Starred review from June 1, 2015
Beattie's new collection of stories, her first original volume since Follies (2005) and following the spectacular retrospective gathering, The New Yorker Stories (2010), is graced by a slyly clever title. The state these 15 stories are anchored to is Maine, jutting up away from the rest of the country in rocky, woodsy splendor, which does nothing to keep out the human volatility found everywhere else ( No day failed to contain the unexpected ), while the states of mind her fumbling characters find themselves in range from depressed to enraged to resigned. Beattie is a master at depicting the peculiarly painful valor necessary for contending with troubled family members, spouses, lovers, neighbors, even pets. She is also that rarest of beings, a brilliantly comic literary writer. Some of her hilarity is circumstantial, such as when neighborhood kids break into an empty house and discover a cache of Elvis lamps. Most often, it's her skirmishing dialogue that makes us laugh out loud as she dramatizes everything from an auction of beat-up household goods to a tender encounter between a poet in her seventies and an IRS agent, revelations of gay relationships, and tales about anxious teenager Jocelyn, a budding writer. One narrator muses, The whole world's full of stories, but few can tell them as exquisitely, warmly, or drolly as Beattie. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Much fanfare will attend this stellar collection by Beattie, a writer revered and honored for her keen insights and wit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
Starred review from May 18, 2015
The 15 loosely connected stories in Beattie’s latest collection, set on Maine’s southern coast, feature drifting adults and their rootless offspring at seemingly unimportant moments that are in fact critical. In “What Magical Realism Would Be,” a high school student living with her aunt and uncle rants about summer school. “Writing essays was retarded,” Jocelyn asserts. “It totally was.” Jocelyn prefers nights on the beach with friends. “Road Movie” describes an unlucky tryst at a California hotel; “The Fledgling” shows an ungainly attempt to rescue a wayward bird; Elvis lamps are auctioned off in “The Repurposed Barn,” in which Jocelyn sees her teacher in a new light. “Adirondack Chairs” uses furniture to reflect a couple’s abandoned future; in “The Little Hutchinsons,” a wedding hosted by the titular characters goes awry. In “Missed Calls,” an encounter between a photographer’s widow and a writer distracted by concern for his stepdaughter starts with the widow’s memory of Truman Capote but becomes an unsettling view of the stepdaughter and her family. “Major Maybe,” in which a Portland doctor remembers 1980s New York, begins with a woman getting hit by a car, then weaves its way back to the narrator, her roommate, and the flower in their apartment window. The collection demonstrates Beattie’s craftsmanship, precise language, and her knack for revealing psychological truths. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.