Synopses & Reviews
Ann Beattie is one of the foremost story writers of her generation. When her first collection appeared in 1976, she became an avatar of that time. Younger than Raymond Carver (she published her first story in "The New Yorker" when she was twenty five), she and he were the giants of the genre.
Now a PEN/Malamud lifetime achievement award-winner (previous winners include John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Eudora Welty), Beattie is about to launch a new collection of twelve stories in hardcover, as contemporary in tone and as powerful as any of her previous work. The popularity of short fiction is growing, as the success of collections by Annie Proulx, Melissa Bank, and Lorrie Moore confirm, and new audiences are being reached through on-line sites. Beattie's ear for language, subtle wit, and profound compassion for her characters distinguish her as the undisputed master of the form.
Review
Diane Roberts The Atlanta Journal-Constitution This collection is sleek, urbane, eminently readable...Beattie beats Updike any day for elegance of style and profundity of wit. Intelligence combines with sympathy to create a first-rate collection.
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Jennifer Schuessler The New York Times Book Review So vivid and beguiling is Beattie's writing that it isn't until you look again that you realize how rarely she reaches for metaphors or other figures of speech, and how little she needs to...More often than anyone has a right to, Ann Beattie nails it.
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Conan Putnam San Francisco Chronicle ...Beattie has become an expert at probing the essential mysteries of human character.
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The Washington Post Book World One of our era's most vital masters of the short form.
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Mark Levine Men's Journal The stories are always brilliantly real and slightly askew...Add to her total recall the gift of perfect pitch and what you get is indelible writing.
Synopsis
A collection of striking short stories filled with memorable characters from award-winning author Ann Beattie. Peopled by characters struggling with second marriages, abandoning artistic aspirations, or coming to terms with the betrayal of their own expectations, this collection of eleven stories from Ann Beattie makes it strikingly clear why she is known as one of American literature's most adept explorers and interpreters of the unraveling edges of life (Miami Herald).
From the elegiac story The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea, in which two men trade ruminations about the odd experience of being cared for by those you are meant to serve, to The Big-Breasted Pilgrim, wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, expressing Clinton's desire to dine at his house, to two stories in which family myths turn out to be both inaccurate and prescient, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's most ambitious and complex work yet.
Synopsis
Peopled by characters struggling with second marriages, abandoning artistic aspirations, or coming to terms with the betrayal of their own expectations, this collection of eleven new stories from Ann Beattie makes it strikingly clear why she is known as one of "American literature's most adept explorers and interpreters of the unraveling edges of life"
(Miami Herald). From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations about the odd experience of being cared for by those you are meant to serve, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, expressing Clinton's desire to dine at his house, to two stories in which family myths turn out to be both inaccurate and prescient, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's most ambitious and complex work yet.
About the Author
Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections, in John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and in Jennifer Egan’s The Best American Short Stories 2014. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She was the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine and Key West, Florida.
Table of Contents
ContentsHurricane Carleyville
The Big-Breasted Pilgrim
Mermaids
Cat People
The Women of This World
The Infamous Fall of Howell the Clown
See the Pyramids
In Irons
Coydog
Perfect Recall
The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea
The Big-Breasted Pilgrim