Onlookers: Stories by Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie is a genius at creating characters that are three-dimensional and relatable, and she sets them down in surprisingly familiar situations like planting tulips or a family squabble. Readers can easily immerse themselves in Beattie’s worlds.
So when she comes out with a new collection of short stories, that’s just one more chance for readers to marvel in her spot-on narratives and personalities. Her latest work, Onlookers (Scribner), is a collection of some of her very best.
A City With Pride, History and a Dark Legacy
As with The State We’re In which is set in Maine, Onlookers brings to life a geographical location. This time, it’s Charlottesville, Virginia. Almost a character itself, the town appears in every story here, linking each to another in subtle ways. Sometimes it’s the reappearance of a person or a street, a house, or even the university which is situated there. And there is the unavoidable history of the South. Fiercely protected by its citizens, Charlottesville is a bubble of liberal politics and proud traditions. Mature trees shade the streets, its architecture mixes the days of the Civil War with today’s sleek designs, bronze statues of Confederate heroes stand stubbornly waiting to be removed.
Readers may get the feeling that something needs to be resolved in each narrative, that the cloud of shame of the horrific Unite the Right rally in 2017 has never gone away, that clinging to the past might be a comfort that is being eliminated.
So characters are searching for something to hang on to. Monica is recently divorced, unsettled and a little forlorn; an eccentric aunt lives in a crowded little house surrounded by curious lawn art, a Diane Arbus photograph hung unostentatiously above a small marble-topped table. There’s George, permanently befuddled by a childhood accident, who works as a greeter and handyman at a nursing home and fits like an odd puzzle piece in the community; Monica’s nephew Jonah has the uneasy feeling that he doesn’t belong, imagining his aunt and uncle swirling inside a snow globe without him.
Generations of Charlottesville residents embrace their heritage and watch almost bewildered as the town morphs. A man and his wife watch from their penthouse window as people protest the removal of the statue of Lewis and Clark, their Indian guide Sacagawea kneeling at their feet. In another story, protestors at the base of the statue of Robert E. Lee seemed more upset about the treatment of his horse Traveler. “Let horses run free!” they chant.
A Kind of Itch in the Air
The first story in the collection sets the tone for the stories that follow: “Definitely not the strangest situation, but somewhat unusual,” it begins. Later in the book, Monica worries about where the monuments will go in their exile. She pictures them dangling in the air, waiting. She thinks there’s a “… kind of itch in the air … almost palpable.” George’s friend Stacey bemuses that it isn’t easy to keep a sense of wonder as we get older; there are too many unhappy surprises. The elderly doctor in the first story appears envious of emergency workers. “Every time they’re called out, it’s a matter of life and death,” he says, watching a rescue helicopter circle above the house.
This gentle and engaging collection of stories is immensely readable and thought-provoking, the characters finely drawn and the town of Charlottesville comes alive with history and Southern tradition.
Ann Beattie has been included in five O. Henry Award Collections, in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. The former Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, she is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine, Virginia and Florida.
