Follies: New Stories Book

Ann Beattie is one of my favorite short story writers, and this book, though not as gratifying as Park City (one of my favorites of all time), has some excellent stories. The characters in Beattie's stories are always wonderfully drawn, and placed into domestic situations to which readers can relate: a random car crash leading to an unlikely relationship, a daughter with plenty of her own problems trying to steer her elderly mother away from what she believes might be a harmful relationship, a college student who discovers some unsettling truths about a professor who seems to have an enviable life, a family dealing with a parent's dementia. Stories are peppered with addicts, an ex-spouse and child of an over-the-top PETA fanatic, a filmmaker with delusional & violent tendencies.

One of my favorite stories takes place in Charlottesville, Virginia and Beattie perfectly captures that blue blood town in wonderful passages such as these: "There were stores that sold hand-shaped imported cheeses wrapped in grape leaves, oils in handblown bottles as expensive as if you were buying great perfume, satin baby booties hardly wider than a woman's thumb. Grown women walked around in pastel-colored flats; there were the Muffies and Buffies and Fluffies (their dogs). There were the Southern boys on their lunch hour, with tasseled loafers and starched pale blue button-downs." Anyone who's been to Charlottesville will recognize the town in this rendering.

One story immerses the reader right into the middle of the craziness that is Alzheimer's: "The Rabbit Hole as Likely Explanation." Confusion reigns even in the reading and when the reader is about to give up, the author comes back to the real world and deals with all the infighting between family members about how to deal with the parent.

Beattie has mastered the art of the detail, and ties them into complex stories that are not easily summed up. When trying to tell about one of these stories to my husband, I realized it was much too complicated to explain succinctly. I finally gave up and told him he should read the story himself.

The only story that annoyed me was "Apology for a Journey Not Taken: How to Write a Story," which seems to be about how writers want to avoid writing, but how a story materializes all around them during their avoidance. Maybe? I often get impatient with writers who try to be more experimental, but then I've never enjoyed those kinds of writers and tend to steer clear of them. Luckily, Ann Beattie's stories don't veer too often into that experimental fiction territory. They're usually about people we can relate to, and the predicaments people often create for themselves.