The Liar's Wife

Resumen del libro

A quartet of novellas chronicling the lives of Americans in Europe and Europeans in America, from the award-winning author Mary Gordon.

In the four novellas that make up this absorbing and exquisite collection, Mary Gordon offers beautifully rendered, deeply psychological stories about the relationships between Americans abroad and Europeans in the U.S., historical and contemporary. Here we meet the ferocious Simone Weil during her last days as a transplant to New York City; a vulnerable American grad student who escapes to Italy after her first, compromising love affair; the charming Irish liar of the title story, who gets more out of life than most; and Thomas Mann, opening the heart of a high-school kid in the Midwest. At every turn, Mary Gordon reveals in her characters' interactions those crucial flashes of understanding that change lives forever. Each so richly developed it's hard to believe they fit into novella-size packages, these tales carry us away both as individual stories and as a larger experience of Gordon's literary mastery and human sympathy.