The Washington Post Book World One of our era's most vital masters of the short form.
Perfect Recall
A Story by Ann Beattie
Description
A collection of striking short stories filled with memorable characters from award-winning author Ann Beattie.
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 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.
Reviews
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.
