If you wanted to read The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. but haven't read it: skip it and read Beattie's novella. Seriously. It's way better written and has the whole smug-man thing down. Makes you wonder if someone stole someone else's idea... Beattie's short novel is a total page-turner and maste...
i kept looking forward to reading from this book. when i started reading this book i felt like i could know more about stories than i ever have. i felt really good while reading this book. i think that because i felt like this that i tried to read really slowly, in order to drag that feeling ou...
Anne Beattie is one of that school of '70s and '80s writers who painted ordinary America with miniature-level detail, and who marked American realism's last bright point before its long, steady decline into mawkish middle-class self-obsession. Beattie's stories are, above all else, cold and sad a...
Charles picks up a pile of mail and opens first a small blue envelope addressed to him in unfamiliar handwriting. It is a small blue booklet: “Why you didn’t get a Christmas card from us.” He begins reading: “Did you wonder, in all the holiday hassle, why you didn’t get a Christmas card from Caro...
So I was reading the NYT book section and there was a review of Ann Beattie's new book and the reviewer said why isnt she more famous, very underrated american writer etc. Having never heard of her before reading this, my interest was piqued along with the description of her earlier novels being ...
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 w...
Who are these people? What is the plot? Why am I reading this book?I wondered all of those things while reading Picturing Will.Ann Beattie’s writing style is very nice (which is why I'm giving it two stars instead of just one). While the reader doesn’t have to work too hard to get through her sen...