Perfect Recall [Hardcover]

Ann Beattie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2001

A moving and beautifully written collection of short stories from the award-winning author of FALLING IN PLACE (Vintage). Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1972. Twenty-eight years later, she received the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is, as the Washington Post said, "one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." The eleven stories in her new work are peopled by characters coming to terms with the legacies of long-held family myths or confronting altered circumstances, new frailty or sudden, unlikely success. Beattie's ear for language, her complex and subtle wit, and her profound compassion are unparalleled. From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations on illness, art, and servitude, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, PERFECT RECALL comprises Beattie's strongest work in years. It is a riveting commentary on the way we live now by a spectacular prose artist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The 1998 publication of Park City, a collection of new and selected stories, sparked a much-deserved revival of interest in Beattie, one of the most underappreciated of major contemporary writers. Now, Beattie rewards longtime fans and new readers alike with 11 deft, pitch-perfect stories. Plunging straight into the living rooms and back yards where her first-name-only protagonists gather to converse, complain, eat, drink and cook, Beattie gets to the evasive, impatient heart of 21st-century living. In clear, graceful prose, she presents a range of characters, from a penniless war veteran who must endure the "revenge of the ordinary world" ("Hurricane Carleyville") to a culinary celebrity who vacations in Key West and anticipates preparing an impromptu meal for President Clinton ("The Big-Breasted Pilgrim"). In "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," Beattie's subtle, satiric wit comes to play as Hopper and Randy, assistants to rich artists, reminisce about the past and creak through the daily motions of living in bodies that have failed them. Similar themes of dependence and vulnerability arise in the emotionally charged "The Women of This World." Adeptly depicting the dynamics between Dale; her ditzy mother-in-law, Brenda; her scholarly husband, Nelson; and her shrewdly malevolent father-in-law, Jerome, Beattie juxtaposes Nelson and Jerome's struggle for perfection in life, music and wine with a terrible tragedy that causes Dale to ruminate on humanity's inherent imperfection. Beattie still captures the zeitgeist like no one else, effortlesslyDor so it seemsDrevealing the sudden intimacies and sweet ironies of a crowded, improbable world. Only when she touches down, light as a trapeze artist, at the end of a tale, does the reader become aware of the perfect arcs she traces. (Jan.) Forecast: Beattie won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. If her mastery of the form is highlighted by booksellers, discerning readersDalready drawn to this title for its colorful, pointillist coverDshould buy.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This just in, so there's not much news: more "perfect" stories from Beattie.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 347 pages
• Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons; 1st edition (January 14, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743211693
• ISBN-13: 978-0743211697
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,780,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, March 1, 2002

By 

Jody M. Keene (the South) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Perfect Recall: New Stories (Paperback)

Ann Beattie's collection The Burning House has always been one of those books I carry around like a security blanket and look to for inspiration and entertainment. I had high hopes for Perfect Recall, but the new stories it contains did not meet my expectations. The minimalist, tight style I adore in The Burning House has given way to a rambling, lengthy style that often seems to detract as much as it adds, and I ended very few of the stories feeling that I had learned something, or even felt something, worthwhile--I felt like I hadn't read just a disappointing Beattie story, which is bad enough, but a disappointing short story.

There are a few stories worth reading, of course. The title story is Beattie at her best, and "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea" is a slow, melancholoy nocturne of a story that left me thinking "THIS is what Beattie is all about." "See the Pyramids" and "Mermaids" have their moments, but I don't think either of them reaches the heights of some of Beattie's former stories.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment!, April 14, 2002

By 

One Fancy Angel "Life-Lover" (Milwaukee) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Perfect Recall: New Stories (Paperback)

I was thrilled to find a new Ann Beattie book (new to me; I'd somehow missed this book in hardcover), and could hardly stand to wait a minute to begin it.

What has happened is that after reading the first two stories, I've already given-up on this collection. THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE got such awful reviews that I didn't buy it, so I was excited to find, I thought, a book that would show Beattie at her best. The first two stories in this collection ramble, are artsy as all get-out, and don't have any of the striking clarity I've always associated with Beattie. Has something happened to her? Has she lost her gift? From the two stories I read, it certainly would seem so. I was so annoyed reading the first two stories that I was tapping my foot as I read, something I just never do. I refuse to make myself finish this book, though I usually feel a terrible compulsion to finish even the worst books. This book is just an utter disappointment to me. I've read the other three reviews here, and I'll read the title story, since it's been well received, but that's about it. What a shame!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars New Stories, March 5, 2001

By 

Jeff (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perfect Recall (Hardcover)

Though this is not one of Beattie's best works, I enjoyed reading Perfect Recall. Many of the stories have delicious endings and moments of clarity for the characters which make the stories worth reading. As always, Beattie has a fine eye for how we humans operate and captures the complexity and quirkyness of life in each of her characters. Because most of her stories take place in either Key West or Maine and involve cooking, I felt they ended up running together in my mind, and I had a hard time viewing them as fresh and new