by Lily Tuck
I said, “No, it’s still raining in New York. It’s still drizzling. But let’s hope it will stop raining for Leslie’s wedding. Molly, did I tell you how they wrote their own service? How Victor is Jewish and Leslie is Catholic? Except who was it? Roberta? Was it Roberta who said that she heard it would rain through the weekend? But you’re right, Molly, we should really get off the phone now. It’s almost morning and this call is costing you a fortune. Still, thank God, you called, Molly. Thank God, we talked. Talking helps. Poor Inez. I still can’t believe what you said. Inez was such a good friend. Inez was like you, Molly—Inez was one of my closest friends in all the world. Oh, poor Inez. And how did you say they found Inez? Standing up? Was this what you said, Molly? God, Inez. You said they found Inez propped up? Propped up like a what? What was it you said, Molly? A mop?”
Molly said, “A broom.”
About the Author
LILY TUCK was born in Paris. She has published four novels—including The Woman Who Walked on Water, Siam (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and The News from Paraguay (winner of the National Book Award for Fiction)—and a collection of stories, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Fiction, The Paris Review, and the Antioch Review. She lives in New York City.
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PRAISE FOR
Interviewing Matisse, or The Woman Who Died Standing Up
“Tuck has a knack for capturing the meandering quality of real conversation.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Surprising…. Technically audacious.”
—Newsday
“What an ear Lily Tuck has! This novel is like a white-water river running, hitting rocks, frothing, going into eddies, circling back upstream for a moment, then tumbling onward again. Oh, the surface is always the same pretty froth—so that one does not realize what deep and dangerous water one has been in until later. Tuck has written a very funny and completely original book. I loved it!”
—Frances FitzGerald
“Shows a real gift for comic dialogue.”
—Library Journal
“Two middling women (middle-class, middle-aged, middle-brow) talk on the phone for six hours, the pretext a friend’s mysterious death: splendors and miseries of the bourgeoisie as Chamber Theatre, the chamber in question, and in answer, being the human ear. For lack of any power in their lives to. shape or shore up the past, their experiences quite stupefy Molly and Lily, and each entirely fails to hear the other’s cries for help. What an illuminating satire Tuck has written, her hearing so acute, her night-vision so preternatural! The telephone becomes the supremely user-hostile instrument, and two lives pass each other untouched, indeed unsuspected, though both will land in the reader’s heart—hilarious, appalling, profound.”
—Richard Howard
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1991 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
INTERVIEWING MATISSE, OR THE WOMAN WHO DIED STANDING UP. Copyright © 1991 by Lily Tuck. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2006.
Designed by George J. McKeon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tuck, Lily.
Interviewing Matisse, or The woman who died standing up/Lily Tuck.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-06-083284-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-083284-1
1. Middle-class women—Fiction. 2. Middle-aged women—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Telephone calls—Fiction. 5. Bereavement—Fiction. 6. Death—Fiction. I. Title: Interviewing Matisse. II. Title: The woman who died standing up. III. Title.
PS3570. U236I5 2006
813’.54—dc22
2005052696
06 07 08 09 10 RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
EPub Edition © January 2013 ISBN: 9780062032393
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