Park City: New and Selected Stories
by Ann Beattie
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Thirty-six stories on various subjects. The story, Dwarf House, is on the life of a dwarf from childhood to adulthood, and Cosmos is a romance between people who meet via the personal columns.Tags
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The cover of this book features a quotation from the New York Times Book Review, relating that "One feels amazed at the confidence, steadiness and quality of [her work]". I thought this was weird before I read this excellent collection of short stories, and think it's even weirder after having finished it. I'm not sure why one should be "amazed."
I was in fact a bit surprised by this book, but only surprised that I'd never heard of Beattie.
She has a way of drawing you into lives that are familiar but strange, frequently familiar for their strangeness. Every now and then lines jump out that both fit into the surrounding narrative and context yet manage despite their subtlety to cast everything that had been built up to that point in a show more different light. I'm not sure whether to call this an effect (if it is, it is one she uses sparingly, and variedly) but it is in any case a gift. Actually, something like this effect may be said to pervade her writing, and is part of what makes it such a pleasure to read, and so fruitfully re-readable. show less
I was in fact a bit surprised by this book, but only surprised that I'd never heard of Beattie.
She has a way of drawing you into lives that are familiar but strange, frequently familiar for their strangeness. Every now and then lines jump out that both fit into the surrounding narrative and context yet manage despite their subtlety to cast everything that had been built up to that point in a show more different light. I'm not sure whether to call this an effect (if it is, it is one she uses sparingly, and variedly) but it is in any case a gift. Actually, something like this effect may be said to pervade her writing, and is part of what makes it such a pleasure to read, and so fruitfully re-readable. show less
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59+ Works 4,245 Members
Ann Beattie was born in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1947. She received a B.A. from American University in 1969 and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1970. She began her writing career when she was just twenty-five, with the short story A Platonic Relationship, published in The New Yorker. Regular contributions to the magazine show more resulted in her first collection of short stories, Distortions, published in 1976. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, was also published that year. Later works include Park City, Another You, Where You'll Find Me, and Walks with Men. Her work was honored with a Guggenheim fellowship in 1978, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1980, and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2005. She has taught at Harvard College, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Virginia. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Reviews
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- Languages
- English, Korean
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
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