Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived: Short Stories [Paperback]

Lily Tuck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 24, 2002

In an elegant and penetrating first short-story collection, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived, Lily Tuck's characters travel to unknown, exotic places and, while there, find themselves deeply immersed in observation -- of the natives, the local customs, the foreign landscape -- in an effort to discern some elemental truth about who they themselves are. Instead, these women meet with disorientation, confusion; they are disappointed by the people closest to them -- lovers, husbands, family members. Finally, they arrive at the sometimes heartbreaking but ultimately optimistic realization that the answers they seek lie not in other people or places but within themselves.

Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived is a brilliant collection from a writer of exceptional poise and insight.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“These are beautiful, moving stories that reverberate in the mind.” (Boston Globe )

“Elegant” (Minneapolis Star Tribune )

[Lily Tuck is] an elegantly economical stylist able to evoke complex internal meltdowns with a simple stoke of the keys. (Hartford Courant )

About the Author

Born in Paris, LILY TUCK is the author of four previous novels: Interviewing Matisse, or the Woman Who Died Standing Up; The Woman Who Walked on Water; Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man, which was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and The News from Paraguay, winner of the National Book Award. She is also the author of the biography Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and are collected in Limbo and Other Places I Have Lived. Lily Tuck divides her time between Maine and New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (December 24, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060934859
• ISBN-13: 978-0060934859
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 6.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,660,357 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Writing ability is in limbo, January 18, 2012

By 

Timothy L. Hardesty "picasso" (Memphis, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived: Short Stories (Paperback)

None of these short stories are bad. However, just about all of them fail to live up their potential. Personally, I was expecting to gain a stronger sense of the locations in which these stories were set. Having read the first few, I realized that this was not the author's point. Instead it is to instill a feeling of being in limbo, i.e. a state of flux or transition. Unfortunately, I have experienced this to a greater extent in straight-up travel writing (Pico Iyer comes to mind). All of these stories are from a woman's point of view. I would have liked this collection more if the writer had tried to come at this from a male's perspective in at least a few stories. It would have been much more interesting to see the writer's thoughts about what constitutes a state of limbo for women versus men. Another disappointment is the rather redundant nature of the characters in these stories. The peripheral men, in general, are either weak and limp or abrassive, domineering, and boarder on abusive. While being in limbo is not exactly a zone of empowerment, the women themselves do not seem strong. They did not enter limbo as a strong women in their pasts, nor does the reader ever feel that any of these women will leave limbo with strength, will, and purpose. Overall, this collection receives three stars because the stories are readable, but not a book that I could recommend to someone.