I Married You for Happiness

Choosing Barbara Caruso for Lily Tuck's elegiac new novel is inspired casting. Nina, whose thoughts we hear through a long night as she sits alone with the body of her husband, is from "all over," having lived in Europe and South America, and speaks fluent French. Caruso gives her an elegant American voice with the tiniest burr of something exotic, which seems just right as Nina thinks back through a long, loving, but not uncomplicated marriage, and forward again to the stunning present, trying to accept the unthinkable fact that Philip is not just napping before dinner, but dead. Tuck's skill is immense, as is Caruso's, and there's not a word of this heartbreaking but compelling listening experience that feels false or unearned. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 6, 2011
A breathlessly mannered, affecting new work by National Book Awardâwinner Tuck (The News from Paraguay) tracks a Boston wife's random, reflective chain of thoughts as she sits at her dead husband's bedside. Philip, a senior mathematician at an MIT-sounding institution in Cambridge, Mass., goes into cardiac arrest as he naps before dinner. Nina, a painter, and his wife of 42 years, decides to spend the night alone with Philip's body in their Boston bedroom, drinking wine, and remembering. The couple met in the early 1960s in Paris; she worked at an art gallery and read Natalie Saurraute; he was a student, steeped in numbers, probability theory, and the uselessness of reason in trying to prove infinity, or that God existsâà la Pascal. Layered memories, somewhat pell-mell, build suspense: from Philip's honeymoon confession (never mentioned again) of the consequences of a drunk-driving accident in his youth, to Nina's secret abortion, the father indeterminate; and their only child, Louise, now in her 30s, harbors a troubling hostility toward her mother. In the end, the love Nina and Philip have for each other is unproven and unpredictable, except in these small, vital snapshots that make up two lives closely shared, and beautifully portrayed in this triumph of a novel.

January 30, 2012
In this audio edition of Tuck’s latest novel, when artist and homemaker Nina discovers the dead body of her mathematician husband, Philip, she ruminates over the peaks and valleys of their marriage, as household objects—e.g., a well-worn jacket, the table setting for an uneaten dinner—trigger vivid memories including everything from youthful courtship in Paris to adultery, angst, and the trials of parenthood. Barbara Caruso’s nuanced narration and crisp delivery match the author’s prose and her command of language. Additionally, Caruso’s tone—which conveys shock too recent to manifest itself as screams and the simultaneous experience of fatigue and insomnia—captures the essence of Nina. Highly recommended for fans of contemporary literary fiction. An Atlantic Monthly hardcover.