The Doctor's House
by Ann Beattie
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"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 show more 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."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved show lessTags
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Member Reviews
This is a clever novel of family dysfunction. The "Doctor's house' was ruled by a monster and painful secrets emerge and shift through the varying memories of the wife and two adult children. In this dark tale Ms Beattie still manages to inject humour, irony and wit .
nobody seems to like this book but i loved it. ann beattie is an enormously talented writer.
widowed Nina starts & then others tell story of doc's family
11.02
11.02
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Author Information
59+ Works 4,256 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
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Doctor's House
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 119
- Popularity
- 274,538
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.13)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 2
