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About
Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1972. Twenty-eight years later, she received the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.
The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances -- new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled.
From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.
The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances -- new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled.
From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.
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Reviews
"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."
Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times Book Review
"...Beattie has become an expert at probing the essential mysteries of human character."
Conan Putnam, San Francisco Chronicle