The Paris of the 1860s is a time of change for Rose Bazelet. A widow living in a neighborhood marked for improvement by the Emperor Napoleon, she takes a stand and vows never to leave her family home. She spends her days reliving memories of her husband and family in the house she has come to love as much as the people who inhabited it.

The Paris of the 1860s is a time of change for Rose Bazelet. A widow living in a neighborhood marked for improvement by the Emperor Napoleon, she takes a stand and vows never to leave her family home. She spends her days reliving memories of her husband and family in the house she has come to love as much as the people who inhabited it.

In this hilarious, sorrowful, intelligent and irresistible page-turner, Willa Jacobs has the best friend of a lifetime in Jane Weston. When Ben, a close friend from high school, returns to Willa's life, the delicate balance of friendship and love is tipped askew.

In this hilarious, sorrowful, intelligent and irresistible page-turner, Willa Jacobs has the best friend of a lifetime in Jane Weston. When Ben, a close friend from high school, returns to Willa's life, the delicate balance of friendship and love is tipped askew.

With her critically acclaimed debut novel, STILL LIFE WITH HUSBAND, Lauren Fox established herself as a wise and achingly funny chronicler of domestic life and was hailed as “a delightful new voice in American fiction, a voice that instantly recalls the wry, knowing prose of Lorrie Moore” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Fox’s new novel glitters with these pleasures --- fearless wordplay, humor, and nuance --- and asks us the question at the heart of every friendship: What would you give up for a friend’s happiness?
 
For Willa Jacobs, seeing her best friend, Jane Weston, is like looking in a mirror on a really good day. Strangers assume they are sisters, a comparison Willa secretly enjoys. They share an apartment, clothing, and groceries, eking out rent with part-time jobs. Willa writes advertising copy, dreaming up inspirational messages for tea bags (“The path to enlightenment is steep” and “Oolong! Farewell!”), while Jane cleans houses and writes poetry about it, rhyming “dust” with “lust,” and “clog of hair” with “fog of despair.” Together Willa and Jane are a fortress of private jokes and shared opinions, with a friendship so close there’s hardly room for anyone else. But when Ben, Willa’s oldest friend, reappears and falls in love with Jane, Willa wonders: Can she let her two best friends find happiness with each other if it means leaving her behind?