The Double Life of Liliane

by Lily Tuck

“Tuck is a genius.”— Los Angeles Book Review

Lily Tuck has had a wonderful and accomplished career as a National Book Award winning novelist, story writer, essayist and biographer. She is one of our most distinguished contributors to American literature. With The Double Life of Liliane , Tuck writes what may well be her crowning achievement to date, and, significantly too, her most autobiographical work.

As the child of a German movie producer father who lives in Italy and a beautiful, artistically talented mother who resides in New York, Liliane’s life is divided between those two very different worlds. A shy and observant only child with a vivid imagination, Liliane uncovers the stories of family members as diverse as Moses Mendelssohn, Mary Queen of Scots and an early Mexican adventurer, and pieces together their vivid histories, through both World Wars and across continents.

What unfolds is an astonishing and riveting an exploration of self, humanity, and family in the manner of W.G. Sebald and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Told with Tuck’s inimitable elegance and peppered with documents, photos, and a rich and varied array of characters, The Double Life of Liliane is an intimate and poignant coming of age portrait of the writer as a young woman.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Womens, Contemporary, Family Drama

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 8, 2015

About the author

Lily Tuck is an American novelist and short story writer whose novel The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction. Her novel Siam was nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has published four other novels, a collection of short stories, and a biography of Italian novelist Elsa Morante (see "Works" below).
An American citizen born in Paris, Tuck now divides her time between New York City and Maine; she has also lived in Thailand and (during her childhood) Uruguay and Peru. Tuck has stated that "living in other countries has given me a different perspective as a writer. It has heightened my sense of dislocation and rootlessness. ... I think this feeling is reflected in my characters, most of them women whose lives are changed by either a physical displacement or a loss of some kind".

Reviews

[Esil · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I read The Double Life of Liliane, I felt that there was something a bit cold about this book, and it felt like a missed opportunity. Author Lily Tuck has written an account of her early life. Written in the third person, it reads like a novel rather than a memoir. And the effect is a feeling of emotional distance between the events described and the emotions those events would have elicited. As a reader, I felt that I had to imagine how Tuck experienced these events since she gives so little emotion away. This seemed like a missed opportunity because Tuck evidently had a fascinating early life, in part due to her unconventional parents. But what she recounts feels like a mechanical listing of events -- in no particular order. Her parents were Germans of partial Jewish descent who left Germany before the war. Liliane was born in France, but then lived with her mother in Peru as a young child and then in the United States in later childhood and adolescence. Her parents separated when she was very young, so she visited her father in Italy and elsewhere regularly. Her parents led complicated lives, had interesting temperaments and many lovers. The book recounts time Liliane spent with her parents, grandparents, friends and her own lovers in late adolescence and early adulthood. A few well known people make an appearance -- for example Josephine Baker and Italian author Alberto Moravia. And throughout this narrative, very little is revealed about how Liliane experienced any of this. And so throughout I felt that I was given a window into an interesting complicated early life but only seen at a distance. And then I got to the end where Tuck quotes from deconstructionist Paul de Man with whom she took a class at Harvard: "Autobiography occurs when it involves two persons building their identities through reading each other. This requires a form of substitution -- exchanging the writing "I" for the written "I" -- and this also implies that both persons are at least as different as they are the same... In this way, I consider autobiography as an act of self-restoration in which the author recovers the fragments of his or her life into a coherent narrative". So there: the writing "Tuck" put together some facts about her life which are admittedly interesting, and the written "Liliane" remains an enigma, and readers can make of this what they may. I hope this was restorative for Tuck; for me it was somewhat interesting but as I got to the end and read de Man's quote I felt I had participated in an intellectual exercise significantly lacking in emotion. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this book.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Double Life of Liliane", is still lingering in my thoughts. Lily Tuck has written a semi-
autobiographical novel .....blending fact and fiction.

It's a story that gives us the flavor of a young girl's life growing up in the United States and Europe.... alternating between her parents. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Her story takes place between both World Wars....which allows us to feel the attitudes and
social mores of its time with pinpoint accuracy.

If you've ever wondered how this lifestyle would work for your child, you, and your ex-spouce...(I'm not sure it's legal in some states today), reading about the logistics, the adventures, challenges, and examining the character & personality of family members & friends- some famous- some not- is a very interesting journey.

A 'few' of the people you will meet...

Liliane: from age 8 to adult.. we witness her changes.
She lives in New York during the school year with her mother and step dad. She takes the
airplane alone each time...to Rome for the next 8 or 9 years to visit her dad... when not is school.
A shy child- with a vivid imagination -wants to be a writer- enjoys sports...( hockey, swimming, riding horses, etc)

Irene: 'The Mother'. A beautiful woman who often is compared to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She lives in a large luxury apartment in New York - where Liliane attends school. She is remarried, exercises at a studio two mornings a week, and paints a few mornings a week: oil painting. Great artistic talent... but feels her new country, home, husband, and daughter, are her priority.

Rudy: 'The Dad': Born in Germany... He was sent to France after the invasion in 1939
when both Britain and France declared war on Germany. A refugee of the French government
during the war- later enlisted in Foreign Legion. By then, he was 30 years old, married to Irene..
and Liliane was born. He was a film producer. -- he had his own story & journey which I found very engaging .... during this time of his life..,
In time he moved to Rome.

Gaby: 'The Step Father' Irene was happy with him.... as her husband. Liliane ...not so much.
Complexity and issues involved.

'The Three Sisters' of Irene's: Barbara- the doctor, (dermatologist), is a standout. Liliane and Barbara meet up after 20 years in Austria.

This little book is packed filled with juicy storytelling. I haven't even scratched the surface.
Or given any of the 'juice' away! I won't even come close with this review.
It's a sit back - grab your cup of tea - snuggle in book. ..... Gorgeous writing... Wonderful
visuals of when Liliane is visiting Rudy in Rome. They visit museums, churches, go to restaurants, have ice cream, and meet great people: dine and play gin rummy with famous
writers and artists.

Josephine Baker is a star in the eyes of both daughter and father. (Both for different reasons)

Most young kids want to know about their parents marriage at some point, and Liliane
was no different. Given that her parents were divorce -- she wanted to know why.
Here is a small conversation between Mother and Daughter:
"I respected your father," she had told Liliane, "but I was always a bit afraid of him."
"Why did you marry him then?"
"I had to get away. Get away from my parents, get away from Germany."
"But you must of had other reasons," Liliiane persisted.
"Rudy was kind." Irene stopped a moment to reflect. "He was generous," she added.
"But still...." Liliane said.
"I was very young and ignorant".

Well, we watch Liliane become less ignorant as 'she' gets older. Liliane becomes a little more bolder -- enjoying the nightclubs, dancing, fashions, the ocean, (always a strong swimmer), her friends.... and best of all she is writing a novel.
While Liliane is exploring life as a young female...passing around the novel Peyton Place
with her friends - we witness the start of an eating disorder. Either not eating .. or eating and vomiting.
As readers, we are left guessing she out grew this eating disorder with any major medical
complications. ( but I couldn't help think she was lucky).

There are some lovely photos throughout this book: There is one with Liliane wearing her
Bikini bathing suit and she looks just beautiful. A classic beauty!

Lilane isn't the only person growing older, and discovering her strengths and limitations.... 'Everyone' is! This was a powerful human story...
about family members -- and friends of the inner circle.
A truly delightful treasure to read!

Thank you to Grove Atlantic Publishing, Netgalley, and Lily Tuck.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Double Life of Liliane has interesting information--I am speaking of its historical details and vivid descriptions of places. It is for this reason alone I am willing to give it two stars. The story, the plot, the diffuse, hazy characters did little for me.

An abundance of historical details fill out the story. They are interesting. Well-known and little known facts are brought to the fore. The first cross continental air flights over the Andes in South America is one example. That African Americans are immune to malaria, since they have Duffy proteins on the surface of their red blood cells, is another example. The Mau Mau Uprising of the 1950s, Galileo’s law of the pendulum, Herreshoff yacht designs, Orson Welles writings of the occult, the art and techniques of horse jumping—every possibility of adding tangential information related to all and every plot event is taken. The information added is wide in scope and extremely diverse. The problem is that the constant addition of tidbits of information derails the flow of the story.

The story is not told chronologically. The present is in the early 1950s, but the telling flips back and zooms ahead again and again. Flashbacks and fast-forwards, stories within stories and tangents heading constantly in a new direction destroy any semblance of a story to be told. Often one must guess dates; only by extrapolating from what is happening around the characters can one surmise the date.

This can be classified as a book of historical fiction. Persecution of the Jews and events of the Second
World War frequently take center stage. Clearly, Liliane's family have been shaped, scarred, altered by the war, just as earlier descendants have been molded by the events of their time.

Characters are sketched rather than fully drawn. They are vague outlines rather than living, breathing, feeling human beings. They have no life to them. They exhibit little emotion. Rather than focusing on a handful we are given many, too many. Every relation and relations of relations are named and described. Short summaries are drawn of their lives. These brief introductions pique one’s interest; one is transported to different places around the world—Innsbruck, Lima, Rome, Paris, Capri, New York, Lisbon, Berlin, Penobscot in Maine. But then, like a stone, the person is dropped. First one is tantalized, but again and again nothing comes of it. Abruptly the story stops and takes a new direction. One begins to lose interest. The central character is Liliane and her mother and her father, but zillions of other characters are spoken of too. There are so many you lose track of who is who. We follow Liliane from the age of eight to when she is a student at Harvard.

The book is said to be autobiographical, but also fictional. So, which is it? Liliane is obviously Lily Tuck, the author’s surrogate. Look at the similarity of their names. The problem is that as you read you cannot guess which events are real and which are imaginary and purely fictional. The result being, you must see it all as fiction.

What else should I complain about? The book did annoy me. I was promised one thing and given another. I thought I would be given biographical content.

OK, my final complaint. This is a book of metafiction. The following is the best, i.e. the simplest definition of the term I have found--“Metafiction is when the act of telling a story becomes part of the story.” In my view, metafiction turns the tale told into a knot. It becomes too complicated. It makes it even harder to differentiate between that which is true and that which is not. At the book’s end, an attempt is made to evaluate reality versus personal interpretations in philosophical terms. The result is simply pretentious.

Lily Tuck narrates her own book. The narration is downright terrible. She speaks with a hoarse, scratchy voice and reads e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slowly. If I think it is slow, it is really slow. The narration is totally flat, without the slightest variation or nuance in tone. She sings songs—terribly. Her French is utterly deplorable. She should have gotten a trained narrator to read this book!


*********************
*I Married You for Happiness 2 stars
*The Double Life of Liliane 2 stars
*The News from Paraguay

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5) DNF @ 62%. An interesting approach to family memoir, but not successful as a novel. I was meant to review this for BookBrowse, but found I couldn’t recommend it with 4 or 5 stars. The digressive family stories and genealogies are tiresome, and the third-person narration so distancing that readers never get a clear sense of who Liliane actually is. She’s all generalities: “Liliane, like many middle-class teenage white girls in North America, is horse crazy.” Only occasionally do we get telling details or strong recreation of a child’s point-of-view.

This reminded me most of Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing, a fictionalized biography that works better. I would recommend it to people keen on World War II-era European history, but would hesitate before suggesting it as a novel.

[Annie ⚜️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

So basically her and her family are like a more European Forest Gump, in some way, shape or form connected to tons of important historical figures and events. It was, um, just unbelievable bordering on the ridiculous. I guess most of it is supposed to be true but I find it all a lot to swallow. I mean, good for her I guess.

This is also some sort of special new genre of fictional memoir. 🙄 Okay. We are educated on this by way of the main character attending Harvard and giving us her brilliant dissertation on the topic. Mmmkay, I’m impressed by how smart and subversive you are.

Last but not least, I’m also sort of jealous. I’m reading this thinking god why is my family so boring? Why aren’t I connected to all these places and people so I can summer in Rome AND a tiny island on Penobscot Bay, Maine where my stepdad’s family is connected to everyone going back generations. Oh and my mom’s so pretty people just fall at her feet. Um, okay. I just can’t with this. There are dozens of stories and connections to famous or infamous people and places. It was just...a lot.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have tried out some books by this author and did not finish them. This is a remarkably strange overview of her life written in part truth/part fiction that bounces globally and in and out of eras. Some of the events should wound, but one is not allowed to feel sympathy for her as it is a distant flyover in black and white as her movie producer father may have directed.
Because it is so strange I will try to read some of her other works again. That word again - strange!

Library Loan

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love lily tuck for her national book award winning The News from Paraguay and this new novel is her fictionalize(?) autobiography complete with family photos and a bibliography of sorts. novel of young woman, her mother in nyc, her movie making father in rome, and her, traveling back and forth between the two while exploring and expanding on her family histories, the western world of 20th century, and art.

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though an admiring fan of Lily Tuck I found this sophisticated literary work a bit of a bore. Instead of eagerly anticipating each day's reading I found myself controlled in the manner of studying or taking my daily dose of medicine to insure I might survive. Not the most enjoyable use of my time.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read several books -novels, a novella, story collections - by Tuck in quick succession these last several weeks. And some of what I read in the story collections reappears here, in this book billed as her most autobiographical, but also identified as fiction. Liliane, when we meet her, is 8 years old, an only child, it's 1948, and she is flying from NY to Rome to visit her divorced father. When she is with her father, she speaks French, in NY with her mother, she speaks English, worried about being labeled a foreigner. This is a family history in mosaic form, jumping around in time and place, diving into the lives and the families of Liliane's mother and father, as well as tangents that inform. Lives lived during big historical moments, WW I, WW II, etc., giving rise to complicated, problematic, and sometimes exceptional existences.

[Sarah Ingram · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough one to rate. I rarely read autobiographies, so some of my problem was that this just isn't really my genre (i was thinking this would be more fictional than it read). It jumped around a bit too much for me, between family members and time/place. There were some really interesting historical stories. This was a goodreads giveaway arc.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fact that this was an autobiographical novel did not deter me. After all, I quite liked Jeannette Walls' Half Broke Horses. This was unemotional and disjointed. I kept thinking I would quit reading but then around every corner there would be a fascinating historical fact that would keep me gong.

[Kay Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

At first, confused about what was real and what wasn't, I kept reading with frequent side trips to Google to see is someone was a real person. After 100 pages I just quit caring because nothing happens to these very boring, self-absorbed people and moved on to a better book

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book a few years ago at the Boston Book Festival. This has been described as the author's "most autobiographical" work. Her writing is spare, but juxtaposing a lot of information about what happened to people at the time (in the story her German father living in France was arrested as were all Germans, and ultimately freed when he agreed to serve in the Foreign Legion). The story is a reminder that what happens to one individual is often related to luck and whose palm you can grease or whether you have cultivated a friendship with someone who can help you. The book was published in the US in 2015, well before the #MeToo hashtag was coined, but there are elements of the ways in which her mother had to use her body to survive. The other theme that I noted was the issue of being a foreigner in the US who spoke multiple languages but not clear English in her early days in school, and the impact that had on making her not speak up (to not get teased). Interesting perspective on the world, particularly at this time in the US.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 'Double Life" in the title refers to the many dualities of the author's life. She is the only child of divorced parents who live on different continents, the book opens with her being shuttled across the Atlantic from one to another.
As the book continues, the dualities continue, the erasure of her Jewish background, her abilities in multiple languages, her desire to fit in somewhere but also to remain outside of life in order to observe.
Ultimately that is how the books forms, as a sort of memoir, a sort of novel.

[Randi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life of an extremely privileged young woman growing up. Her father is a filmmaker, her mother beautiful, both her parents escaped Germany in WWII. However, no one in this book is very likable, and there isn't much suspense about much of anything.

It's supposed to be "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman." The best part is the end, when it is supposedly the beginning of the young woman's own novel.

[Carolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting novel or autobiographical story - I'm not sure how much of it is based on real events. If it is autobiographical, I found it to be a bit detached, written in the third person, and it only really gives a short account of certain sections of this girl's life, and just fades away in the end without any real conclusion. The family history and extended family, famous people and historic events, etc. proves to be a plus.

[Kathy Leppert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed in this book. One of the reviews mentioned the emotional distance in the narration, and I agree. Plus the entire book is one long example of why you need to show, not tell. I finished it because I wanted to know what happened, but then I felt like the ending fell even flatter than the rest of the book. It just... stopped.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lily Tuck won the National Book Award in 2004 for The News From Paraguay. The Double Life was on a recommended shelf at a bookstore in Santa Fe so I thought I’d give it a try. Unsourced photographs are used as illustrations of a very loose narrative. This book just didn’t resonate with me.

[Erin Euler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing. The vibe of this book is of deep restraint, a very white intellectual restraint even at the hands of luxury and beauty, to make you feel sorry for this clever and resourced mind.

I don't know why I liked this book so much.

[Caterina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a Great Novel

Maybe it was just me, but I found myself confused by the flashbacks in this book. It’s well written and is a quick read, but the characters seem to be less than three dimensional. I would not recommend this book

[DJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book about a young girl who divides her time between her father's home in Italy and her mother's home in New York. The author described the characters beautifully without belaboring descriptions. This was one book I was sorry to finish.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is funny how these reviews work. I rated this book and Time and Tide by Edna O'Brien three stars but I enjoyed this very brief novel by Llly Tuck so much more. This highly autobiographical book travels through Europe and the United States as Liliane meets the various friends and lovers of her divorced parents. Many pages of the book are biographical sketches of Liliane's many relatives but these literary bon mots held my attention. Short and fizzy if not all that substantial the book kept me entertained during the 3 days i was reading it.

[Virginia Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written autobiography that takes place pre, during and post WW II with lots of cultural and historic references. Not sure what the idea of writing in the present is supposed to add to the story but I don’t like it.

[Kate Wyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book used the word bougainvillea six times. I hate that word.

I have other problems with the book, but they are equally petty.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The autobiographical book reads like an international historical novel. The singing of the author in the audio version, done off-key, is more actual than the melody itself.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't quite make it through to the end. Had to go back to the library with it.

[Alexandria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mentions a bunch of interesting people but tells the stories in the most boring way possible.

[Sheri-lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was asked to read this for discussion with my friend and colleague, Ted. And like a lot of reviews on here, I'm not sure how to rate this book, so the neutral 3 it is.

Ted says, "I want you to read this book and explain it to me." "I wonder at why or how a book like this is written. Does it come out of finding a pile of pictures in your grandmother's house and researching things about the pictures and what you can't find out about you make a story...or do you make write stories and then find some pictures to go with it?"

Good question.

I'm not sure.

I feel like it's more the former than the latter. I also feel like all the side stories of seemingly unimportant people and their relations reinforces the idea that all our lives are these interconnected stories; that the mundane and the extraordinary is what makes us similar but also different; that to tell our life story is often more a telling of very boring facts and references than anything. The last chapter discussion about autobiography is interesting. "...it is impossible to know whether figuration produces reference in a text or whether reference produces the figure." "Autobiography occurs when it involves two persons building their identities though reading each other. This requires a form of substitution--exchanging the writing 'I' for the written 'I'--and this also implies that both persons are at least as different as they are the same." "In this way, I consider autobiography as an act of self-restoration in which the author recovers the fragments of his or her life into a coherent narrative."

This narrative feels incoherent at times...yet not. It's a make you think book. I'm not sure what I think or how I think. I can see why Ted feels the way he does. Maybe I'm just not smart enough for this book. Which oddly, is what Ted said.

[AJourneyWithoutMap · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck is a semi-autobiographical novel in which the author blends fact with fiction, leaving the reader the onerous task of deconstructing and separating the real from the imaginary. While this does not work well for me as a good read, I still find it quite brilliant and intelligent. Careless readers may well come out remembering nothing, with the possibility of branding the book a disappointing read.

The book is about Liliane. But then, it is not so much about her. It is about the people Liliane met and interacted with, the places, events and time that are crucial to her journey. The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck is about a young girl's life in France, how her parents must escape the Nazis, and her transformation into both adulthood and an American way of life. For some it may be a tough task to jump from one character to another, from one period to another, and from one place to another to properly relate everything to its central character. However, author Lily Tuck does a commendable job connecting all the dots which will fully engage readers who persevere with the book.

All in all, the book is intelligently written and the idea brilliantly conceived. But the uniqueness of its concept might well the book's undoing. It needs a great effort not only to understand this fictionalized autobiography but also to keep reading through to the end.