Secrets & Surprises

Authors: Ann Beattie

Secrets Surprises

Ann Beattie

Vintage (1978)

Tags: General, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction
Generalttt Short Stories (Single Author)ttt Fictionttt

These fifteen stories by Ann Beattie garnered universal critical acclaim on their first publication, earning Beattie the reputation as the most celebrated new voice in American fiction. Today these stories -- "A Vintage Thunderbird;" "The Lawn Party, " " La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans," to name a few -- seem even more powerful, and are read and studied as classics of the short-story form. Spare and elegant, yet charged with feeling and with the tension of things their characters cannot say, they are masterly portraits of improvised lives.

Review

"Powerful and plausible...Beattie is a remarkable talent."--
Chicago Sun-Times

"Ann Beattie's stories are the most perceptive since Salinger's. They are not just good writing, not just true to life; they have wonder in them and vision." -- Mary Lee Settle

"Superb."--
Boston Globe

"Talented and sensitive...works of vivid honesty and insight."--
Washington Post

Also by Ann Beattie, available in Vintage Contemporaries:
Chilly Scenes of Winter, Distortions, Falling in Place, Love Always, Picturing Will

From the Inside Flap

Ann Beattie’s

Secrets

and

Surprises

“Beattie’s crisp, direct style is free of artifice; her observations penetrating.”

—Newsweek

“Beattie evokes her characters with clarity and accuracy and creates a poignancy around them that leaves a sad afterimage in the reader’s mind. It is the kind of powerful, haunting, quality that we feel in
The Sun Also Rises
and
The Great Gatsby.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Beattie’s stories are an encouraging sign that short fiction … is once again enjoying its rightful popularity.”

—Atlantic Monthly

“Secrets and Surprises
is further proof that Beattie is one of the intriguing and provocative writers of our time. [Her] observations are always concise and illuminating, and her involvement unifies these stories and gives them life.”

—Library Journal

Also by Ann Beattie

Chilly Scenes of Winter
Distortions
Falling in Place
The Burning House
Love Always
Where You’ll Find Me
Picturing Will

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, May 1991

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage
Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1978.

Portions of this book have previously appeared in the following:
Canto, Fiction Magazine, Mississippi Review, The New England Review, The New York Times Magazine
, and
Viva
.

The following stories originally appeared in
The New Yorker:
“Colorado,” “The Lawn Party,” “Secrets and Surprises,”
“Weekends,” “Tuesday Night,” “Shifting,” “Distant Music,” and “A Vintage Thunderbird.”

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

CPP/Belwin, Inc. : Lyric from “Solitude.” Copyright 1934 by Mills
Music, Inc. Copyright renewed 1962 by Mills Music, Inc. and
Scarsdale Music Corp. International Copyright Secured. Made in U.S.A. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beattie, Ann.
Secrets and surprises : short stories / by Ann Beattie.—1st
Vintage contemporaries ed.

p. cm. — (Vintage contemporaries)

eISBN: 978-0-307-76573-4

I. Title.

[PS3552.E177S4 1991]

813′. 54—dc20 90-55706

v3.1

TO ROGER ANGELL

Contents

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

A VINTAGE THUNDERBIRD