Oblong Books & Music

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Celebrated author Mary-Beth Hughes returns with a knockout collection of stories that are by turns “devastating, poignant, desperate, and true” (Mary Gaitskill).

Best-selling and widely acclaimed author Mary-Beth Hughes, “a writer of dexterity and imagination” (The New York Times Book Review), delivers a seductive, deeply human, and sophisticated story collection about the  universal need to be loved and the complicated imperfections that jeopardize the  ties that bind us. 

The stories in Double Happiness are extraordinary portrayals of the ordinariness of life. By pinpointing those moments of discord when personal needs and  morality clash with circumstances beyond our control, Hughes challenges our concepts of responsibility, trust, resilience, and betrayal. In “Pelican Song,” a  thirty-year-old modern dancer who moonlights as a movie-ticket taker visits her  parents’ picturesque home only to discover that her stepfather has begun to abuse  her too-accommodating mother; “Horse” follows maladjusted honeymooners in Atlantic City whose romantic weekend is saved from emotional catastrophe by a bored horse that refuses to dive from its pedestal into the ocean; and in “Rome,” a mini-holiday in New York City turns from shopping sprees and tea at the Plaza to a young girl’s sharp discovery of her father’s secret life. 

With an elegant blend of humor and pathos, Hughes captures the turning  points in relationships that make us wonder how well we really know the people we love, and ourselves. Full of improbably paired characters whose differences  serve to unearth the vulnerabilities, idiosyncrasies, and compromises that unite and divide us, Double Happiness is a revealing meditation on the fragility of con tentment and the lengths we must go to in order to sustain it.