The Burning House (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Ann Beattie
- First Published: 1979
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Social realism, Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: 1970’s, Self-discovery, Parents and children, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Sex or sexuality, Marriage, Alienation, Friendship, Women’s issues, Adultery, Drugs, Ethics, Popular culture, Masks, Gossip, Middle age, Marijuana
- Locales: Connecticut
The Work
This collection of stories established Ann Beattie as one of the foremost voices of her generation and earned for her a reputation as a literary stylist. Her spare style suggests a sense of emptiness or absence that is also the subject of these stories, which deal with disintegrating relationships set within the context of the social changes and shifts in identity that came out of the 1960’s. All her characters are white, middle-class people from the East Coast who are past their youth. They are rudderless, drifting in and out of relationships, marriages, families,...
[The entire page is 752 words long]
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