As someone who is reluctant to read anything more than once [I keep very few books in my home, reselling them all], I can convey my feelings about this book in one sentence: I have read this book over fifteen times. I find something new each time. I find myself thinking about the book at odd times: driving down the road, a casual phrase in a conversation. It is a quiet, poignant little story. Well-told, realistic characters. Read this book. You'll be glad you did.

First off, let me say the movie version of this book, while well acted, chops the story up in ways that kills some of the best things about the book.

This is one of those books that is tough to describe. I've read it several times now and find new things everytime. Beattie does an incredible job of creating these people who walk through their own little world, trying to deal with the hand that life has dealt them. They're just like us, selfish, unaware, worn out in places, but full of humanity. There are acts of kindness, warmth, vulnerability in these people the author has created. This is what makes this book, you follow these people along an episode of their lives and wonder where its going to go. I find that when I take a step back, I question where they end up, but while I'm in it, I don't.

At the heart of the matter is a love story, an awkward, imperfect love story about a man who is obsessed. It drives him through his days, drives him into doing dumb things, and gets his friends and family to roll their eyes.

An excellent read, the first or fourth time around.

themes like the concept and importance of marriage and how music is "the soundtrack of our lives" help make Chilly Scenes of Winter a wonderful, Catcher-in-the-Rye-esque experience. One of my favorites.

I first read this book about twelve years ago and I still go back to it regularly because it makes me laugh, although some of the stories are serious as well. My favorite stories are "Vermont" and "Weekend." If you want to know what the '70s were really like, then here's where you should start.

Ann Beattie's very best ever! Mrs. Beattie has the power to capture the human spirit with words like a child with a butterfly net. Her stories expose a piece of truth that the reader will find lies well hidden within themselves. Each story not only provides insight into the life of a character who appears naked on the page in a brilliant light, but also forces an intraverted look at oneself. Beattie writes what we are afraid to think.

What can a picture tell you about a person? The answer is quite a bit as you view these penetrating portraits of southern writers. A writer's tools are words to convey a story. Photographer Curt Richter uses his tools of lighting, mood, camera and the subjects themselves to reveal a visual story whose impact goes far beyond words.

Over a seven year period, Curt scoured the country taking pictures of those writers associated with the south. His labor was not in vain for he blessed us with outstanding visual views of these writers not seen before. These are not a compilation of formal studio portraits nor are they casual snapshots. You are given a series of sepia toned pictures whose faces, postures, hues and eyes that reveal something more about the subject that meets the eye.

Ralph Ellison looks like an elder statesman as he peers into the lens. Larry King appears to have a haunting quality as his off focus face gives us a smile. Eugene Walter looks like a supplicant in prayer or is he just fooling us? Let your mind and imagination decide as you see this wonderful display of southern authors. For those of you who are collectors of some of their works, you will be delighted with their pictures.

Robert Coles has written a foreward to the book introducing us into the world of southern writers and the culture of the south. Ann Beattie provides us with her observations regarding this collection through her afterword. Now relax, open this book and reflect upon these gifted writers of prose and poetry who have shared their wares with the world.

I have never been so captivated by photographs that truly depict their subjects. I have seen other works by Curt Richter and he truly is the finest portrait photographer of our time. Congratulations on a sensational effort. It came at the right time of year because I am giving this book to all of my friends and family.

It's so wonderful to see a group of photographic portraits that dispense with the current trend of the snapshot and at the same time have the courage not to follow a formula. The photographer is obviously aware of the history of portraiture occuring even before the advent of photography. As they say in "Fiddler on the Roof" -- "tradition." Thank God for some tradition. It seems so avant-garde. I throughly enjoyed the book.

While the photography is great, it was limited to only a couple areas of Maine. I was hoping for more small town, quaint images. The only town featured was one that's not even on the map.

Stunning photographs and poetic/romantic writing. Makes me wish I had gone to Maine (during the summer of course!) while I was in college in New Jersey. This is a special book and it left me wanting more.

On the recommendation of a friend, my wife and I stumbled into a photo gallery in Deer Isle, Maine, last week during our vacation (we are from New York) to see the work of Terrell Lester, not even aware Knopf had recently published this book. We were, in short, completely blown away by his photos, all of which, and more, are collected in this remarkable book, along with four essays of varying interest. Lester's photos are like fine art, to be specific, like the best of the Hudson River School of painters back in the 1800s who created such vivid landscapes, saturated with reds and blues and yellow (and that's just in the sky). His photos of islands, mountains, rocks, lakes, surf, trees and spectacular blueberry fields blazing red in autumn are rich with emotion. They deserve to be, and in fact are, on museum walls. For the most part, they are reproduced well in "Maine: The Seasons," but in this case, you can't tell a book by its cover-- a wonderful (but rather too typical for a Maine book) photo of a father and a son heading off to work in their lobster boat. You won't be disappointed.

Don't read this book expecting any major philosphical revelations. Read it for what it is...a funny slice of dysfunctional rural Vermont where an unlikely and comical cast spend a summer. The letters to advice columnist, Cindi Coeur, alone are well worth the read. The ending gets a little too serious and too intent on providing some sort of life lesson but the vein of humor helps the reader get through to the finale.

I have been accused, I believe fairly, of being a misogynist, so it came as something of a surprise to find that I liked this satirical novel by one of our best female writers better than did the critics. In fact, I liked the book very much and think it belongs right up there with Bonfire of the Vanities and Bright Lights, Big City on the short list of really perceptive social novels of the 80's.

Hildon and Maureen are a quintessential yuppie couple who have moved to Vermont where Hildon publishes Country Daze, a sort of rustic Spy magazine for the New Yorkers who summer in the Green Mountains. Hildon has been carrying on an affair with Lucy Spenser since they were in college; Lucy now writes a spoof advice column for the magazine under the pseudonym of Cindi Coeur. Meanwhile, Lucy has just been jilted by her longtime lover, Les Whitehall, and now her 14 year old TV star niece, Nicole Nelson, has come for a visit while the mother runs off with a 24 year old tennis pro. Beattie spins a savage comedy of manners out of this material. It is both genuinely funny, here's one of Cindi Couer's columns:

Dear Cindi Couer, I understand that small children often exaggerate without thinking of it as a lie. My question is about my son, who has been complaining that his best friend has better lunches than he has. He says that instead of bringing tuna fish sandwiches to school, the boy has a whole tuna. I told him that this was not possible, because a real tuna fish would weigh hundreds of pounds. Nevertheless, my son refuses to eat tuna fish sandwiches anymore, and I feel that tuna sandwiches are better for him than the protein found in the only other sandwich he will eat - pork chop. I am also worried about his telling lies. He refuses to admit that he has made up the story about the tuna. I have questioned him in detail about how this would be possible, and he just continues the lie. He says the boy does not bring the sandwiches in a lunch box, but in a box the size of a bed. Should I discipline him, or just pack tuna sandwiches and insist that he face reality and eat them? A Worried Mom

Dear Worried, It seems to me that you have quite a few options. You could refuse to replace the tuna sandwiches with sandwiches made of pork chops, and substitute something such as quiche, which will get soggy and appeal to no child. You could also get a pig and put it in a cage, telling your son that this way he would have something to rival his friend's tuna fish, and that it is his problem to get it to school. You might also consider the possibility that the other boy is being forced to eat sardine sandwiches and is trying to compensate for his own embarrassment by insisting that they are tuna fish. You may want to ask yourself what your son is missing sat home that makes him have such a strong empathetic reaction with the other boy. You might also consider the possibility that one or both boys needs glasses.

and devastatingly accurate in its depiction of the emptiness behind the facade of modern love.

Everything is surfaces here. People assume roles and pass themselves off as something they are not, the New Yorkers have created a Potemkin Village version of Vermont so that they can pretend to be countrified, folks sign letters Love Always as if it meant Sincerely--and it turns out that it means little more than that for most of them. Everyone is so artificial and their lives so transient that they do not really love one another, not husbands and wives, not mothers and daughters, not longtime companions, not adulterous couples. Their lives are summed up in the title of Nicole's soap opera, "Passionate Intensity"--which is taken from William Butler Yeats' Second Coming: The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity. Love has been replaced by passion; relationships have replaced true commitments.

And so ends the Baby Boomer generation, depthless, childess, loveless & artificial, they are completely atomized. And lest one hold out hope for the next generation, Nicole explains to her aunt that noone has friends anymore, that people sleep together because they are supposed to, and when her aunt asks if she has a "fave rave", responds that it's not cool to like a boy that much anymore. As Hildon says of her:

She needs an education. She ought to have a tutor or something. She's never learned anything.

She knows lyrics to songs and she knows what people are talking about if they say something dirty and she knows who's who on television. She doesn't know anything about the world.

Lucy's generation had, at least, been exposed to and then rejected Western Civilization, American ideals and Judeo-Christian morality. The generation to come is simply being raised in a moral and ethical vaccum and, since nature abhors a vaccum, mass media and pop culture are rushing in to fill the empty space. Beattie amply demonstrates the emptiness of the lives that these people lead and the malignancy of the culture that they have created.

Reading the book, I was struck by how hard it would be for someone to relate to much of it in thirty years. Many references are already dated: Betamax, Cabbage Patch Kids, Bess Myerson, etc., and hopefully, the people themselves will seem like artifacts by then. Having just read several of the great satires from earlier in the Century (Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point, Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, Evelyn Waugh's Handful of Dust), it became obvious that, even if the authors had captured the Zeitgeist perfectly, it is very hard for the modern reader to pick up on all the in jokes and to feel the bite of the satire as their contemporaries must have felt it. But Beattie is writing about things that are all too familiar to us here and now and she writes about them with engaging wit and great perception. I highly recommend this one

GRADE: A

When I think of Miles Davis, the word virtuoso comes to mind. When I think of Ann Beattie's short stories, the music from Miles' classic album "Kind of Blue" plays in my head. Spare, taut, controlled, yet so emotionally stripped down as to be poetic in the truest sense. This is fiction that rings like a tuning fork, humming inaubibly to the fragile souls that inhabit these works. Short stories like "Vermont", "Burning House", and "Where'll You Find Me" resonate with despair and, yet, at the same time tremble with a glimmer of hope. Bawdiness and loudness of voice, a brawling style, does not prevail in these quiet tales. But then again Ms. Beattie isn't trying to be Hemingway. She in her own way moved the short story beyong Hem and Cheever and even Carver, taking it to a realm where readers and writers are innured to listen.

This book was my first encounter with Beattie, and I must say that I was completely taken with her prose and the ease with which she provides us glimpses into her characters' lives. As a reader who revels in the chance to read writers who are technical masters of the short story form, Beattie did not disappoint. What I did find disappointing was that the stories became repetitive in theme and style so that powerful effect of the excellent ones ("Vermont, The Burning House, "Where You'll Find Me") was ultimately diluted by some of the other weaker stories. Finally, it is nice to read a female author who is unashamed to write about the human heart without an artifial device like southern charm or supposed female wackiness, both of which can sometimes be a distraction and detraction from a story

Park City is a big, hefty collection of wonderful short stories from one of our most talented writers of short fiction. Beattie writes with a detached affection for her characters and a wonderful sense of clarity. This is a collection of new stories and the greatest hits from her earlier collection. I read a lot of these stories in the 80s, but I can still remember them. The new ones are fabulous. The characters and their stories will stay with you long after you put this book down.

This is the best book Beattie has written (that I have read, anyway.) The stories in this collection are not all brilliant, but the title story blew me away (read the speech given in the final pages. Wow!)and there are six or seven at that same level. I'm talking about totally original fiction, here, not merely "good" stories; no one else writes stories like Beattie when she is at her best. And at her best, her fiction was as distinguished as anyone's in the early 80s. Read this collection and her novel FALLING IN PLACE.

Ann Beattie's The Burning House is one of the definitive collections of short fiction available today. Beattie's sparse, witty prose defines the minimalist trend of the seventies and eighties, and her characterizations are dead on. This collection inspires, charms, devastates, and all-around entertains--and it's not a long collection. Do yourself a favor: buy The Burning House and read it.

Oops! Please do not use the review that I (Brandon Christian-bchristi@stetson.edu) wrote of Burning House. It is not the book I thought I was writing about... details are wrong. Sorry

Why doesn't anyone read these books? Every time I'm on Amazon I look up intelligent, literate books and NO ONE has written about them. Can't people read books other than those that win the literary prizes.

Anyhow...this is an excellent collection by Beattie. It was her second collection after DISTORTIONS. Although several stories use the present tense and portray emotionally dead people, none of them are the minimalist, four-paragraph type story that crop up in her next collection, THE BURNING HOUSE. All the Beattie trademarks are here: excellent dialogue, sparse but evocative detail, and surprising humor in unlikely spots. I've recently begun to reread this collection in hopes of writing an essay on Beattie's fiction, and I've discovered how finely crafted and structured these stories are. Clearly, she's more than a distinctive prose style. I look forward to PERFECT RECALL, coming out in early 2001.

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!

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.

My reaction to Beattie's collection was similar to Jeff's (see review below). Although I admire Beattie's style and gift for exquisite imagery, I did not love all the stories in this collection equally--particularly the stories set in Key West. Some of them are so crowded with characters and events that I thought they had the potential to be developed into novellas or even novels. My favorite was the title story, "Perfect Recall," set in Maine, about sisters, prodigies, art, money, and illegitimate children raised by stepmothers. One reason I may object to some of the Key West stories is "weather envy"; it has been a harsh winter. But it may be that the rich characters in the Key West stories simply interest me less than the quirkier characters in Maine.