Customer Reviews

Perfect Recall: New Stories

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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.

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!

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

Ann Beattie's collection of eleven stories, peopled by closet eccentrics, is aptly titled Perfect Recall. With her particular brand of storytelling, it appears that Beattie has mastered perfect recall, if not total recall, herself. She christens at least one character in each story with it. This, of course, introduces conflict. Everyone's perception of the past is quite different.

I'm most amazed by the tremendous amount of imagery and details Ann Beatty can compress into one short story as well as into one enlightening opening paragraph which serves as the "hook" you can't say no to. Beattie has a unique talent to get what appears to be everything in her writer's mind down and still make her fiction sound very real.

Is it real? Some of it? Fiction writers write what they know and then some but this author's imagination soars with ideas from which spring vivid specifics. Yet all is set down in complete, coherent paragraphs, which admittedly ramble, but you don't care, you indulge.

In fact, ingesting is an ultimate high. Beattie's writing is like conversation with a good friend. You come away feeling better because she chose to include you in her thoughts.

I ordered this story despite the negative consensus of former Beattie fans. Writers must be allowed to spread their wings in new ways and that is what Beattie is doing here. Rising out of the cumulative detail is a touchingly authentic and superbly deep story by Beattie. Brava!

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