The Accomplished Guest - by Ann Beattie (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"Set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, this collection of stories explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging"--<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>* A <i>Washington Post </i>Notable Fiction Book of the Year <p/> A magnificent collection from award-winning author Ann Beattie--"profoundly intriguing and unsettling stories that abound in delectably witty and furious inner monologues, barbed dialogue, ludicrous predicaments, many faceted heartaches, and abrupt upswellings of affection, even love...always on point, funny, and poignant" (<i>Booklist</i>, starred review).</b> <p/>Ann Beattie's "seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony, and consummate cool" is on full display in this astutely observed collection set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, that explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging. In <i>The Accomplished Guest</i>, people pay visits or receive visitors, travel to see old friends, and experience the joys and tolls of hosting company (and of being hosted). In some stories, as in life, what begins as a benign social event becomes a situation played for high stakes. <p/> "Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown" (<i>O, The Oprah Magazine</i>), and the pieces in <i>The Accomplished </i>Guest--featuring recent O. Henry, Pushcart, and <i>Best American Short Story</i> selections--are marked by an undercurrent of loss and an unexpected element of violence, with Beattie's signature mordant humor woven throughout. Some guests provide welcome diversions, others are uninvited interruptions, all are indelibly drawn. <p/> Beattie "punctures her characters' pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades" (<i>The New York Times Book Review</i>). <i>The Accomplished Guest </i>is fresh, funny, and overwhelmingly "brilliant at furnishing the precise level of niggling complexity that is tragicomically real" (<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>).<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown."<br> <b>--Hamilton Cain, <i>O, The Oprah Magazine</i></b><br><br>"Beattie's stories capture the perplexity of people, lost in a world of terrorists and Kindles, as they make their way down what Beattie calls 'the river of life's confusion.'"<br> --<b><i>Publishers Weekly</i></b><br><br>"In a Beattie story, perspective is preeminent, and it's never one you expect. The unwieldiness of human nature, the strangeness of time and circumstance, inevitably shine through."<br> <b>--Megan O'Grady, <i>Vogue</i></b><br><br>"One of America's finest authors--and arguably best living short-story writer."<br> <b>--Heidi Julavits, <i>Interview </i></b><br><br>"She is brilliant at furnishing the precise level of niggling complexity that is tragicomically real."<br> <b>--Joan Frank, <i>The San Francisco Chronicle</i></b><br><br>"She punctures her characters' pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades, though few, if any, have matched her seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony and consummate cool."<br> <b>-<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><br><br>"The John Cheever of her generation, Beattie has long chronicled the emotional foibles of [the] upper-middle-class... with sharply chiseled wit; in these 13 new stories, travel or a visit of some sort is the common thread, mortality the common theme."<br> --<b><i>Kirkus</i></b><br><br>"These gorgeously complicated, psychologically astute tales are catalyzed by holiday gatherings, weddings, birthday celebrations, and reunions, joyous occasions wildly derailed by divorce, sibling rivalry, generational clashes, financial disasters, violence, and medical emergencies. The directions in which these encounters veer are beyond unexpected, thanks to Beattie's puckish imagination... Beattie's profoundly intriguing and unsettling stories abound in delectably witty and furious inner monologues, barbed dialogue, ludicrous predicaments, many faceted heartaches, and abrupt upswellings of affection, even love... always on point, funny, and poignant."<br> --<b>Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)</b><br>
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