If you wanted to read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. but haven't read it: skip it and read Beattie's novella. Seriously. It's way better written and has the whole smug-man thing down. Makes you wonder if someone stole someone else's idea... Beattie's short novel is a total page-turner and maste...
i kept looking forward to reading from this book. when i started reading this book i felt like i could know more about stories than i ever have. i felt really good while reading this book. i think that because i felt like this that i tried to read really slowly, in order to drag that feeling ou...
Anne Beattie is one of that school of '70s and '80s writers who painted ordinary America with miniature-level detail, and who marked American realism's last bright point before its long, steady decline into mawkish middle-class self-obsession. Beattie's stories are, above all else, cold and sad a...
Charles picks up a pile of mail and opens first a small blue envelope addressed to him in unfamiliar handwriting. It is a small blue booklet: “Why you didn’t get a Christmas card from us.” He begins reading: “Did you wonder, in all the holiday hassle, why you didn’t get a Christmas card from Caro...
So I was reading the NYT book section and there was a review of Ann Beattie's new book and the reviewer said why isnt she more famous, very underrated american writer etc. Having never heard of her before reading this, my interest was piqued along with the description of her earlier novels being ...
Hard to rate. The stories are all cool and distant and very cleanly built; sharp corners and perfectly shaped ikea pegs. I like the minimalist MFA type writing generally, and enjoyed the experience of reading this, but (and maybe this is a personal failing) I like to have a sense of familiarity w...
Who are these people? What is the plot? Why am I reading this book?I wondered all of those things while reading Picturing Will.Ann Beattie’s writing style is very nice (which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of just one). While the reader doesn’t have to work too hard to get through her sen...
A collection of short fiction, twelve works in all, including two never-before-published novellas. Here are disconnected marriages and uneasy reunions, nostalgic reminiscences and sudden epiphanies--a remarkable and moving collage of contemporary lives.
To her latest novel, Beattie brings the same documentary accuracy and Chekhovian wit and tenderness that have made her one of the most acclaimed portraitists of contemporary American life. Marshall Lockard, a professor at the local college, is contemplating adultery, unaware that his wife is alre...
These fifteen stories by Ann Beattie garnered universal critical acclaim on their first publication, earning Beattie the reputation as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction. Today these stories -- "A Vintage Thunderbird;" "The Lawn Party, " " La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans," to na...
They stand together on the deck that extends far over the grassy lawn that slopes to the lake, and he reads and she looks off at the water. When she was a little girl she would stand on the metal table pushed to the front of the deck and read the letters aloud to her father. If he sat, she sat. L...
Mrs. Terhune, who had no nickname, and whose first name was rarely spoken, had supplied him with homemade soup and oyster crackers over the last few years, receiving a handsome check from Duff’s cousin at the beginning of each month for her efforts. She was seventy-four and quite able to continue...
Nixon Mrs. Nixon Reads The Glass Menagerie The four characters of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie are a mother, her daughter, her son, and a “gentleman caller.” In his notes describing them, Williams puts forth some of their inherent contradictions. Amanda, the mother, has “endurance and...
There was no background information on any of the staff, so for most of the story she was going to have to rely on interviews. She wanted to do a good job, because she wanted to move on from Vermont to an important paper like the Boston Globe. She needed some more impressive press clips before sh...
His aunt was in Key Biscayne for the winter. The night before, they had trained the car headlights on the stump where she kept a jar with the house key hidden inside. Leaving New York had been a sudden whim; all day he had been thinking about the farm, and when he had mentioned it late at night t...