I had to force myself to finish this book. Just as I was going to put it down, "something big" happened, and I thought the story would pick up and things would be resolved. WRONG! I agree that none of the characters were likeable. In fact, they were all pretty mean people. So many things were left undone. I have no idea what happened to these characters and at the end, I didn't care.

Reading this marvelous book I found myself asking the same question over and over until I was nearly shouting it out loud: why isn't Ann Beattie bigger than she is?

Seriously, folks, Falling in Place is an extraordinary book and deserves to be counted among post-WWII 20th century American classics. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But few books succeed as this book does in both capturing their era (in this case the malaise days of the late 1970s) and speaking to all ages.

This is the story of how one family, no more or less dysfunctional than anyone¡¯s, manages to do just the opposite of the title, namely, fall completely apart. It is about family whose members forget they love each other --or forget how to love each other-- until it is too late. The book is a tragedy writ both large and small.

In short, not even Cheever does a better job of exposing the mix of boredom, depravity, lies and heartbreaking affection behind the picket fences of suburbia. And to top it all off Beattie manages to deal with the then trendy "battle of the sexes" without taking sides --and remember this she did nearly three decades ago. This novel needs to be rediscovered. Perhaps, its fate is due to Beattie's overshadowing success in short fiction. But there is room for both Beatties. There must be.

I knew someday I would be compelled to write a review of this book. I just had no idea it would be today. So here I am killing time on Amazon when I find out that this, one of my favorite novels, is going out of print? So naturally, I had to....

I also notice the extreme polarity of opinion to Beattie's novels in the reviews below. One has to be in the right frame of mind to read Beattie, who when she wrote 'Falling in Place,' was just coming out of what the critics had called the 'minimalist' movement. Beattie's prose is quite terse, giving the reader a feeling fo averageness. Why? She is quite a realist and herein lies the hidden beauty in her words. In Beatties world the characters just are; They are not likeable or unlikeable and that is the point. No one in life is quite one or the other. And her words. At length, here's a passage from page 51:

Why Spangle? Because there was no one like him, that was part of it. One day, he had taken her hand, before they were even out of bed, and asked if he could hold it all day. When they had to go to the bathroom, they walked back to the apartment, so they wouldn't have to let go of eachothers hands. They had walked along swinging hands. They had propped their elbows on a tabletop and hand-wrestled. He had kissed her hand, rubbed it. "I'm pretending I can keep you," he said. "I'm pretending it's as easy as this."

The reader reads "Falling in Place" to fall in love with prose and characters, not plot and action. And my, there are plenty of characters worthy of attention here. Spangle, the all-too-grown up slacker, Mary, the dreary teenage girl obsessed with Peter Frampton, and Cynthia, the depressed summer-school teacher who, no matter how she tries, can feel nothing but contempt for her students.

Honestly, this book is about the intertwining lives of several wandering souls and if you want plot, it's not here. If, like me, you can't help falling in love with beautiful, idiosyncratic, life-affirming characters and honey-sweet prose, pick this up. All to regretfully, you'll have to get it used.

Why did this stellar author write this insipid book? I could not relate to any of the numerous, vapid characters whose names and importance quickly escaped my memory and left me wondering time and again: who is he? who is she? And why am I trying so hard to like this book?

My book group was very disappointed with this book. Although the premise and the character's dilemma were interesting and thought-provoking, they felt the book needed more momentum. I was glad to see that Jean finally realized her own worth; but somehow it was hard to feel lots of empathy for her.

This is a great book from Ann Beattie. It touches on many themes: friendship, betrayal, the safe but static family lives of people etc. But ultimately it is the narrator as well as the reader's fascination with Dara Falcon that propels us deeper and deeper into this 'web' of events. The larger than life portrayal of Dara Falcon is believable and a terrific accomplishment for the writer. Read this book.

After having finished this novel, I have now read six of Ann Beattie's books -- her first four, written in the late 70s and early 80s, and two recent novels ANOTHER YOU (1995) and this book PICTURING WILL (1989). Clearly something happened during the intervening years. Whereas Beattie's early fiction was full of odd characters, delightful non-sequiters, and brilliant dialogue, PICTURING WILL is dull, dull, dull. The characters are totally bland and whereas a muscular plot might have fleshed them out more, there is no plot to speak of. Beattie looks at the lives of character and explains, explains, explains; she doesn't DRAMATIZE. This tendency not to dramatize was brilliantly exploited in her earlier work, which recreated the ennui and anomie of her characters lives in prose that was razor sharp. PICTURING WILL is filled with none-too-original characters doing nothing much in prose that is lackluster and undistinguished. PICTURING WILL is so bad it makes ANOTHER YOU look distinguished.

Picturing Will offers an perceptive insight into the minds of serveral interesting characters from several different perspectives. The pace is fast, the story interesting, the character development solid if somewhat fragmented. A wonderful insightful book which looks into the mind of a child, the mind of a step-parent, the mind of a divorced mother, and several other characters as well. Mostly though the book is about the effects of others actions on each other and the writing and style is masterful. Highly recommended especially to those unfamiliar with fragmented families.

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.

It's a three generation family story, told from three different points of view by a sister, a mother and a brother. At the beginning the brother is looking up his old high school girl friends, having sex with them, and telling his sister about it. He's still doing the same thing at the end. The mother is alcoholic and the sister is depressed. This is all the fault of the terrible father.
Beattie takes rather to much to heart the disclaimer at the front of the book that it is not intended to have any "resemblance to actual events,locales or persons."
There's a certain vagueness about everything that I found irritating. Much is made of the fact that the father is a doctor (which makes him arrogant and a bad father and a bad husband) but we never understand what his specialty is. The mother's problems are laid to the oppression of women in the fifties, so time frame would be important, but we are never told what date the action is taking place in. The only work any character does that is described in detail is that of Nina, who is a copy editor. The characters (except for the nasty doctor) can spend very little time working because they're always travelling to meet lovers drinking coffee or wine or eating out, or in pychotherapy. We are never told how much anything costs.
None of this would matter in a short story but by the end of 280 pages is gets tedious. Beattie should read Balzac or Sue Grafton.

I had to interject that I've read lots of far worse contemporary fiction. The novel does make it clear that the kids were born in the late 50s (there are references to their 70s high school and 40-ish current age) and, in our mobile society, it's entirely plausible that an independent computer wizard could catch a commuter jet on the weekend. I agree the father isn't a well-developed character, but such sadism does exist. Maybe as a Nina-like character (an editor who loves carriage houses), I could relate more than most. Not the best book I've ever read, but I had no trouble finishing; definitely not the worst out there..

I started reading "The Doctor's House" as bedtime reading but soon realized that the book required real brainpower to appreciate, more than I could give it in the drowsy state that seems to suffice for many other contemporary novels. There's genius at work in the author's technical accomplishment here, bringing to life on the page three consciousnesses that are as articulate and complex as actual complicated humans (blindspots and warts included). This novel is narrated just as much as your own life is--which is to say zilch. In this interrelated triptych, as in life, you're on your own to "get it"; Beattie leaves it to you so see as far as you can and to construe as much as you can. The book serves as a model of what fiction can do far better than any of the other arts--probing the inner reality (thoughts, emotions, perceptions, idiom) of its characters. Norman Mailer wrote years ago that an author couldn't create a character more intelligent or complex than he himself was. Thank goodness Beattie has the capacity to create such compelling characters. It's up to readers to meet her at that level of sophisticated perception.