Ann Beattie has published twenty-one books and lives with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry, in Maine. She is a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Praise for A Wonderful Stroke of Luck
"Even if you're not old enough to remember the thrill of reading
Beattie's first-ever story to be published in The New Yorker,
you'll find that the short fiction master's latest foray into long
form is a marvel of wry wit and wisdom."
--O, the Oprah magazine
"Ms. Beattie captures the exhilarating feeling of being young and
gifted and specially selected for stardom, but the bulk of her
novel is about the long anticlimax that is real life. . . . This is
Ms. Beattie's first novel since 2002, but readers of her short
stories will be fully at home with its discursive style. . . . The
effect is a radical decentering that comes near to conveying the
essential disorientation of experience."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "Every sentence shines with
wit, originality, and sharp observations."
--The Boston Globe "Ann Beattie's 21st book proves to be her best.
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck shows a complicated relationship between
a brilliant teacher and his boarding school students. His influence
on them--and their secrets--continues as they become adults."
--Good Housekeeping (Best Books of 2019) "Given a week on a
deserted island with a shelf of boarding-school novels, I'd start
off with A Separate Peace, plow through Prep for the tenth time,
and then end with A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, Beattie's foray into
the #MeToo movement, which asks how deeply we internalize the
lessons of charismatic, if vaguely nefarious, teachers. . . . A
master class."
--Hillary Kelly, Vulture "Ann Beattie's 21st book is the work of a
master storyteller at the height of her talents. . . . It's a
remarkable novel that feels so utterly real that it defies
convention. It works the way life works, which is to say with
misdirection and events that feel random but probably aren't. It
calls to mind, in different ways, both Stoner and The Secret
History--which are, incidentally, two of my all-time favorite
novels."
--Andrew Ervin, Los Angeles Review of Books "I found [A Wonderful
Stroke of Luck's] twists and shadows full of secrets and surprises.
. . . What makes Beattie's work so interesting, to me, is its
resistance to conventional, formal narrative structure. Its
artistry is in its wit and its humanity, its remarkable formal
verisimilitude. . . . A Wonderful Stroke Of Luck left me feeling as
if I'd expanded my circle of real life acquaintances. . . . I found
myself frequently startled by the accuracy, perceptiveness,
specificity, and humor of Beattie's observations."
--Rachel Lyon, Electric Literature "Beattie's writing with its
clever rhythm of observation, reflection, and speculation that
disorients us even as it seems to be moving us forward. . . . A
Wonderful Stroke of Luck puts us in its well-meaning but hapless
protagonist's position--moving ahead, not necessarily getting
anywhere, but graced along the way with moments that occasionally
confer their own meaning."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"How do our charismatic teachers set the stage for the rest of our
lives? That's one of the questions that Ann Beattie tackles in this
novel. When a former New England boarding school student named Ben
looks back on his childhood, he starts to question the motives of
his superstar teacher. Later on, his teacher gets in contact, and
Ben has to grapple with his legacy."
--The Millions (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019) "I would read
anything by Beattie."
--Lila Shapiro, Vulture (a Most Anticipated Book of 2019) "An
intellectually rich book with a razor-sharp sense of irony. . . .
Mesmerizingly elegant. . . . Beautiful to read."
--Vox "[Beattie's] elegantly sculpted tale is both wrenchingly sad
and ultimately enigmatic: as usual."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Gimlet-eyed Beattie has created
a stunningly unnerving and provocative tale spiked with keen
cultural allusions and drollery. This jarring dissection of
privilege and anxiety, gender expectations, lust, ludicrous
predicaments, defensive selfishness, moral confusion, and numbing
loneliness projects a matrix of angst somewhat countered by the
solace and sustenance found in a quiet life far from the grasping,
hurried, hostile world. . . . Beattie's literary reign continues
apace, thanks to her stealthily eviscerating insights and
disquieting wit."
--Booklist (starred review) "Beattie details with precision the
ambiguities and self-deceptions of Ben and the other teenagers, and
shows compassion as she tracks the missteps of a generation shaped
by the 9/11 attack."
--Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture "A deep and interesting novel."
--Cosmo.com "The novel has the mesmeric quality of remembering late
youth, its chaos and loose ends, the sweet taste of being free to
make bad decisions, the astringency of their potential
consequences."
--Public Books "Beattie's latest novel . . . is riven with hope and
humor. . . . [A] postmodernist Greek tragedy. . . . Laugh-out-loud
humorous. . . . Beattie [has] a keen ear for not only what is said
but also what is left unsaid, often with tragic consequences."
--BookPage Praise for Ann Beattie "Unshakably intelligent,
deep-hearted. . . . One feels amazed at the confidence, steadiness,
and quality of [Beattie's] writing." --Lorrie Moore, The New York
Times Book Review on Park City "Beattie's wry voice, intimate
narration, and tart characterization remain instantly
recognizable." --Christopher Cox, The Paris Review's Art of Fiction
interview "As much as anyone's in the past fifty years . . . Ann
Beattie's lifework defines what the short story can do, the extent
of human life it can encompass." --Jonathan Lethem on The New
Yorker Stories "Full of echoes and resonant fractures, and so
beguiling in its eerie simplicity. I read it twice." --Miranda July
on Walks with Men "A very funny book. . . . If Jane Austen had been
crossed with Oscar Wilde and re-crossed with early Evelyn Waugh,
and the result plonked down among the semi-beautiful people of late
20th century media-fringe America . . . the outcome might have been
something like this." --Margaret Atwood, The Chicago Sun Times on
Love Always "Ann Beattie yet again reveals herself as one of
literature's most liberating figures."
--Howard Norman, The Washington Post on The Accomplished Guest
"[Beattie] 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." --The New York Times Book Review editors on
The New Yorker Stories, a Top 10 Book of 2010
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