Reviews for The Darling And Other Stories

The average rating for The Darling And Other Stories based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-03-14 00:00:00 Kenneth Lynch Who can keep up with Ann Beattie? How many gazillion stories has she written? Why is there a faux-looking deer on the hardcover edition of this book, and a droopy-eyed dog on the paperback edition? These are mysteries I cannot begin to fathom (Leonard Nimoy, where are you?). Nor, exactly, can I fathom how these stories work so well, how in their deceptive simplicity they lull you into a sense of plain enjoyment, then take a few unexpected turns and you wind up someplace unexpected. Favorite so far is "Just Going Out," which starts out in the first person from the perspective of an adult re-examining a series of incidents from her childhood, then breaks into the third person mid-story, and takes some very odd twists indeed. The main character is a writer, and so this switch of point of view is self-conscious but it strangely doesn't undermine the "continuous waking dream" of this story, only enhances it. "Duchais" is also very strong in its portrayal of an eccentric professor, and the student who finds himself entangled in his life. "Find and Replace" starts off really well, with an engaging if embittered narrator whose recently-widowed mother is about to move in with her neighbor, whom she barely knows. It sags toward the end with its pivotal scenes at a rental car agency (even Beattie can't pull this off, needs to upgrade to a bigger climax). One other quibble is with her propensity to rely on musical allusions in the following formulaic way, "I drove to Venice, singing along with Mick Jagger about beasts of burden"; "Sting was on the radio, singing about fields of barley." But more than making up for it are great lines like these: "He wore a silver stud in one ear and had little, bony hands that looked vestigial."

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-14 00:00:00 Matthew Davis 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.