Book Rec of the Day 2/4/2007

Beattie is a master of negative space. She is at her best when exploring misfired human connections. Follies is her eighth book of stories, and it is classic Beattie. Even when her characters actually collide with one another (a car accident brings two people together), they still find a way of pulling apart and spinning into their own separate orbits. Beattie fans and anyone else who loves clean, spare prose and sharp realism will fall for Follies.

FOLLIES: NEW STORIES, by Ann Beattie (Scribner, 2005)