, thus giving context to her private life as it shaped her professional career. VERDICT Tuck remains one of America's most brilliant novelists and short story writers, and this distinctive work, penned with a masterly eye for details that speak volumes and illustrated throughout with intriguing uncaptioned photos, allows her literary gifts to come full circle. [See Prepub Alert, 3/30/15.]—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

National Book Award winner Tuck (The News from Paraguay) blends history, biography, memoir, and fiction in this gleefully chaotic metanarrative, which closely parallels the author's own life. Tracking the emotional and intellectual development of its protagonist, Liliane, who is born in France in the 1930s but raised largely in the U.S., the novel encompasses many of the early 20th century's most monumental—and most horrific—developments. Sections centering on Liliane's parents and family members offer insights into the tribulations faced by European Jews during World War II, as well as the experiences of migrants to the U.S. in the years during and after the war. Along the way, the novel, restless and roving, delivers reports on Liliane's impressive family history (celebrity relatives include Moses Mendelssohn and Mary, Queen of Scots), while mapping the various places her peripatetic clan has called home (Peru, Italy, and Tanzania among others). While stretches of the novel verge on seeming crammed and distracted, Tuck succeeds in balancing the bounty of the information she relays with playful, buoyant prose and poignant scenes—particularly those between Liliane and her mother, Irène—that quicken the heart. Of her mother's scent, Liliane thinks at one point, "Joy, the most expensive perfume in the world; an ounce consists of ten thousand jasmine flowers and three hundred roses." In Tuck's prose—messy, lively, dizzy, happy—one gets a contagious sense of fun that she has transmuting life into words. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Literary Agency. (Sept.)