The House at Belle Fontaine

From the National Book Award-winning author of I Married You for Happiness: “Tuck packs a small universe and decades of emotional history into each story.”—Entertainment Weekly (A-)


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.

These “evocative stories of beautiful language and masterful economy” (The Boston Globe) span the better part of the twentieth century and almost every continent, excavating both the opportunities that arise from loss and the moments that knock lives onto a collision course and an uncertain future.

“Reminiscent of the exquisite short stories of Edith Pearlman…We become intimate witnesses to these private lives falling apart and, in some cases, coming back together.”—The Boston Globe

“For me, the most thrilling short stories conjure the psychological depth and chronological sweep typical of the novel. The ten stories in Lily Tuck’s The House at Belle Fontaine all do this.”—The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

“Tuck is a genius”—Los Angeles Times