PICTURING WILL. A Novel. [Paperback]

Ann. Beattie (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Random House, (1989)
• ASIN: B000UFG0I6
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections and in John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars UGH!, August 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Picturing Will (Paperback)

After having finished this novel, I have now read six of Ann Beattie's books -- her first four, written in the late 70s and early 80s, and two recent novels ANOTHER YOU (1995) and this book PICTURING WILL (1989). Clearly something happened during the intervening years. Whereas Beattie's early fiction was full of odd characters, delightful non-sequiters, and brilliant dialogue, PICTURING WILL is dull, dull, dull. The characters are totally bland and whereas a muscular plot might have fleshed them out more, there is no plot to speak of. Beattie looks at the lives of character and explains, explains, explains; she doesn't DRAMATIZE. This tendency not to dramatize was brilliantly exploited in her earlier work, which recreated the ennui and anomie of her characters lives in prose that was razor sharp. PICTURING WILL is filled with none-too-original characters doing nothing much in prose that is lackluster and undistinguished. PICTURING WILL is so bad it makes ANOTHER YOU look distinguished.

3.0 out of 5 stars Dream-like, May 4, 2009

By 

BJ Knapp - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Picturing Will (Paperback)

Beattie writes beautifully. But I found this story flowed kind of like a dream that you can vaguely remember when you wake up. I felt that the story didn't really go anywhere.

4.0 out of 5 stars Will's Life, May 2, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Picturing Will (Paperback)

This is a very well-written account of adult lives as perceived through their relationships with a young boy, Will.

The mother and father divorce when Will is young and the first half of the book is devoted to Will's life with his mother. The second half of the book is about Will with his father. The very last part is a flashback - Will is an adult viewing his childhood.

This book is very different from Ann Beattie's characteristic minimalist style writing, and much better!