Another You [Hardcover]

Ann Beattie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 1995

To her latest novel, Beattie brings the same documentary accuracy and Chekhovian wit and tenderness that have made her one of the most acclaimed portraitists of contemporary American life. Marshall Lockard, a professor at the local college, is contemplating adultery, unaware that his wife is already committing it.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Successfully avoiding the one-note, affectless deadpan to which her work was in danger of succumbing, Beattie provides plenty of dramatic tension in this absorbing narrative of a man emotionally distanced from his life. Marshall Lockard, youngish professor at a small New England college, is a peevish, condescending loner; his career is at a dead end and his marriage to Sonja is passionless. When he impulsively stops his car to pick up an attractive student, he has a vague idea of starting an affair with her. But the story Cheryl tells him?that her roommate says she's been abused and raped by Jack McCallum, a colleague of Marshall's in the English department?gradually enmeshes Marshall in McCallum's very messy life. Seeing echoes of his own personality in McCallum's passive sadness, Marshall begins slowly to acknowledge the complexities of his life, including the harmful effects of his father's bullying and his mother's early death. Meanwhile, the reader has been puzzling over a series of undated letters interspersed throughout the narrative; written to a woman called Martine (whose identity, when it is finally revealed on a tombstone, brings past and present together), they are penned by an obviously cold, arrogant, manipulative man who signs only his initial. Eventually, the letters hold a clue to Marshall's emotionally crippled personality. Though this novel has a few maladroit episodes (e.g., the true identity of Cheryl's roommate is gratuitously melodramatic), Beattie's writing has a new immediacy and intensity. The enduring effects of childhood trauma, which she explored in her previous novel, Picturing Will, are here conveyed with wit, irony and compassion.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In her latest novel since Picturing Will (LJ 1/90), Beattie again explores the anxieties of the American middle class. Using a deliberately understated narrative voice, she presents the confused world of college professor Marshall Lockheed and his wife, Sonja. As Marshall ponders whether to tell Sonja about his complicated infatuation with a student, Sonja ponders the pros and cons of revealing her brief affair with her boss. Meanwhile, repercussions from their rather unexceptional indiscretions are about to plunge both Lockheeds into some very unusual territory. In the background are Marshall's dying stepmother, a woman with secrets of her own, and a collection of mysterious letters from the past with significant links to the present. Beattie's detached prose captures characters and events photographically: precise images are put forth for the reader to ponder without authorial analysis or elaboration. At its best, this technique stimulates thought and imagination, but it will not appeal to all readers. Nevertheless, this is essential where Beattie's work is admired.
-?Starr E. Smith, Marymount Univ., Arlington, Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 323 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 1st edition (September 5, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679400788
• ISBN-13: 978-0679400783
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,307,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A long and pointless journey, March 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Another You (Paperback)

Ann Beattie has a sharp eye and a clean prose style, but she is not a particularly gifted dramatist. Another You is a remarkably stagnant story that bumps along for three hundred pages without building any sort of momentum. The main character, a college professor named Marshall Lockard, is so self-absorbed and fundamentally unlikeable that it's hard to care what becomes of him. The first half of the book concerns a convoluted plot involving one of Marshall's students and an equally unlikeable colleague. The second, slightly more engaging half focuses on Marshall's family, a mysterious subplot involving his deceased parents and stepmother. The two stories intersect but shed no light on one another. I regret the time I spent reading this book and look forward to the day Beattie returns to writing short stories.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Insulting, July 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Another You (Paperback)

This was the first Ann Beattie book I've read and probably the last one I will ever read. The book was insulting to blacks, Southern people, people from Detroit, college students, and the list goes on. The main characters are so self-absorbed that I didn't feel any sympathy for them or care about their lives. I wish McCallum's wife would've done away with him, Marshall, and Sonja in one fail swoop so the book could've ended sooner!

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most wonderful book I have read in years., March 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Another You (Paperback)

Ann Beattie, as always, offers a poignant and often biting look at the lives of common individuals experiencing life. This novel, like My Life Staring Dara Falcon, illustrates beautifully the solitude, yet interdependence of our lives.