Double Happiness

Short stories about the universal need to be loved, from “a quietly gorgeous writer” (The New York Times Book Review).

In “Pelican Song,” a thirty-year-old modern dancer who moonlights as a movie ticket taker visits her parent’s picturesque home to discover that her stepfather has begun mistreating her too-accommodating mother. “Horse” follows maladjusted honeymooners in Atlantic City whose romantic weekend is saved from emotional catastrophe. A holiday in New York City turns from shopping sprees to a young girl’s sharp discovery of her father’s secret life in “Rome.”

With an elegant blend of humor and pathos, Mary-Beth Hughes captures the turning points in relationships that make us wonder how well we really know those we love. Double Happiness is a revealing meditation on the fragility of contentment and the lengths we must go to in order to sustain it, and “[an] intensely moving collection” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

“Excellent.” —The New Yorker