The Burning House

by Ann Beattie

A collection of the author's most recent stories features their unnervingly sophisticated young people and older folks striving for wisdom and grace, all of whom are rendered by an acclaimed stylist

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, The United States Of America, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature

10 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Ann 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.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

people in the middle of changes. like reading a collected review of assorted slow burning mid-life crises, put to the page by a dry-eyed, not-exactly sympathetic observer. humans are sad! but this collection is beautiful and often surprising.

[Dev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like when you are months removed, and only then do you realize the in-between moments were really the moments. Off-page: car crashes, marriages, divorces, affairs, death, and remarriages. On-page: descriptions of tiny movements—left with the residue and trying to make sense of it.

As someone with a proclivity for melancholy and over-romanticizing the little things, this was everything I could have asked for from a short story collection. Really gorgeous descriptions that keep things moving from feeling to thought and back again. Stories that exist somewhere between nostalgia and mourning. Incredibly meditative fiction, and so intelligent on a sentence level.

I don’t think you could go wrong with a single story from this, but a few highlights for good measure: Jacklighting, Winter: 1978 and Sunshine and Shadow

[Conchita Matson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know what to think. I might change the rating after discussing it in book club. Left me with many questions.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I mentioned this somewhere else, but I'd never read Beattie, even though it feels like I spent most of the nineties in writing programs trying to figure out what to do with the legacy of dirty realism (the programs and me both trying to figure it out-- syntactic ambiguity can be your friend). I'm not sure what I expected out of this, but since Susan Lohafer seemed so enamored with her, I thought I'd give Beattie a whirl, and I'm glad I did....

The stories aren't what I expected, given my experience with Carver and Mason. I recognize the flatness of the language and the connection with the other two of the unholy trinity, but it sort of resonates differently here-- I think this might be because this is a weird collection for Beattie, with unusual characters?-- but it was less that these characters had limited emotional vocabularies than they just talked this way, as if they were suppressing, rather than at the limits of their expressive range. But I'm more interested in the stories themselves which were, on first reading at least, really complex, fragmentary, and oddly shaped. I liked a lot of them, I like stories that come in odd shapes and start and end in unlikely places-- there's a real deliberate attempt here to make something artful out of these otherwise artless, prosy lives. And maybe that's what I found most surprising-- the shapes are so willful, so strange, that to me the stories moved well out of the realm of pretty much any sort of realism I know and into a totally different, transformed kind of reading experience-- maybe it leads more to someone like Amy Hempl (who is herself another student of Lish, but really, who isn't-- they proved it on an episode of Law and order: CI) but it was really different than what I expected.

So, I really liked this book, even when I didn't totally understand it, and I suspect that if I were to read all these stories again, I might like it even more. A solid collection.

[Mickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each of these stories felt like a small clip in the lives of their characters instead of a complete story, but somehoe this was better than knowing everything surrounding the characters. Each character grappled with serious, depressing, and life changing circumstances, and the format made these situations feel incredibly real and that much more powerful. Would absolutely recommend if you're ready for a bit of a downer.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best stories in my opinion are "Greenwich Time" and "The Burning House," which happen to be the last two.

[David Sheward · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Bought at a used-book store somewhere.) I know I had read this collection of Ann Beattie stories a long time ago, but I found a copy at a used bookstore somewhere, began it again, then put it down for a couple of years and recently picked it up again after reading a later Beattie collection. Except for striking details, I did not remember the stories. The only one I could recall was The Cinderella Waltz about a woman whose husband leaves her for another man. Rereading that one, I found themes deeper than just the novelty of a gay angle. The husband is now thinking of moving to San Francisco for a new job. In an interesting detail, the wife recalls the husband not being satisfied with any of the Christmas gifts, and being disappointed with a six-slice toaster when he wanted a eight-slice model. This seemingly insignificant piece of information shows us the husband always wants more, whether it's a present or a relationship. You have to look hard at what Beattie includes and why she includes it.

Reading these stories again now that I'm older and lived through situations similar to those of the characters gives me a better understanding of Beattie's craft. She offers pieces of a person's life, like flashes, and imparts why they do what they do. I like Greenwich Time with the divorced husband killing time in Manhattan until he forces himself to drive to Connecticut and ask his remarried ex-wife for custody of their little boy.

[Amelia L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find collections of short stories kind of hard to review because I have Thoughts about each of the stories individually, but also the essence of the writer's work is better discussed from a big-picture standpoint. (see: my unwritten review for Dubliners)Beattie's work is best enjoyed with time, with enough detail to really know the characters, making the longest stories, including "Greenwich Time" my favorites for that reason. In the beginning and middle, Beattie experimented with shorter, shock-based, almost flash fiction stories, which delivered the right vibe but missed the beauty and depth category. I also have her novel Chilly Scenes of Winter on my TBR shelf, and I'm excited to see how it compares.

I mentioned this already, but Beattie's writing reminds me a lot of Sally Rooney, which makes me wonder if Rooney was inspired by Beattie's scenes of relationship and life discontent. Beattie's characters are usually well-read intellectual types dealing with intense changes and facing unsteady ground in relationships. The melancholy and the whirling gyre of the mind are integral facets of the plot. Our pasts come back to haunt us, humorous memories, good memories, bad ones. The characters contextualize their time together through the time they spend alone-- it's given a character's mind is always on something else.

Beattie is obviously an apt observer of human nature and the complexity of our brief interactions. Her writing makes small moments huge and the simplest of observations are turning points. She writes the beginnings of her stories like a mystery, leaving the reader to figure out the situation before it dawns on them and little profound insights are dropped. In this sense, re-reading the stories helps. As a whole, these stories are of crossroads; between sorrow and longing, giving and taking, grief and the contentedness of normalcy. There is a wry, hidden humor too, in the dry delivery and situational mirth.

My favorites are "Running Dreams", "Winter 1978", "The Burning House", and "Jacklighting"

[Linda]

It was weird reading these again 40-some years after I read them the first time. At the time it was not even just fashionable to write like Beattie...it was just that there didn’t even seem to be an alternative. Looking at these stories now, it’s almost hard to see how they ever got published. The pileup of the same characters - the floaty woman, the guy who won’t commit, the flamboyant gay guy, the sad divorced mom, everyone stoned - From story to story I couldn’t keep anyone straight. Maybe this creates a confusion in the mind of the reader similar to the stoned state of the characters. My god, why are they all so confused and depressed? These boomers? They had it all. Yikes. On the other hand, they do paint a vivid portrait of a time and place. But too much of the people-being-characterized-by-the-weird-thing-they-love-that-they-bought-in-antique-store. Final question to self: Do you like the “boom-epiphany” endings? She puts an awful lot of weight on them. They don’t always work. But sometimes when they do, they still seem kind of cool.

[Linda DiMeo Lowman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read three of these stories and just didn't enjoy them. I have too many other books I want to read so I abandoned it.

[rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I read this a few years ago, this colleciton of short stories definietley struck me as "ridiculously awesome." Very empathetic characters.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story is one of the best stories in all of literature. If the rest don’t quite compare, how could they possibly.

[Dylan Suher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beattie is pretty much the archetype of strictly minimalist New Yorker fiction, specifically, she's really emblematic of a very particular moment in American fiction of the seventies. This dedication to observation and capturing the moment means, in practice, a lot of colorless characters who blend together and stories that don't really go anywhere. And while I think you can still write good stories about the well-to-do, I did find it difficult to relate to yet another WASP with a summer home. On the other hand, I found myself highlighting quite a few lines. And there are transcendent exceptions to the rule here, namely: "Girl Talk," "The Cinderella Waltz," "Playback" and "Running Dreams."

"Today he is wearing his blue jeans with the Superman patch on the knee. If Superman launched himself from Andrew's knee, he would be flying a foot or so off the ground. People would think that small figure in blue was a piece of trash caught by the wind, a stick blowing, something to gather their hems against."

"I am really at some out-of-the-way beach house, with a man I am not married to and people I do not love, in labor."

"That was why deer had such sad eyes, Benton told Jason---because they were once something else."

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have yet to read an Ann Beattie book that I don't like. Part of me wants to give this 4 stars, some stories are definitely that, and some are 3's, maybe one 2 and one five also. My first preference of Ann Beattie's workse are her novels. Her short stories are powerful, tightly written, very brief. She reaches one or two layers into the character while her books are very fully revealing. If someone else attempted to write her characters stories it would be a depressing read. Her stories are like an intimate glimpse into her characters life, understanding and acceptance. The short stories usually start with peripheral dialogue revealing the characters. She has a particularly soft ear for the misfits and artistic souls. She carefully crafts nostalgia into each story as a point of reference and a frame for the story.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Years ago I loved Ann Beattie's work. Been away a while and returned to her through "The Burning House."
Older now, I found many characters and stories shallow, callow and...not very self-aware. Then thought again about the time in which they were written, time when I lived in NY and Maine, and said "Be careful."
Beattie is careful with her characters, shallow though they are at times.
And she's working settings in which people were what she captures - unfaithful, fickle, questing, wondering.
My favorites are "The Burning House," "Greenwich Time" and "Gravity."
Well worth the read. Finding some sadness having known some she captures, often with keen craft.

[Carfig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting snapshots of life among a group of similar, often drunk or stoned lonely people with wide-open, unfinished edges, like the deckle-edged black and white photos mentioned in one of the stories. In another of the odd coincidences that have been occurring in my life of late, Beattie's name was in the crossword I did on the same day I started reading this. I found this and another collection of her stories at an antiquarian bookseller in Manassas, in unedited proofs. I was almost as intrigued by seeing the unedited text as I was in reading the stories.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that was probably unique or broke new ground in its time (it was first published in 1982). I like her "flat" style. The characters and situations are interesting, the dialogue is good... but I'm not sure it still gives satisfaction. It didn't for me, but that may have to do with my relationship with short stories. If the characters and plots are interesting enough, I want to spend more time with them than a short story lasts, so ultimately I'm frustrated.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

For years I've been hearing what a master of the shorty story Ann Beattie is. This was my first foray into her fictive realm, and it was disappointing (I confess I did not read the entire collection). All the stories were about privileged white hetero couples whining about their relationships. Not too different from what you'd find in ABC primetime. Skip it.

[Jody · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that made me want to write short stories. Every story in it is perfect, fully formed. I wish Beattie's other collections and novels (the ones I've read, at least) came close to the achievement of this one.

[Louis]

Even more Beattie.

[Cherie · Rating 3 out of 5]

B Some of the stories were really great, but other ones were mediocre and skimmed those

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Jacklighting" is an exceptionally beautiful story of loss.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

jacklighting is still my all time piece of favorite contemporary short fiction.

[robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

the stars are only for the title story. greenwich time merits 3, cinderella waltz 1, and the rest were unread by me

[.. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was confusing at times and some parts absolutely did not make sense, but I guess that's the way it works with 1st person povs.

Other than that, it's a pretty good short story.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most revealing series of stories.