Trompe l'Oeil
Authors: Nancy Reisman
Praise for
The First Desire
“Accomplished. . . . Reisman's sumptuous prose, and her canny knowledge of the corrosive ways an average family can come apart, make
The First Desire
a lovely, absorbing companion.”
â
Entertainment Weekly
(editor's choice)
“Reisman's hypnotic prose makes her . . . characters live. And her sympathy and wealth of detail make the Cohens' world our own: specific, inescapably flawed, unpredictably meaningful and very, very real.”
â
People
“Only fiction can feel as real as thisâand only in the right hands. . . . You needn't be from Buffalo to be swept away by
The First Desire
. You need only be from a family.”
â
USA Today
“A book of rhythms and reveries . . . rich in atmosphere. . . .
The First Desire
is a mystery story, left unsolved because the mystery is identity itself.”
â
New York Times Book Review
“Reisman's first novel is mesmerizing . . . . Reisman demonstrates a rare, poetic understanding of family dynamics . . . [and] writes with beauty and precise imagery . . . . This realism, subtly laced with tenderness and compassion, distinguishes a novel whose addictive embrace continues after the last page has been turned.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“A debut of luminous, distinctive quality . . . . This is a writer quietly taking her own bold course, and to travel with her as she does is a joy.”
â
Boston Globe
“Haunting. . . . Reisman's genius [is having] produced a book that generates its own world and holds the reader captive, willingly, to its landscape. Reisman creates this miracle through the power of her writing.”
â
San Francisco Chronicle
“A continuing testament to the paradoxical ease with which family ties unravel. . . . Intensely affecting and thought-provoking.”
â
Washington Post Book World
“A superb new writer. . . . Reisman, whose sensually charged, often outright stunning style strongly evokes Virginia Woolf . . . proves herself a rare master of internal drama, able to isolate the moment that effects a sea change within a lifetime of compromise.”
â
Vogue
Copyright © 2015 Nancy Reisman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and Brooklyn, New York
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reisman, Nancy, 1961-
Trompe l'oeil: a novel / Nancy Reisman. -- First U.S. edition.
pages; cm
ISBN 978-1-941040-04-1 (ebook)
1.
 Â
Dysfunctional families--Fiction. 2.
 Â
Loss (Psychology)--Fiction. 3.
 Â
Marital conflict--Fiction. 4.
 Â
Grief--Fiction. 5.
 Â
Domestic fiction.
 Â
I. Title.
PS3568.E5135T76 2015
813'.54--dc23
2014045523
First US edition 2015
Interior design by Diane Chonette
for Jeanne, Linda, and David for Rick
& always, for Robert and Rena
CONTENTS
Prospettiva
Francesco Borromini (c.1652â53)
PALAZZO SPADA
Rome, the first time: imagine wandering the historic center, the centuries crowding together, tourists in bright scarves speaking languages you can only glean, Vespas cutting fast around the clustered pedestrians. Turn a corner, another, onto a momentarily quiet street: here's one more residential palace, almost tucked away. A doorway, a hall, a courtyard where you'll find a scattering of fruit trees. And in the courtyard, in this city of arched passageways, yet another arched passageway opens before you. This one appears as an alluring question, suggesting elegant spaces beyond, perhaps a dinner table set for eight, a Persian carpet; or a music room, a piano, tall windows. From the courtyard, you approach. Four sets of double columns flank the arch, and repeating rows of blue squares cover the curved ceiling, echoing the floor's square tiles. At the passageway's far end, a statueâa male nude in centurion's headgearârises in profile, one arm extended forward, one leg extended back, as if
he is in motion through that other corridor. A good distance, it seems, from the courtyard's exterior arch. Beside the orange trees, the museum guideâstylish, middle-aged, lipsticked, a woman like many women in Romeâsmokes a cigarette and says,
Yes, I will show you
. She gestures toward the passageway. The archway and second hall beckon, but she does not usher you in. Instead the woman hands you her cigarette and enters the passageway as you remain beside the trees. She steps forward, though as she moves, the archway ceiling seems to press down on her, the space itself shrinking, forcing her to stoop. A quick shock, an architectural joke: it's a foreshortened stage, the far end child-sized, the statue a miniature. The woman steps back out and reclaims the cigarette; and now, again, defying you and what you have just seen, the space reasserts itself as the long, high-ceilinged hall, the unfurling space a deft false promise. Andâtooâa wish?