Perfect Recall: New Stories - Softcover

Beattie, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743211707 ISBN 13: 9780743211703

Publisher: Scribner, 2002

Synopsis

Peopled by characters struggling with second marriages, abandoning artistic aspirations, or coming to terms with the betrayal of their own expectations, this collection of eleven new stories from Ann Beattie makes it strikingly clear why she is known as one of "American literature's most adept explorers and interpreters of the unraveling edges of life" (Miami Herald). From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations about the odd experience of being cared for by those you are meant to serve, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, expressing Clinton's desire to dine at his house, to two stories in which family myths turn out to be both inaccurate and prescient, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's most ambitious and complex work yet.

About this title

Review:

The Washington Post Book World One of our era's most vital masters of the short form.

Jennifer Schuessler The New York Times Book Review 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.

Conan Putnam San Francisco Chronicle ...Beattie has become an expert at probing the essential mysteries of human character.

Mark Levine Men's Journal The stories are always brilliantly real and slightly askew...Add to her total recall the gift of perfect pitch and what you get is indelible writing.

Diane Roberts The Atlanta Journal-Constitution This collection is sleek, urbane, eminently readable...Beattie beats Updike any day for elegance of style and profundity of wit. Intelligence combines with sympathy to create a first-rate collection.

Synopsis:

A moving and beautifully written collection of short stories from the award-winning author of FALLING IN PLACE (Vintage). 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. She is, as the Washington Post said, "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743211707
• ISBN 13: 9780743211703
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352