Customer Reviews

Another You

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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.

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!

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.