Peopled by characters struggling with second marriages, abandoning artistic aspirations, or coming to terms with the betrayal of their own expectations, this collection of eleven new stories from Ann Beattie makes it strikingly clear why she is known as one of "American literature's most adept explorers and interpreters of the unraveling edges of life" (Miami Herald).
From the elegiac story "The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea," in which two men trade ruminations about the odd experience of being cared for by those you are meant to serve, to "The Big-Breasted Pilgrim," wherein a famous chef gets a series of bewildering phone calls from George Stephanopoulos, expressing Clinton's desire to dine at his house, to two stories in which family myths turn out to be both inaccurate and prescient, Perfect Recall comprises Beattie's most ambitious and complex work yet.

Contents

Hurricane Carleyville

The Big-Breasted Pilgrim

Mermaids

Cat People

The Women of This World

The Infamous Fall of Howell the Clown

See the Pyramids

In Irons

Coydog

Perfect Recall

The Famous Poet, Amid Bougainvillea

The Big-Breasted Pilgrim

Ann Beattie has published six previous collections of stories such as PERFECT RECALL and six novels including LOVE ALWAYS (Penguin) and FALLING IN PLACE (Penguin). She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine and Key West, Florida.