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A Wonderful Stroke of Luck
A razor-sharp, deeply felt new novel about the complicated relationship between a charismatic teacher and his students, and the secrets we keep from those we love
As a member of the Honor Society at Bailey Academy, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, Ben falls under the tutelage of Pierre LaVerdere, a brilliant, enigmatic teacher who instructs his charges on how to discuss current events, how to think about art and literature, and how to form opinions for themselves. Ben develops close friendships with LaVerdere's other disciples, and as the years go by the legacy of their teacher and his words remain strong. As Ben moves on, first to college and then to the turbulence of post-grad life in New York City, he comes to feel the pace of his life accelerating, his relationships a jumble, and his career plans in a constant state of flux. What did Bailey really teach him?
After his father dies, Ben develops a curiously close, yet strained intimacy with his stepmother and tries to salvage what he can of his relationship with his sister. A move upstate offers only temporary respite from his anxieties about work and romance and when LaVerdere returns to Ben's life, everything Ben once thought he knew about the man--and about himself--is called into question. A twenty-first century comedy of manners, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is a keenly observed work of fiction that shows one of the most iconic writers of our time, once again an astute chronicler of her generation's ambivalence and sometimes strange ambitions.
As a member of the Honor Society at Bailey Academy, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, Ben falls under the tutelage of Pierre LaVerdere, a brilliant, enigmatic teacher who instructs his charges on how to discuss current events, how to think about art and literature, and how to form opinions for themselves. Ben develops close friendships with LaVerdere's other disciples, and as the years go by the legacy of their teacher and his words remain strong. As Ben moves on, first to college and then to the turbulence of post-grad life in New York City, he comes to feel the pace of his life accelerating, his relationships a jumble, and his career plans in a constant state of flux. What did Bailey really teach him?
After his father dies, Ben develops a curiously close, yet strained intimacy with his stepmother and tries to salvage what he can of his relationship with his sister. A move upstate offers only temporary respite from his anxieties about work and romance and when LaVerdere returns to Ben's life, everything Ben once thought he knew about the man--and about himself--is called into question. A twenty-first century comedy of manners, A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is a keenly observed work of fiction that shows one of the most iconic writers of our time, once again an astute chronicler of her generation's ambivalence and sometimes strange ambitions.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2019
144 people are currently reading
2608 people want to read
About the author
Ann Beattie
141 books409 followersAnn Beattie (born September 8, 1947) is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She holds an undergraduate degree from American University and a masters degree from the University of Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 136 reviews
August 11, 2019
Beattie, in the New Yorker stories, has a remarkable record of basically recording our society from the point of view of her generation. In A Wonderful Stroke of Luck, she deviates and chronicles the generation coming of age during 9/11. Perhaps this was the wrong premise. The first 50 pages really flows, her use of language the driving force. But not able to feel for the characters, or engage with the plotline it just became a mostly miserable read for me. I enjoyed the occasional poetic moments, and glimmer of her amazing insight that shows up on the page. I just can't say that I liked it as a whole.
January 11, 2020
A principal character is Pierre LaVerdere, a “charismatic” school-master and ironist. His take on Thomas Hicks The Peaceable Kingdom: “…let me suggest that while certain writers and musicians are approved of because they have a so-called vision that they return to, it is also a risky endeavor, because quantity may raise questions rather than reinforcing the impact. Does one’s adamancy convince, or suggest a possible struggle within the artist that becomes part of the art itself—perhaps inseparable from it? Something we are no doubt still thinking about, following our trip to a so-called real art gallery last year, under the supervision of Ms. Alwyn-Black [the art mistress], as I’m sure all of you will remember: another highlight of your broad—I imply no pun here—education at Bailey Academy.”
A superb American rendition of what Samuel Butler labeled “the Hypothetical Language” as spoken at “The Universities of Unreason,” which tantalizingly refuses to affirm or deny anything while proclaiming the speaker’s intellectual superiority. It actually demonstrates what most of us at school already wondered: If he’s so bright, why’s he forty and still in prep school? In the words of Ben Cabot, our main character, Bailey Academy “was for bright, screwed-up kids.” Good schools have a list of the likely destinations for classmates who will not be invited back at the end of term. Ours included several “academies.” Masters like LaVerdere weren’t absolute twats in the old days (like when Holden Caulfield was in school); then it was assumed preppies came from families that had got their political values from the National Association of Manufacturers and admired Senator Robert Taft. Today of course families of the wealthy and privileged profess unimpeachably correct progressive values and scarcely need anyone to teach their children to question traditional beliefs: How do you supposed they became “screwed up kids”?
The book opens at the time of “9/11” (what would Americans be if they didn’t put the months and days in the wrong order and in emergencies couldn’t call 999 like everybody else? We’d say “eleven September” instead.) At the end Ben has graduated from Cornell (where he “learned to code” but apparently nothing else), is living in a house up the Hudson River (bought with money inherited from his dead father—he also inherited a silly looking beret that acts as a minor motif). He had had a long string of sexual encounters but no relationships except with his old schoolfriend LouLou; they briefly ran away from school so she could follow a singer, got ditched at a service station. No bother—LouLou phoned one of the school servants to pick them up. Later LouLou becomes a lesbian and offers both LaVerdere and Ben the opportunity to donate sperm to her family with Dale. LaVerdere puts them off by offering to father the baby the old-fashioned way instead. LouLou and Dale break up and at the end Ben is driving her to a reception at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. (I kept wondering about parking.)
LaVerdere actually isn’t well educated. Ben says to him
“Maybe like you I should have stayed in New York, but I lack courage.”
“I hope not. It’s an hamartia.”
“What does that mean?”
“A fatal flaw. Don’t you remember our discussions of Shakespeare?”
Of course hamartia doesn’t mean “fatal flaw”; that was Butcher’s misinterpretation of Aristotle. It means a “mistake” or a “crime” and in Jewish or Christian Greek a “sin”; a main job for us university professors was correcting errors our students had picked up from clever teachers in secondary school.
I’d been reading Ms. Beattie off-and-on (mostly off) since the ’70s and bought this one on a whim to see how she would do with a school story. It’s like The Secret History with the stoners as the only characters—no one trying to live like Euripides Bacchae: more like the Lotos Eaters. Indeed, LaVerdere soon retires to Key West and fails as a novelist. Though the book goes nowhere, we get lots of Ms. Beattie’s ADHD prose. The parenthesis is one of her favorite tropes: she can’t finish a sentence without changing the subject. Ben’s sister Brenda is frightened by a squirrel in the park. “‘Fucking filth!’ His sister exclaimed, jumping up and brushing her jeans, as if the rodent’s hair had been instantly ejected, like porcupine quills. (Ben silently corrected himself: The porcupine has no way to send its quills out of its body; it is the animal’s flapping its tail that embeds the quills.)”
You’ll learn other out-of-the way-facts as well from this book. Make sure you’re up on your late night television chat show hosts and know the difference between A. E. Housman and John Houseman too.
A superb American rendition of what Samuel Butler labeled “the Hypothetical Language” as spoken at “The Universities of Unreason,” which tantalizingly refuses to affirm or deny anything while proclaiming the speaker’s intellectual superiority. It actually demonstrates what most of us at school already wondered: If he’s so bright, why’s he forty and still in prep school? In the words of Ben Cabot, our main character, Bailey Academy “was for bright, screwed-up kids.” Good schools have a list of the likely destinations for classmates who will not be invited back at the end of term. Ours included several “academies.” Masters like LaVerdere weren’t absolute twats in the old days (like when Holden Caulfield was in school); then it was assumed preppies came from families that had got their political values from the National Association of Manufacturers and admired Senator Robert Taft. Today of course families of the wealthy and privileged profess unimpeachably correct progressive values and scarcely need anyone to teach their children to question traditional beliefs: How do you supposed they became “screwed up kids”?
The book opens at the time of “9/11” (what would Americans be if they didn’t put the months and days in the wrong order and in emergencies couldn’t call 999 like everybody else? We’d say “eleven September” instead.) At the end Ben has graduated from Cornell (where he “learned to code” but apparently nothing else), is living in a house up the Hudson River (bought with money inherited from his dead father—he also inherited a silly looking beret that acts as a minor motif). He had had a long string of sexual encounters but no relationships except with his old schoolfriend LouLou; they briefly ran away from school so she could follow a singer, got ditched at a service station. No bother—LouLou phoned one of the school servants to pick them up. Later LouLou becomes a lesbian and offers both LaVerdere and Ben the opportunity to donate sperm to her family with Dale. LaVerdere puts them off by offering to father the baby the old-fashioned way instead. LouLou and Dale break up and at the end Ben is driving her to a reception at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. (I kept wondering about parking.)
LaVerdere actually isn’t well educated. Ben says to him
“Maybe like you I should have stayed in New York, but I lack courage.”
“I hope not. It’s an hamartia.”
“What does that mean?”
“A fatal flaw. Don’t you remember our discussions of Shakespeare?”
Of course hamartia doesn’t mean “fatal flaw”; that was Butcher’s misinterpretation of Aristotle. It means a “mistake” or a “crime” and in Jewish or Christian Greek a “sin”; a main job for us university professors was correcting errors our students had picked up from clever teachers in secondary school.
I’d been reading Ms. Beattie off-and-on (mostly off) since the ’70s and bought this one on a whim to see how she would do with a school story. It’s like The Secret History with the stoners as the only characters—no one trying to live like Euripides Bacchae: more like the Lotos Eaters. Indeed, LaVerdere soon retires to Key West and fails as a novelist. Though the book goes nowhere, we get lots of Ms. Beattie’s ADHD prose. The parenthesis is one of her favorite tropes: she can’t finish a sentence without changing the subject. Ben’s sister Brenda is frightened by a squirrel in the park. “‘Fucking filth!’ His sister exclaimed, jumping up and brushing her jeans, as if the rodent’s hair had been instantly ejected, like porcupine quills. (Ben silently corrected himself: The porcupine has no way to send its quills out of its body; it is the animal’s flapping its tail that embeds the quills.)”
You’ll learn other out-of-the way-facts as well from this book. Make sure you’re up on your late night television chat show hosts and know the difference between A. E. Housman and John Houseman too.
April 4, 2019
I’ve been a bit exasperated with the currently fashionable critical focus on “stakes” in books, because it seems to put the focus on plot at the expense of beautiful writing. And then I read A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie, and all of a sudden, I get it. Because there really is some beautiful writing here, as when Beattie compares a character to “cigarette ash, her grudges tiny, glowing embers waiting to flare” or describes a handshake as “a firm grip with soft skin, like a pillow-top bed at an expensive hotel.” But there are no stakes here at all: the book’s campus novel opening—which introduces several students in a boarding school honors club moderated by the supposedly charismatic Pierre LaVerdere, a teacher who his students almost worship, even though nothing about Beattie’s characterization of him merits this—feels at odds with the rest of the book, which morphs into a coming-of-age story about one of these students, Ben, who is a self-described “withholding” person and therefore perhaps not the best choice for a protagonist.
It doesn’t help that many of the major emotional events in the book—deaths, a suicide, etc—happen offstage, with the reader finding out about them well after the fact from an offhand comment by one or another character and therefore having no real connection to them. Or that the characters themselves are generally unlikable and unmemorable and, even more problematically, cycle in and out of the book irregularly and somewhat distractingly. (Jasper, we hardly knew ye!) The one constant is Ben, but his meanderings through multiple dead end jobs and relationships are more frustrating than compelling. (And why does Ben suddenly hold a grudge against LaVerdere—not that I blame him!—after being so besotted with him in high school—and well before some plot points involving other characters later in the book give him some legitimate reasons to find him repugnant?) LaVerdere himself makes a late reappearance for no discernible reason and is no less a cipher at the book’s closing than he was at the start.
I’ve not read any Ann Beattie before and was really excited to start this book, as I’ve heard such good things about her, so I’m going to assume that A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is just an uncharacteristic miss. I do appreciate receiving an ARC from NetGalley and Viking in exchange for my honest review. (2.5 stars)
It doesn’t help that many of the major emotional events in the book—deaths, a suicide, etc—happen offstage, with the reader finding out about them well after the fact from an offhand comment by one or another character and therefore having no real connection to them. Or that the characters themselves are generally unlikable and unmemorable and, even more problematically, cycle in and out of the book irregularly and somewhat distractingly. (Jasper, we hardly knew ye!) The one constant is Ben, but his meanderings through multiple dead end jobs and relationships are more frustrating than compelling. (And why does Ben suddenly hold a grudge against LaVerdere—not that I blame him!—after being so besotted with him in high school—and well before some plot points involving other characters later in the book give him some legitimate reasons to find him repugnant?) LaVerdere himself makes a late reappearance for no discernible reason and is no less a cipher at the book’s closing than he was at the start.
I’ve not read any Ann Beattie before and was really excited to start this book, as I’ve heard such good things about her, so I’m going to assume that A Wonderful Stroke of Luck is just an uncharacteristic miss. I do appreciate receiving an ARC from NetGalley and Viking in exchange for my honest review. (2.5 stars)
July 5, 2019
The older I get, the less and less I tolerate books I don't enjoy. I made it just beyond 100 pages before giving up. As echoed in many other reviews, the first 50 or so pages are promising, if a little pretentious/too cool for its own good. But after that...well, if I want to hang around with f-ked up people spinning around their sad lives like water going down the drain, I'd find some actual people of that nature to hang out with. Not for me, this one.
abandoned
May 5, 2019I don’t know what this was supposed to be. I just couldn’t even bear to even skim to the end. Stopped about mid way through.
April 20, 2019
I have no quarrel with the novel's writing and the language, but found the subject, plot and characters disappointing. The story begins at Bailey, a school for so-called troubled children. Ben lands there by accident, though, as he discovers late in the novel - a result of his father's anger and troubles rather than his own. The school's atmosphere, the arrogance and insecurity of many staff members, only add to the entitlement, self-absorption and identity issues of these students. They seem alienated, at a loss, jaded, incapable of forming real relationships. When they meet later in life, they do not recognize or really care about one another. Still, all that matters for Ben is the past as he goes through life with dry humor, rigid phrases and endless worries about what others are thinking. Of course, Beattie refers to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" at one point, and there are hints of Holden Caulfield, too. But Ben does not run away from school and instead wallows in his memories of routines, emotions and responses to key events. He cannot let go. Much of the book is set in the post-Bailey years and he goes on to attend Cornell and enjoy a comfortable, easy life as a programmer, living in the Hudson Valley region. Yet he is miserable. So this reader is left confused about just what was A Wonderful Stroke of Luck? Certainly not his family, the school, his relationships and friendships. The book is as aimless at its protagonist.
June 3, 2019
Ann Beattie has been a favorite author for many years, one reason being that her characters have been as authentic as they are interesting. The reader could relate to Beattie's characters because they related to real life experiences. This was re-enforced by her collection of stories published in the New Yorker over the years; Beattie's characters aged as Beattie did confronting evolving life situations.
Which explains why " A Wonderful Stroke of Luck was unsatisfying. The heart of the novel is the protagonist's years in a private high school with a close set of friends and a charismatic teacher which is wracked by 9/11 while they are at their private boarding school.
While the novel continues with the protagonist's life for the next 15 years, his high school friends, and teacher, make repeated entrances into his life. The main thing is that I didn't find the characters particularly interesting or believable. It was as if a 70 someting author was trying and failing to relate to a younger generation's experiences with a world changed by 9/11 occurring in the formative years of high school
Which explains why " A Wonderful Stroke of Luck was unsatisfying. The heart of the novel is the protagonist's years in a private high school with a close set of friends and a charismatic teacher which is wracked by 9/11 while they are at their private boarding school.
While the novel continues with the protagonist's life for the next 15 years, his high school friends, and teacher, make repeated entrances into his life. The main thing is that I didn't find the characters particularly interesting or believable. It was as if a 70 someting author was trying and failing to relate to a younger generation's experiences with a world changed by 9/11 occurring in the formative years of high school
April 24, 2019
The first 50 pages of this are just wonderful. I love the hothouse of high school: how everyone is struggling and striving and trying to connect and failing. LaVerdere was suitably awful/compelling, and Ben was just so dumb in the way of all high school boys. But then Ben leaves high school and continues to be struggling and striving and trying to connect and failing and he just never gets out of that. But also the novel never evolves past it either to complicate it or even make it interesting.
June 24, 2019
This book was difficult to read; it did not have my interest. There were times when I thought about discontinuing reading it. Beattie introduces us to a group of students that met at a boarding school in NH (Bailey Academy). She tosses in an influential teacher that's also in charge of the honor society (Mr. LaVerdere) but how, and to what extent, these students have been influenced is not heavily developed. Beattie's characters from the boarding school are not developed either; they are also unlikable. I did not know very much about them and I did not care about them. Nothing they said or did on campus as students, or later on as adults, contributed to the action or plot development in a significant way. To me, the author has written a boring book.
March 29, 2019
Ann Beattie’s novel is told from the perspective of a young man, beginning with his adolescence in a north-eastern boarding school for troubled kids, and continuing until he is in his mid-thirties, living in suburban upstate New York. While it feels risky for a woman in her 70’s to write from this perspective, it felt largely authentic and I was interested in Ben, his friendships, his relationships with women, and his career.
I have to say that I’m baffled by the ending. I turned back the pages of the ebook several times, trying to determine if something had been inadvertently deleted.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I have to say that I’m baffled by the ending. I turned back the pages of the ebook several times, trying to determine if something had been inadvertently deleted.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
July 4, 2019
I usually love Ann Beattie, but this one was such a muddle, uninspiring characters, nothing razer-sharp at all. You just don't care other than wishing the lead character would STOP TALKING. And the typos. Seriously, not up to snuff.
August 6, 2022
"At some point, you had to accept the way things were and move on."
If I had to sum up this novel: "Man grows up, is lonely, doesn't have a life, but he f*cks a lot of women." Why? Well, this book said "Plot? What's that??" because...well there isn't one.
I was very confused at the first ~20 percent of this book. Hell, I was confused for the entirety of this book. I thought it might be promising at the beginning, but yeah, I was still confused. (All of my notes are basically "What the hell is going on?") Idk what to say in this review. Most of this was just, (as I've said) the story of a guy who doesn't know what to do with his life. But he also f*cks so many women. See, s*x was brought up so many times in this book.
"For a brief period of time what seemed most important was getting laid."
Our main character, Ben, also has an insane ex-girlfriend.
"she'd painted the mirror with menstrual blood before throwing the tampon in the trash."
I think I threw up while reading that. And- was that even his ex-girlfriend? They used to live together, and they f*cked...so I just assume they were dating? I hope you can see how confused I was about this book. I genuinely didn't know what was going on almost all of the time.
Ben was also so flat, just like all of the characters. I buddy read this with my friend, who said that Ben looks like he'd be a p*do (or smth around those lines), which just goes to show how flat/ boring he is. I don't like him, he f*cked up his own life, and the book ends really badly. It's just; "Oh well I lost literally everyone in my life, and I'm still single...BUT I GOT A DOG!! Yay!" What an amazing ending!! (Sigh)
I also was confused about the setting & time. ARE WE IN THE U.S. OR IN G.B/ THE U.K.?!
HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED? HOW OLD IS HE?!
OH AND, WHY WERE THERE SO MANY S*X SCENES. WHY. JUST WHY.
"When you interact with good people, you always get back way more than you put in."
Does that mean, "talk to good people, so that you can get benefits for yourself/ take advantage of them? HUH?!
And if you need another piece of evidence as to how bad this book is...it uses the term "bright pink magic wand" as a synonym for P*nis. What. The. Hell.
I don't get the title of the book? You'd think that there's a meaning behind it, "A wonderful stroke of luck" but as far as I know, there's not?? Ben certainly didn't get lucky, and his life is far from 'wonderful'.
Basically, this book had no plot, yet it somehow still managed to confuse the shit out of me, and I simply have to ask; "Why and what was the point of this book?". Please don't read this. There are too many books to read & there's not enough time for bad ones, like this.
If I had to sum up this novel: "Man grows up, is lonely, doesn't have a life, but he f*cks a lot of women." Why? Well, this book said "Plot? What's that??" because...well there isn't one.
I was very confused at the first ~20 percent of this book. Hell, I was confused for the entirety of this book. I thought it might be promising at the beginning, but yeah, I was still confused. (All of my notes are basically "What the hell is going on?") Idk what to say in this review. Most of this was just, (as I've said) the story of a guy who doesn't know what to do with his life. But he also f*cks so many women. See, s*x was brought up so many times in this book.
"For a brief period of time what seemed most important was getting laid."
Our main character, Ben, also has an insane ex-girlfriend.
"she'd painted the mirror with menstrual blood before throwing the tampon in the trash."
I think I threw up while reading that. And- was that even his ex-girlfriend? They used to live together, and they f*cked...so I just assume they were dating? I hope you can see how confused I was about this book. I genuinely didn't know what was going on almost all of the time.
Ben was also so flat, just like all of the characters. I buddy read this with my friend, who said that Ben looks like he'd be a p*do (or smth around those lines), which just goes to show how flat/ boring he is. I don't like him, he f*cked up his own life, and the book ends really badly. It's just; "Oh well I lost literally everyone in my life, and I'm still single...BUT I GOT A DOG!! Yay!" What an amazing ending!! (Sigh)
I also was confused about the setting & time. ARE WE IN THE U.S. OR IN G.B/ THE U.K.?!
HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED? HOW OLD IS HE?!
OH AND, WHY WERE THERE SO MANY S*X SCENES. WHY. JUST WHY.
"When you interact with good people, you always get back way more than you put in."
Does that mean, "talk to good people, so that you can get benefits for yourself/ take advantage of them? HUH?!
And if you need another piece of evidence as to how bad this book is...it uses the term "bright pink magic wand" as a synonym for P*nis. What. The. Hell.
I don't get the title of the book? You'd think that there's a meaning behind it, "A wonderful stroke of luck" but as far as I know, there's not?? Ben certainly didn't get lucky, and his life is far from 'wonderful'.
Basically, this book had no plot, yet it somehow still managed to confuse the shit out of me, and I simply have to ask; "Why and what was the point of this book?". Please don't read this. There are too many books to read & there's not enough time for bad ones, like this.
June 5, 2019
I'm finished because I decided to stop about 110 pages in. Why did I wait this long? I don't know. I just realized I don't like any of the characters, I don't like the plot, such as it is.
There's probably something I'm missing here. I picked up the book, because it seemed intriguing and I like the title. But I just don't see the draw here.
Life is too short to continue with something you don't really like.
There's probably something I'm missing here. I picked up the book, because it seemed intriguing and I like the title. But I just don't see the draw here.
Life is too short to continue with something you don't really like.
April 26, 2019
Ann Beattie is a national treasure. And this, her 21st book, is as witty and wise as anything she's done.
June 30, 2019
I've always liked Ann Beattie's short stories, even though they don't have a plot. But this didn't work for a novel. Yes, the writing was good, and, yes, the book was funny in places, but nothing ever really happened. I liked the main character, Ben. But he just seemed to drift (I know this was the point) from one job, place to live, woman, etc. without ever deciding to change. He just went along with whatever anyone asked him to do or whatever was easiest. Deciding not to be the father of LouLou and Dales's child was the one time he made a decision.
Two other things bothered me. One, things happened or characters were introduced that I didn't remember. I even looked back and couldn't find mention of the occurrences. For example, when did his father die? And when was Benson introduced? Maybe I just was not paying close enough attention or maybe this was done on purpose--but I'm used to important events or people being introduced. The other thing that annoyed me was the way people reacted to Ben. They seemed to always take what he said wrong or make a big deal out of a simple comment. Obviously, the book did give me something to think about, though!
Two other things bothered me. One, things happened or characters were introduced that I didn't remember. I even looked back and couldn't find mention of the occurrences. For example, when did his father die? And when was Benson introduced? Maybe I just was not paying close enough attention or maybe this was done on purpose--but I'm used to important events or people being introduced. The other thing that annoyed me was the way people reacted to Ben. They seemed to always take what he said wrong or make a big deal out of a simple comment. Obviously, the book did give me something to think about, though!
Read
July 21, 2019I tried. I made it 60-some odd pages of absolutely nothing happening except peccadilloes where no one acted like real human beings and I was left baffled by the point of it all.
So this has been languishing on my currently reading pile for months. I am officially throwing in the towel.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review through the GoodReads giveaway program. Sorry, folks - I tried my best.
So this has been languishing on my currently reading pile for months. I am officially throwing in the towel.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review through the GoodReads giveaway program. Sorry, folks - I tried my best.
April 13, 2020
I began on the wrong foot with this novel and had to stop and try again later. My initial hurdle must've been impatience with the opening, free-form discussion among a bunch of high school students led by a self-regarding teacher named LaVerdere. (Personally, I've always hated that kind of discourse. Somebody utters a half-baked comment, but before I can open my mouth to try and clarify or refute it somebody else rushes off on a ridiculous tangent, only to have the baton hijacked and taken in yet another direction.) Looking back on it years later, Ben, the main character, recalls "that catch and release of hypothetical thoughts; he'd liked the way some of them flashed as they quickly disappeared back into the water, never to be hooked again." Favoring logical, if plodding, progress toward a conclusion, I would not have fared well in that class. "There'd been little LaVerdere disliked more than a person's simply falling silent," so he would not have liked me at all.
Ann Beattie's prose tends to follow a similar pattern, with a free-associating assemblage of details. Here's a sample passage, selected only because it's shorter than most:
All the students were grouped close together, as if they'd rushed onstage at the end of a Shakespearean play. A line popped into Ben's mind: Our revels are ended. The week before, he and Jasper had listened to some famous author reading from Shakespeare on a CD sent by Jasper's mother. They'd also eaten small, expensive candy bars she'd included, which had unfortunately melted in the package.
You might guess that jazz improvisation is not my favorite kind of music (it's not). And since Ann Beattie's writing has a similar spontaneous feel to it, you might expect me to be unhappy with A Wonderful Stroke of Luck. Nevertheless, once on board I enjoyed the opening chapters thoroughly! I suppose on this second try I was just lucky enough to be in a more suitable frame of mind.
(Note: Jazz is not Ben's thing either. Later in the book he compares it to "the downing of a shot elephant, one that tried over and over to rise but was damned by its injuries and its weight.")
One attractive feature of the writing, helpful for readers not yet in sync with the direction the book may be taking, is Beattie's vivid imagery, no doubt the product of a lifetime of careful observation:
She pulled her gloves off slowly, as if skin were liable to come loose with each finger.
"Bye," Hailey said, flapping her hand as if it contained a tiny piece of laundry that needed shaking out.
Lovely details like that made it easy for me to keep going while I pondered broader questions. For example: Would this be a story illustrating indecisiveness? Or acknowledgement of the difficulty of knowing anything with confidence?
"Take action. Stop thinking and take action," [Ben] could almost hear his father saying. It was what he said if you faltered more than three seconds, trying to impale a wiggling worm on the hook. Elin had been a good influence on his father. She particularly disliked his "Take action" speech and had more or less managed to shut him up by pointing out that rushing to a conclusion didn't necessarily make that solution the right one.
Alternatively, is the quasi-randomness actually part of an all-encompassing, Joycean picture? (I think we all hope such a picture exists.) That, at least, may be the effect LaVerdere seeks:
Sometimes his remarks came from left field, but as Hailey had pointed out, at the end of any exchange, everything LaVerdere said, as well as in what order he delivered the information, made perfect sense.
Or how about this: Are all the unrelated bits and pieces serving the characters as desperately needed points of reference in a world that will never make sense? That explanation occurred to me in the chapter where they're watching the 9/11 broadcast. Tessie happens to block Ben's view of the horrific images on the tv, and he thinks:
Tessie and Binnie had a dog that they sometimes brought to work. Otherwise, their neighbor, who lived above them in the town at the crossroads, looked after it. The dog was old. Dilly, it was called.
It's entirely understandable for minds to be functioning thus during a 9/11 type of crisis, but if that is the explanation then every day borders on being a crisis for these people. It would be an exhausting way to live.
Most of the story covers what happens after Ben and the others have ventured forth into the grownup world, albeit with occasional looks back. He sees now they'd gone to an expensive private school "for bright, screwed-up kids"–kids who also had screwed-up parents (e.g., one boy's father had shown up there intoxicated, begging forgiveness for having walked out on his marriage and swearing he wouldn't have done it had he known the mother was dying of cancer. The other students yawn at this, having comparable family situations). But now that they're out of that environment, what are they going to do?
Ben finds work writing software code, which may represent rules under which life ought to operate. If so, that's futile. What he sees is "like an impossible game of chess, because there'd been no good move to make." Actually, an improbable number of lucky breaks come his way, but he does make self-destructive choices. One friend, more charitable than most, offers a gentle suggestion:
"I hope I don't insult you, I ask only out of concern. Have you noticed that when life's going well, you seem to feel a compulsion to shake things up?"
He seems to admit to that, saying sometimes people "fuck up parts of the code, for their own reasons." His reasons seem to be based on a need to stay in motion and avoid being defined by commitments (to avoid being hooked like a fish?). But eventually, thanks to an inheritance, he buys a 1925-vintage house in "a slightly scruffy small town" and becomes part of that community.
Still, relationships are fleeting. At one point Ben finds himself conjuring up the very lengthy roster of women he has bedded. They aren't trophies—the series is more like one disaster after another—but I don't see him deriving any clear lesson from it. (For me this part of the story brought to mind the character in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, although that guy is more open to the idea that improvement might be attainable.)
I feel the need for a foil in this narrative, a character who embodies some form of stability if not forward progress. The closest approximations might be Ben's stepmother Elin (who's mostly offstage) and his neighbor Steve (denounced, perhaps unjustly, as being "a fucking Republican!"). Even they are not paragons of constancy, except in comparison with, say, Ben's best friend from school, LouLou. She's in a gay relationship and needs a sperm donor (getting even that close to fatherhood terrifies Ben), but then changes her mind, dumps the girlfriend, and disappears with someone new ("Baby—what baby?").
The stroke of luck alluded to in the title is failure to attain an objective that would not have brought happiness. The adage may or may not be true; life thus far has not persuaded me. But this story has helped quell any regrets I might have been feeling with regard to turning points in my past. The life depicted here may seem bleak and pointless, aside from the sake of the experience itself, but it strikes me as a sensitive, caring, and intellectually honest portrayal.
Ann Beattie's prose tends to follow a similar pattern, with a free-associating assemblage of details. Here's a sample passage, selected only because it's shorter than most:
All the students were grouped close together, as if they'd rushed onstage at the end of a Shakespearean play. A line popped into Ben's mind: Our revels are ended. The week before, he and Jasper had listened to some famous author reading from Shakespeare on a CD sent by Jasper's mother. They'd also eaten small, expensive candy bars she'd included, which had unfortunately melted in the package.
You might guess that jazz improvisation is not my favorite kind of music (it's not). And since Ann Beattie's writing has a similar spontaneous feel to it, you might expect me to be unhappy with A Wonderful Stroke of Luck. Nevertheless, once on board I enjoyed the opening chapters thoroughly! I suppose on this second try I was just lucky enough to be in a more suitable frame of mind.
(Note: Jazz is not Ben's thing either. Later in the book he compares it to "the downing of a shot elephant, one that tried over and over to rise but was damned by its injuries and its weight.")
One attractive feature of the writing, helpful for readers not yet in sync with the direction the book may be taking, is Beattie's vivid imagery, no doubt the product of a lifetime of careful observation:
She pulled her gloves off slowly, as if skin were liable to come loose with each finger.
"Bye," Hailey said, flapping her hand as if it contained a tiny piece of laundry that needed shaking out.
Lovely details like that made it easy for me to keep going while I pondered broader questions. For example: Would this be a story illustrating indecisiveness? Or acknowledgement of the difficulty of knowing anything with confidence?
"Take action. Stop thinking and take action," [Ben] could almost hear his father saying. It was what he said if you faltered more than three seconds, trying to impale a wiggling worm on the hook. Elin had been a good influence on his father. She particularly disliked his "Take action" speech and had more or less managed to shut him up by pointing out that rushing to a conclusion didn't necessarily make that solution the right one.
Alternatively, is the quasi-randomness actually part of an all-encompassing, Joycean picture? (I think we all hope such a picture exists.) That, at least, may be the effect LaVerdere seeks:
Sometimes his remarks came from left field, but as Hailey had pointed out, at the end of any exchange, everything LaVerdere said, as well as in what order he delivered the information, made perfect sense.
Or how about this: Are all the unrelated bits and pieces serving the characters as desperately needed points of reference in a world that will never make sense? That explanation occurred to me in the chapter where they're watching the 9/11 broadcast. Tessie happens to block Ben's view of the horrific images on the tv, and he thinks:
Tessie and Binnie had a dog that they sometimes brought to work. Otherwise, their neighbor, who lived above them in the town at the crossroads, looked after it. The dog was old. Dilly, it was called.
It's entirely understandable for minds to be functioning thus during a 9/11 type of crisis, but if that is the explanation then every day borders on being a crisis for these people. It would be an exhausting way to live.
Most of the story covers what happens after Ben and the others have ventured forth into the grownup world, albeit with occasional looks back. He sees now they'd gone to an expensive private school "for bright, screwed-up kids"–kids who also had screwed-up parents (e.g., one boy's father had shown up there intoxicated, begging forgiveness for having walked out on his marriage and swearing he wouldn't have done it had he known the mother was dying of cancer. The other students yawn at this, having comparable family situations). But now that they're out of that environment, what are they going to do?
Ben finds work writing software code, which may represent rules under which life ought to operate. If so, that's futile. What he sees is "like an impossible game of chess, because there'd been no good move to make." Actually, an improbable number of lucky breaks come his way, but he does make self-destructive choices. One friend, more charitable than most, offers a gentle suggestion:
"I hope I don't insult you, I ask only out of concern. Have you noticed that when life's going well, you seem to feel a compulsion to shake things up?"
He seems to admit to that, saying sometimes people "fuck up parts of the code, for their own reasons." His reasons seem to be based on a need to stay in motion and avoid being defined by commitments (to avoid being hooked like a fish?). But eventually, thanks to an inheritance, he buys a 1925-vintage house in "a slightly scruffy small town" and becomes part of that community.
Still, relationships are fleeting. At one point Ben finds himself conjuring up the very lengthy roster of women he has bedded. They aren't trophies—the series is more like one disaster after another—but I don't see him deriving any clear lesson from it. (For me this part of the story brought to mind the character in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, although that guy is more open to the idea that improvement might be attainable.)
I feel the need for a foil in this narrative, a character who embodies some form of stability if not forward progress. The closest approximations might be Ben's stepmother Elin (who's mostly offstage) and his neighbor Steve (denounced, perhaps unjustly, as being "a fucking Republican!"). Even they are not paragons of constancy, except in comparison with, say, Ben's best friend from school, LouLou. She's in a gay relationship and needs a sperm donor (getting even that close to fatherhood terrifies Ben), but then changes her mind, dumps the girlfriend, and disappears with someone new ("Baby—what baby?").
The stroke of luck alluded to in the title is failure to attain an objective that would not have brought happiness. The adage may or may not be true; life thus far has not persuaded me. But this story has helped quell any regrets I might have been feeling with regard to turning points in my past. The life depicted here may seem bleak and pointless, aside from the sake of the experience itself, but it strikes me as a sensitive, caring, and intellectually honest portrayal.
August 7, 2019
1.5 stars
What a bizarre, fever dream of a novel. I truly don't understand how this got published. I soldiered through because it was a giveaway book and I hate to DNF a giveaway (the only one I have DNF'd was just too violent and vulgar for me to stomach), but let me assure you: you do not need to read this book. I've never read any of Beattie's other books before, but I knew she was pretty well respected so it was baffling how utterly pointless this one is. There were the occasional lines of prose that made me think, but mostly I was just confused. There doesn't seem to have been an editor, or if there was, well, yikes. I kept waiting for something to happen, and it finally did, but none of it made any sense. The weirdest thing is that this reads like a novel written by an old cis white man. And I don't mean that as a compliment. So yes. A useless addition to the American novel.
What a bizarre, fever dream of a novel. I truly don't understand how this got published. I soldiered through because it was a giveaway book and I hate to DNF a giveaway (the only one I have DNF'd was just too violent and vulgar for me to stomach), but let me assure you: you do not need to read this book. I've never read any of Beattie's other books before, but I knew she was pretty well respected so it was baffling how utterly pointless this one is. There were the occasional lines of prose that made me think, but mostly I was just confused. There doesn't seem to have been an editor, or if there was, well, yikes. I kept waiting for something to happen, and it finally did, but none of it made any sense. The weirdest thing is that this reads like a novel written by an old cis white man. And I don't mean that as a compliment. So yes. A useless addition to the American novel.
April 3, 2019
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie is a recommended/so-so novel following a disaffected young man through his coming-of-age into adulthood.
Ben is an honor student at the elite Bailey Academy where he finds himself part of the honor society led by teacher Pierre LaVerdure. LaVerdere is a capricious advisor who teaches his group of students how to discuss topics, with both reason and deception. As Ben moves aimlessly on after graduation, eventually to college, and in and out of relationships, LaVerdere's influence seems to continuously be a part of his subconscious.
The quality of the writing is excellent, but the execution of the plot and the character development is not very satisfying. Basically this came across as yet another novel about an indecisive, aimless, indifferent unfulfilled millennial going through not even a very interesting existential crisis in a somewhat pointless plot. That may seem harsh, but I feel as if I've read about this character before but placed in a much more focused narrative with a decisive plot. Beattie provides some incredible emotional insights and the quality of the writing elevates this above the ordinary, both of which influenced my rating, but with a sharper focus on the plot this could have been a more powerful novel. 2.5 rounded up
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0...
Ben is an honor student at the elite Bailey Academy where he finds himself part of the honor society led by teacher Pierre LaVerdure. LaVerdere is a capricious advisor who teaches his group of students how to discuss topics, with both reason and deception. As Ben moves aimlessly on after graduation, eventually to college, and in and out of relationships, LaVerdere's influence seems to continuously be a part of his subconscious.
The quality of the writing is excellent, but the execution of the plot and the character development is not very satisfying. Basically this came across as yet another novel about an indecisive, aimless, indifferent unfulfilled millennial going through not even a very interesting existential crisis in a somewhat pointless plot. That may seem harsh, but I feel as if I've read about this character before but placed in a much more focused narrative with a decisive plot. Beattie provides some incredible emotional insights and the quality of the writing elevates this above the ordinary, both of which influenced my rating, but with a sharper focus on the plot this could have been a more powerful novel. 2.5 rounded up
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/0...
June 12, 2019
2.5. I wanted to like this novel, but found the characters thin and head-scratchingly opaque. There wasn’t a single really likable character, and despite the premise of the book that a charismatic prep school teacher had a substantial impact on his students, I could never grasp why they found him so fascinating. He just seemed irritating to me. The end of the book, when Laverdere shows up, and why he reappears, seemed forced to me. Also, it was difficult to keep track of characters who you never get to know, but who then bounce back into the novel every so often with little effect. Yikes. Sorry, Ann Beattie.
June 18, 2019
Beattie's writing is wonderful, no doubt. But I was sort of missing the semblance of a plot. It seems like Beattie wanted to keep us at a distance from all of the characters, to the point that none of the action really happened on the page. Instead, we had to hear about it rather than experience it. I didn't get a great sense of who anyone was, or why they did what they did. That was kind of frustrating. Not an unpleasant read though.
May 20, 2019
I'm an Ann Beattie fan, so this novel was a disappointment. It opens at a boarding school for "troubled" teens from wealthy families, and continues over the next 20 years or so, in New York City and then a small town a couple of hours' drive. Ben, the main character, is so disaffected from, well, pretty much everything, that you're never sure whether he's actually feeling anything beneath the gloss of cynicism and alienation. This was about the right amount of material (Beattie is frequently published in the New Yorker) for a short story misguidedly stretched into a very thin novel. Bloodless.
July 1, 2019
This is one of those stories that I just didn't get. It started out with students at a ritzy private school and ended up with a former teacher/student reunion. After the first two chapters I sort of lost interest and skimmed. I usually like Ms. Beattie's books but this was a great disappointment. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
May 31, 2019
Feeling exasperated, I sought out reviews to determine whether other readers felt as I do: that this book skirts events that would result in a more interesting narrative and fails to provide any worthwhile characters. The answer: yes. I have other books waiting so I’ve decided to not waste any more time on this one.
October 16, 2019
2.5 stars
December 13, 2020
I think I get why people didn't really like this. Ben, the protagonist, never really feels fully drawn-out, which makes all the characters around him feel underdeveloped. But as a portrait of millennial angst and boredom, it's interesting, even if Beattie sometimes doesn't feel like the right author for it.
April 8, 2019
First world problems going nowhere. I have read a lot of this authors stuff and loved it. Kept reading this one despite not knowing where it was meandering. There is so wonderful writing in it. Hence two stars rather than one.
May 2, 2019
Amazing work from Ms. Beattie. Again.
My notice, for ZYZZYVA magazine, follows below:
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck’ by Ann Beattie: Familiar Themes, New Territory
by Paul Wilner
Posted on May 2, 2019
Ann Beattie novel A Wonderful Stroke of LuckNo good deed goes unpunished.
Ann Beattie’s 21st work of fiction, A Wonderful Stroke Of Luck (288 pages; Viking), has been taking a beating in some quarters, notably the New York Times (for, among other capital sins, spelling Spalding Gray’s name incorrectly).
She’s been laboring under the mantle as a voice of her g-g-generation ever since her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, in 1976. It’s a jacket she hates, understandably, but it was refreshing at the time to find fiction about people and places (although usually not politics) of the ‘60s that didn’t read like it was written by Richard Fariña.
The cool, evaluative voice—hip but not ostentatious—of her fiction, then and now, probed the psyches of lost souls struggling to find their place in a world not of their own making. (Chilly Scenes was closer to a portrait of slackers than the counter-culture, but the term had not yet come into use…so much for journalistic generalizations.)
The new novel takes its title from a quote by the Dalai Lama (“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck’’), but rest assured, Beattie has not gone New Age on us. Her characters certainly don’t get what they want, let alone what they need, and most assuredly don’t feel lucky about it.
It’s a portrait of millennials (again with the labels…) at the private prep school Bailey Academy in New Hampshire, under the heavy influence of Pierre LaVerdere, their campy, cryptic instructor. They may bear an outward resemblance to the kids in The Dead Poets Society or A Separate Peace. But the author is stalking bigger game, offering pitiless status details with deadpan reserve.
Setting up a meeting of the Honor Society, she notes, “Today there were also enormous seedless grapes—a nod, perhaps, to their recent discussion of Cesar Chavez.’’
The over-achieving, desperate-to-please students react with scorn when, in an exercise in adolescent “Jeopardy,” someone replies “John Cheever’’ instead of Gatsby after LaVerdere asks a rhetorical question: “Literature. In this twentieth-century novel, a character attends a sparsely populated funeral after the protagonist is found dead in his pools.’’
And so it goes.
It may sound a bit precious, but these kids are no less worthy of attention for being privileged than Holden Caulfield at Pencey Prep. Their angst is real, however unearned it sometimes seems, and Beattie has previously explored this fictional terrain in the portrayal of the funny, troubled teenager, Jocelyn, in the linked tales of The State We’re In: Maine Stories.
Here, the tone changes, abruptly, in Chapter Six, when the main protagonist, Ben, gets unwelcome news. “On 9/11 LouLou was the town crier, banging on her classmates’ doors. It took Ben some time to realize that he hadn’t been awakened from a nightmare. Mrs. Somersworth, the school nurse (rumored to have had a drug problem herself, when she was their age) handed out tissues and herded them into the TV room to look at the shaky footage, the incomprehensible smoke in New York.’’
The personal swiftly becomes political. The father of Ben’s friend Jasper, it is revealed, died in one of the towers, where he was meeting his divorce lawyer. But for these beleaguered kids, the echo chamber reminder, “9/11 changed everything,’’ tolls for a while, but doesn’t fundamentally alter their fates.
After Ben graduates, he skips college, moving to upstate New York for dead-end jobs and dead-end affairs with women he has trouble connecting with. In a section that calls to mind Bret Easton Ellis, if he were (somehow) in control of his instrument, he meets his ex-girlfriend Arly at the Gansevoort, where he spots Cindy Crawford, “her high heels clicking, taking the lobby entrance into the bar. The security thug was an enormous horror movie fly with multi-faceted, glinting pupils. The guy pushed a button as Ben approached to let him on the elevator, indicating acceptance at the same time he indicated contempt.’’
Other troubles await.
“The door to eight-sixteen was cracked open. What awaited? He walked in, realizing with relief there’d be a mini-bar, he could have a drink and calm down even if it was too late to rethink things. He could catch his breath.
She lay naked on the bed, turned toward him. Had she been crying?’’
More portraits in pain ensue: Ben’s crush on Gina, his next door neighbor’s wife; a tragic-comic visit from his Bailey friend, LouLou, and her girlfriend, Dale, who want him to be a sperm donor; and failed attempts to reconnect with Jasper, who’s moved to California to another life, another world.
Things come crashing down when he hears from VerDevere (he’s usually referred to by his last name, the adolescent tropes prevail). A confession, and a confrontation, ensue. No spoilers here, but brace yourself, this is no easy conversation.
The pose has been broken, and the poor, bare, forked animal remains, though not without pretension, since that’s all his former teacher has to hold on. Ben holds on, too, trying to pick up the pieces.
The novel ends with his driving Dale (she and LouLou have broken up) to an event at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Both are broken, but doing their best.
“The cars were moving fast on the West Side Highway,’’ Beattie writes, echoing Fitzgerald, and Jordan Baker. “Once you knew how to drive in New York, your instincts never failed you. But you couldn’t hesitate, once you pulled out; you never signaled, and when you shot into the next lane, you had to keep accelerating…
“They continued downtown—a word that had become, in his lifetime, synonymous with what wasn’t there. They could build all the new buildings and parks and memorials they wanted, but downtown would always be the absence of what used to exist.’’
But it’s Ben’s own absence, his life as a suffering spectator, which he’s really mourning.
In the still compelling coda to Chilly Scenes, Beattie wrote, “It would be a waste of time just to stare at snowflakes, but she was counting, and even that might be a waste of time, but she was only counting the ones that were just alike.”
Baby, it’s cold outside. The truth hurts. But it’s worth knowing.
Ann Beattie will be at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sunday, May 5th at 3:15pm, in conversation with Carol Edgarian.
https://www.zyzzyva.org/2019/05/02/a-...
My notice, for ZYZZYVA magazine, follows below:
A Wonderful Stroke of Luck’ by Ann Beattie: Familiar Themes, New Territory
by Paul Wilner
Posted on May 2, 2019
Ann Beattie novel A Wonderful Stroke of LuckNo good deed goes unpunished.
Ann Beattie’s 21st work of fiction, A Wonderful Stroke Of Luck (288 pages; Viking), has been taking a beating in some quarters, notably the New York Times (for, among other capital sins, spelling Spalding Gray’s name incorrectly).
She’s been laboring under the mantle as a voice of her g-g-generation ever since her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, in 1976. It’s a jacket she hates, understandably, but it was refreshing at the time to find fiction about people and places (although usually not politics) of the ‘60s that didn’t read like it was written by Richard Fariña.
The cool, evaluative voice—hip but not ostentatious—of her fiction, then and now, probed the psyches of lost souls struggling to find their place in a world not of their own making. (Chilly Scenes was closer to a portrait of slackers than the counter-culture, but the term had not yet come into use…so much for journalistic generalizations.)
The new novel takes its title from a quote by the Dalai Lama (“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck’’), but rest assured, Beattie has not gone New Age on us. Her characters certainly don’t get what they want, let alone what they need, and most assuredly don’t feel lucky about it.
It’s a portrait of millennials (again with the labels…) at the private prep school Bailey Academy in New Hampshire, under the heavy influence of Pierre LaVerdere, their campy, cryptic instructor. They may bear an outward resemblance to the kids in The Dead Poets Society or A Separate Peace. But the author is stalking bigger game, offering pitiless status details with deadpan reserve.
Setting up a meeting of the Honor Society, she notes, “Today there were also enormous seedless grapes—a nod, perhaps, to their recent discussion of Cesar Chavez.’’
The over-achieving, desperate-to-please students react with scorn when, in an exercise in adolescent “Jeopardy,” someone replies “John Cheever’’ instead of Gatsby after LaVerdere asks a rhetorical question: “Literature. In this twentieth-century novel, a character attends a sparsely populated funeral after the protagonist is found dead in his pools.’’
And so it goes.
It may sound a bit precious, but these kids are no less worthy of attention for being privileged than Holden Caulfield at Pencey Prep. Their angst is real, however unearned it sometimes seems, and Beattie has previously explored this fictional terrain in the portrayal of the funny, troubled teenager, Jocelyn, in the linked tales of The State We’re In: Maine Stories.
Here, the tone changes, abruptly, in Chapter Six, when the main protagonist, Ben, gets unwelcome news. “On 9/11 LouLou was the town crier, banging on her classmates’ doors. It took Ben some time to realize that he hadn’t been awakened from a nightmare. Mrs. Somersworth, the school nurse (rumored to have had a drug problem herself, when she was their age) handed out tissues and herded them into the TV room to look at the shaky footage, the incomprehensible smoke in New York.’’
The personal swiftly becomes political. The father of Ben’s friend Jasper, it is revealed, died in one of the towers, where he was meeting his divorce lawyer. But for these beleaguered kids, the echo chamber reminder, “9/11 changed everything,’’ tolls for a while, but doesn’t fundamentally alter their fates.
After Ben graduates, he skips college, moving to upstate New York for dead-end jobs and dead-end affairs with women he has trouble connecting with. In a section that calls to mind Bret Easton Ellis, if he were (somehow) in control of his instrument, he meets his ex-girlfriend Arly at the Gansevoort, where he spots Cindy Crawford, “her high heels clicking, taking the lobby entrance into the bar. The security thug was an enormous horror movie fly with multi-faceted, glinting pupils. The guy pushed a button as Ben approached to let him on the elevator, indicating acceptance at the same time he indicated contempt.’’
Other troubles await.
“The door to eight-sixteen was cracked open. What awaited? He walked in, realizing with relief there’d be a mini-bar, he could have a drink and calm down even if it was too late to rethink things. He could catch his breath.
She lay naked on the bed, turned toward him. Had she been crying?’’
More portraits in pain ensue: Ben’s crush on Gina, his next door neighbor’s wife; a tragic-comic visit from his Bailey friend, LouLou, and her girlfriend, Dale, who want him to be a sperm donor; and failed attempts to reconnect with Jasper, who’s moved to California to another life, another world.
Things come crashing down when he hears from VerDevere (he’s usually referred to by his last name, the adolescent tropes prevail). A confession, and a confrontation, ensue. No spoilers here, but brace yourself, this is no easy conversation.
The pose has been broken, and the poor, bare, forked animal remains, though not without pretension, since that’s all his former teacher has to hold on. Ben holds on, too, trying to pick up the pieces.
The novel ends with his driving Dale (she and LouLou have broken up) to an event at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Both are broken, but doing their best.
“The cars were moving fast on the West Side Highway,’’ Beattie writes, echoing Fitzgerald, and Jordan Baker. “Once you knew how to drive in New York, your instincts never failed you. But you couldn’t hesitate, once you pulled out; you never signaled, and when you shot into the next lane, you had to keep accelerating…
“They continued downtown—a word that had become, in his lifetime, synonymous with what wasn’t there. They could build all the new buildings and parks and memorials they wanted, but downtown would always be the absence of what used to exist.’’
But it’s Ben’s own absence, his life as a suffering spectator, which he’s really mourning.
In the still compelling coda to Chilly Scenes, Beattie wrote, “It would be a waste of time just to stare at snowflakes, but she was counting, and even that might be a waste of time, but she was only counting the ones that were just alike.”
Baby, it’s cold outside. The truth hurts. But it’s worth knowing.
Ann Beattie will be at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sunday, May 5th at 3:15pm, in conversation with Carol Edgarian.
https://www.zyzzyva.org/2019/05/02/a-...
December 21, 2023
When I picked up this book I was prepared for the worst. I dressed up in full battle armour and literally had to fight the first 30 pages.
Boy, was I confused and bored. So many characters, so little happening but so much being written about. And this ever present nuisance LaVerdere. His name sounds like a brand for expensive organic vegetables or wine, I can't decide. Then this underlying theme of 9/11 came up, seemingly out of the nowhere (I thought the book played in the 80s or 90s). I think the significance 9/11 is difficult to understand for everyone born after and for Europeans especially. Still it can't have been so life changing as it is sometimes made out to be by the author.
After several chapters the main character has graduated and is tossed into the real world. I was surprised and yet again confused. I reckoned the whole book would discuss Ben's school years- but no. The reader is now confronted by a early twenty dude (I think atleast that he's still so young, even though he feels older). This middle part of the book, I found intriguing. Somebody on Goodreads called it ADHD-writing and I absolutely agree but I don't hate it. The thing is, I myself am about the same age as Ben and exactely as clueless as he is as to what form my life should take. I get how he feels lost and doesn't want to commit to anything. I think the whole ADHD-writing somehow mirrors his brain, jumping from one possible turn his life could take to next. So I kinda see the artistic vision (besides all these side quest sentences were quite entertaining, especially as the book didn't really have a plot). Personally, I really like the character of Ben. He seems to BE but not really LIVE. He does many things, has affairs, meets people, works at different jobs but he never really does something with passion. I believe it's not always that easy to find a spot you'd like to belong in. I often aks myself if people really want to do what they do, or if it just was convenient and they got the hang of it. I see Ben as a character who doesn't know what he wants but he sees what he doesn't want and is thus restless. He doesn't strike me as sad but there's something downcast about him and his ways. Recently I have at times felt the same, that's why I like him. Because he seems approchable not knowing his way, and just choosing a way but perhaps never being passionate about it. That might be the theme of the middle passage, probably of the whole book, but I found it best formulated in the middle part. Because towards the end the book got messy.
Let me just say. YOUR. TEACHER. SHOULD. NOT. BE. YOUR. SPERM. DONOR.
Basta, no matter what arguments anyone might have, this is absolutely disgusting. What kind of kink does LouLou have for even considering it!? LaVerdere is clearly a weirdo, an arrogant snob, a loser, and still you admire him? Girl, RUN. He's like forty years older and would have railed her. Because he felt honored and his ego was inflated. Smells like a real loser-complex to me. I mean do your thing, find love in old age but not with younger people and not with stepmothers of your students, preferably. Ngl, HIV is a bad thing but I didn't feel all too bad for him. He seems like the type of man who'd just have gone on whoring around unprotected.
Cut away the beginning of the book, nobody understands or cares about and burn the end for obvious reasons and you might have an interesting study of a young adult.
Boy, was I confused and bored. So many characters, so little happening but so much being written about. And this ever present nuisance LaVerdere. His name sounds like a brand for expensive organic vegetables or wine, I can't decide. Then this underlying theme of 9/11 came up, seemingly out of the nowhere (I thought the book played in the 80s or 90s). I think the significance 9/11 is difficult to understand for everyone born after and for Europeans especially. Still it can't have been so life changing as it is sometimes made out to be by the author.
After several chapters the main character has graduated and is tossed into the real world. I was surprised and yet again confused. I reckoned the whole book would discuss Ben's school years- but no. The reader is now confronted by a early twenty dude (I think atleast that he's still so young, even though he feels older). This middle part of the book, I found intriguing. Somebody on Goodreads called it ADHD-writing and I absolutely agree but I don't hate it. The thing is, I myself am about the same age as Ben and exactely as clueless as he is as to what form my life should take. I get how he feels lost and doesn't want to commit to anything. I think the whole ADHD-writing somehow mirrors his brain, jumping from one possible turn his life could take to next. So I kinda see the artistic vision (besides all these side quest sentences were quite entertaining, especially as the book didn't really have a plot). Personally, I really like the character of Ben. He seems to BE but not really LIVE. He does many things, has affairs, meets people, works at different jobs but he never really does something with passion. I believe it's not always that easy to find a spot you'd like to belong in. I often aks myself if people really want to do what they do, or if it just was convenient and they got the hang of it. I see Ben as a character who doesn't know what he wants but he sees what he doesn't want and is thus restless. He doesn't strike me as sad but there's something downcast about him and his ways. Recently I have at times felt the same, that's why I like him. Because he seems approchable not knowing his way, and just choosing a way but perhaps never being passionate about it. That might be the theme of the middle passage, probably of the whole book, but I found it best formulated in the middle part. Because towards the end the book got messy.
Let me just say. YOUR. TEACHER. SHOULD. NOT. BE. YOUR. SPERM. DONOR.
Basta, no matter what arguments anyone might have, this is absolutely disgusting. What kind of kink does LouLou have for even considering it!? LaVerdere is clearly a weirdo, an arrogant snob, a loser, and still you admire him? Girl, RUN. He's like forty years older and would have railed her. Because he felt honored and his ego was inflated. Smells like a real loser-complex to me. I mean do your thing, find love in old age but not with younger people and not with stepmothers of your students, preferably. Ngl, HIV is a bad thing but I didn't feel all too bad for him. He seems like the type of man who'd just have gone on whoring around unprotected.
Cut away the beginning of the book, nobody understands or cares about and burn the end for obvious reasons and you might have an interesting study of a young adult.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 1, 2022
I have no idea what this book was trying to say and, at times, I wasn't even sure I liked it. Huzzah for challenging artistic fiction that dares you to go WTF was that?
A book about unlikeable wealthy New Yorkers, Beattie's book focuses on Ben, who at the inception of the novel is attending a prestigious but highly dysfunctional boarding school on the East Coast. Ben may or may not be there because his father thinks he is emotionally damaged; the school may or may not be a receptable for the fucked up outcasts from wealthy families orbiting NYC. This point is never made explicitly clear. While at school, Ben is a member of the Honors Society, where his charismatic teacher Laverdere holds court over his impressionable charges with obscure, and often bizarrely pointless Socratic dialogues meant to push the children toward what...some kind of deeper wisdom?
Some bizarre human interactions occur, the generational psyche is irreparably damaged by 9/11, and Ben graduates. Unsure of what to do with his life--Ben is painted as someone who doesn't really plan and, in a lot of ways, doesn't really engage with the world around him in a concrete and meaningful way--Ben has a series of bizarre misadventures. His family may be fucked up, but they are wealthy, and his class privilege ensures that this brief interregnum does not derail his graduation from Cornell and entry into the Manhattan financial world.
Ben opts out and moves outside the city, where further bizarre and possibly significant events occur. Then it all kind of ends. Is Ben happy? Did he change? Was there a point to any of this bizarrely told, erratically plotted, often coldly distant and vaguely traumatic narrative? Who knows! I'm still working it out--and I ended up deciding that I do love it! Why? I can't tell you. Seriously, this is a bizarrely unique and bizarrely engaging story about rich people problems that's kind of awesome?
A book about unlikeable wealthy New Yorkers, Beattie's book focuses on Ben, who at the inception of the novel is attending a prestigious but highly dysfunctional boarding school on the East Coast. Ben may or may not be there because his father thinks he is emotionally damaged; the school may or may not be a receptable for the fucked up outcasts from wealthy families orbiting NYC. This point is never made explicitly clear. While at school, Ben is a member of the Honors Society, where his charismatic teacher Laverdere holds court over his impressionable charges with obscure, and often bizarrely pointless Socratic dialogues meant to push the children toward what...some kind of deeper wisdom?
Some bizarre human interactions occur, the generational psyche is irreparably damaged by 9/11, and Ben graduates. Unsure of what to do with his life--Ben is painted as someone who doesn't really plan and, in a lot of ways, doesn't really engage with the world around him in a concrete and meaningful way--Ben has a series of bizarre misadventures. His family may be fucked up, but they are wealthy, and his class privilege ensures that this brief interregnum does not derail his graduation from Cornell and entry into the Manhattan financial world.
Ben opts out and moves outside the city, where further bizarre and possibly significant events occur. Then it all kind of ends. Is Ben happy? Did he change? Was there a point to any of this bizarrely told, erratically plotted, often coldly distant and vaguely traumatic narrative? Who knows! I'm still working it out--and I ended up deciding that I do love it! Why? I can't tell you. Seriously, this is a bizarrely unique and bizarrely engaging story about rich people problems that's kind of awesome?
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