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 with a character, which in this kind of writing the main character is the narrative voice and which here actively repels familiarity. Kinda of like that super hot girl in your literature of the balkans class who never spoke to anyone or asked any questions but had an aura of faint contempt for everybody in the room. It's attractive, but not going anywhere. (uncomfortable using the word it without qualifying that I mean the voice, not a human being. (not The Voice tv show either. ))
Years ago I loved Ann Beattie's work. Been away a while and returned to her through "The Burning House."Older now, I found many characters and stories shallow, callow and...not very self-aware. Then thought again about the time in which they were written, time when I lived in NY and Maine, and said "Be careful." Beattie is careful with her characters, shallow though they are at times.And she's working settings in which people were what she captures - unfaithful, fickle, questing, wondering.My favorites are "The Burning House," "Greenwich Time" and "Gravity."Well worth the read. Finding some sadness having known some she captures, often with keen craft.
What do You think about The Burning House (1995)?
Interesting snapshots of life among a group of similar, often drunk or stoned lonely people with wide-open, unfinished edges, like the deckle-edged black and white photos mentioned in one of the stories. In another of the odd coincidences that have been occurring in my life of late, Beattie's name was in the crossword I did on the same day I started reading this. I found this and another collection of her stories at an antiquarian bookseller in Manassas, in unedited proofs. I was almost as intrigued by seeing the unedited text as I was in reading the stories.
—Carfig
