Latuchie, Karen 1954-

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LATUCHIE, Karen 1954-

PERSONAL: Born 1954. Education: Attended Bennington College and Barnard College.

ADDRESSES: Home—Jersey City, NJ. Agent—c/o Author Mail, W. W. Norton Co., Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110.

CAREER: Alfred A. Knopf (publishing house), New York, NY, member of staff for 25 years.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellowship in fiction, New York Foundation for the Arts; residential fellowships, MacDowell Center and Blue Mountain Center.

WRITINGS:

The Honey Wall, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2004.

Short fiction has appeared in such journals as Paris Review, Southwest Review, and Confrontation.

SIDELIGHTS: Karen Latuchie's first novel, The Honey Wall, is a story of stormy, intertwined lives. Nina, an eccentric engineer who reluctantly left New York City to live in rural Vermont with her boyfriend, Tony, a painter and professor, maintains a long-term, love-hate relationship with him. Bill, an older neighbor, confides his own story of an affair forty years ago with his brother's French wife and his subsequent estrangement from his family, inspiring Nina to deal more openly with the flaws in her own romantic relationship. Her feelings about Tony's infidelities and her own tendency to repeat past mistakes are highlighted by Bill's story of the consequences of his brash actions.

Although many reviewers enjoyed The Honey Wall, a Publishers Weekly critic remarked that the "painful patterns" Nina and Tony keep repeating are "wearying for readers and characters alike." A Kirkus Reviews critic similarly commented that the "honey wall" of hidden bees of the book's title, meant to convey the "erotic repercussions of illicit affairs," is a "belabored metaphor." The same critic, however, found the story "wonderfully streamlined and unsentimental." Joanna M. Burkhardt, writing in Library Journal, called the book "a vibrant picture of parallel lives, examining love, passion, dependency, and the long-term effects of a single moment in time." Allison Block concluded in her Booklist review of Latuchie's book that The Honey Wall is "a literary page-turner."