My Life, Starring Dara Falcon (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Beattie, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679781323 ISBN 13: 9780679781325

Publisher: Vintage, 1998

Synopsis

Dara Falcon is brilliant. She is manipulative. She is seductive. She makes things happen. She is someone for whom the novel's narrator, Jean Warner, is a perfect complement. Jean, an appealing but unformed young woman, is an only child brought up by an aunt after her parents' death. She has married into a large New England family, in which she happily -- if somewhat passively -- immerses herself. Until Dara Falcon arrives in town. Almost immediately they are friends; almost immediately everything about Dara fascinates Jean -- Dara's secret and perfect room, her past, her clothes, her acting career, her unabashed assault on the town's men. And almost immediately the ordinary stresses and strains of the family Jean has idealized become apparent as Dara insinuates herself into their lives. Suddenly Dara is everywhere -- moving in with the man who may drive the family's business under; writing mysteriously to Jean's favorite and supposedly happily married brother-in-law; horning in on Jean's part-time typing job; setting herself up as the star of the local play. And soon Jean's life, her marriage, her very idea of herself, have been dramatically wrenched out of their seemingly innocent, if unexamined, balance, sending her off in uncharted directions.

About this title

About the Author:

Ann Beattie lives in Maine and Key West, Florida. Her latest novel, Park City: New and Selected Stories will be published by Knopf in June 1998.

From the Inside Flap:

In her latest novel, the author of Another You combines intensely realistic description and an effortless command of mood to examine the treacherous difference between love and fascination--between what we know about other people and what we think we know. Dara Falcon is someone other people think they know. Charismatic and theatrical, she has no sooner arrived in a New England town than she is wreaking havoc in the lives of her new friend Jean and her family. As Ann Beattie follows Dara's antics, she braids subplots and vibrant characters into a work that is compassionate, tartly funny, and teeming with life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0679781323
• ISBN 13: 9780679781325
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320