The State We're In: Maine Stories
General fiction, Short stories
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
From a multiple prize-winning master of the short form a stunning collection of brand-new linked stories that perfectly capture the zeitgeist through the voices of vivid and engaging women from adolescence to old age We build worlds… for ourselves wherever we go writes Ann Beattie The State We re In her magnificent new collection of linked stories is about how we live in the places we have chosen--or been chosen by It s about the stories we tell our families our friends and ourselves the truths we may or may not see how our affinities unite or repel us and where we look for love Many of these stories are set in Maine but The State We re In is about more than geographical location and certainly is not a picture postcard of the coastal state Some characters have arrived by accident others are trying to get out The collection opens closes and is interlaced with stories that focus on Jocelyn a wryly disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school As in life the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn s sometimes challenging sometimes embellishing her view Riveting witty sly idiosyncratic and bold these stories describe a state of mind a manner of being--now A Beattie story says Margaret Atwood is like a fresh bulletin from the front we snatch it up eager to know what s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no-man s-land known as interpersonal relations The State We re In is a fearless exploration of contemporary life by a brilliant writer whose fiction startles as it illuminates