The New Yorker Stories (2010)

Ann Beattie’s stories appeared in The New Yorker for 32 years, and most of the characters in them are people who would probably read The New Yorker. They are tin-toy yuppies, wound up by the countercultural revolution of the late ’60s and now shuffling about aimlessly, having picked up a few marriages and a summer house in Vermont over the decades. In The New Yorker Stories, Beattie captures the milieu perfectly through a vast cast of Sams and Davids and Karens, each afflicted with a nagging sense of loss even if they can’t articulate what, if anything, they have lost. The stories are in chronological order, tracking thee author’s evolution from a Raymond Carver-like minimalism to something more humanistic but no less subtle. Taken as a whole, they amount to an in-depth study of a subculture and a staggering almanac of emotions. A

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