Doctor'S House, the: A Novel / Ann Beattie. - Hardcover

Beattie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743212649 ISBN 13: 9780743212649

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

An ear for language of the highest order, profound compassion for characters, an eye for the smallest shifts in the cultural landscape, and a preternatural understanding of motivation and behavior -- Ann Beattie's renowned storytelling abilities, for which she won the 2000 PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize, are on dazzling display in "The Doctor's House." We open this novel to a woman's account of her brother's sexual appetites and his betrayals of his lovers, which he has a need to confess to his sister. Nina, a reclusive copy editor, should have better things to do than to track Andrew's escapades. Since her husband's tragic death, she has become solitary and defensive -- and as compulsive about her brother as he is about sex. When the first movement ends, the melody is taken up by their mother. New shadows and new light fall on Nina's account as painful secrets of life in the house of their father, the doctor's house, emerge. In the dramatic third movement, the brother gives us his perspective, and as Beattie takes us into Andrew's mind, there is the suggestion that Nina is less innocent and less detached than she maintains. Through subtle shifts, "The Doctor's House" chronicles the fictions three people fabricate in order to interpret, to justify, or simply to survive their lives. "Few novelists," said "The Washington Post," "are more adept at creating fictional atmospheres that eerily simulate the texture of everyday life."

About this title

Review:

San Francisco Chronicle Ann Beattie is an expert at probing the essential mysteries of the human character.

Los Angeles Times Ann Beattie's prose is gentle, spare, and incisive....She has loosed a monster in The Doctor's House.

Newsday Authors as varied as Russell Banks and Sue Miller have taken the measure of dysfunctional families in recent years. But not since Albee and Pinter has a domestic scene been subjected to such ferocious, pitiless examination. Beattie makes us read on nonetheless, avid to hear the voices cry out their bitter truths.

Lisa Shea Elle Psychologically charged...The adroit prose in this novel is signature Beattie.

About the Author:

Ann Beattie is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has published six novels and seven story collections. Her work has been included in Best American Short Stories of the Century and in three O. Henry Award collections. It has earned her an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for lifetime achievement in the short-story form. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine, Key West, and Charlottesville, where Beattie teaches writing and literature at the University of Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743212649
• ISBN 13: 9780743212649
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288