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glendaleereads's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the short stories but some of these stories were so frustrating because the characters were difficult to like (not all but most) but if an author is making you feel that she’s doing something right in her writing. So I recommend this book if you want to take a break from novels and read some fast paced interesting short stories.
alanfederman's review
3.0
I had never read anything by Ann Beattie before this book and my decision to pick it up was brought about by an interview I read with her in The Paris Review. She really intrigued me as a writer; however I'm not sure this was the best book to begin with. One of the cover blurbs compared it to a Miles Davis boxed set and I think that's appropriate, both in terms of scope and breadth as well as not a great way to get introduced to a writer or a musician. The book contained selections from many of her previous collections and like a boxed set, as soon as I got the feel for what that collection was like it was off the next and the next. The stories themselves were great and she truly is an amazing writer, but being new to her work I may have missed the full impact of each individual book or 'album' as it were.
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