Park City

For more than twenty-five years, Ann Beattie's short fiction has held a mirror up to America, portraying its awkwardly welded families, its loosely coupled couples, and much-uprooted children with acuity, humor, and compassion. This triumphant collection includes thirty-six of the finest stories of her career including eight new pieces that have not appeared in a book before. 

Beattie's characters embark on stoned cross-country odysseys with lovers who may leave them before the engine cools. They comfort each other amid the ashes of failed relationships and in hospital waiting rooms. They try to locate themselves in a world where all the old landmarks have been turned into theme parks. Funny and sorrowful, fiercely compressed yet emotionally
expansive, Park City is dazzling.

"There is a kind of magnificence to Ann Beattie's Park City. . . .  One feels amazed at the confidence, steadiness and quality of [her work]." —The New York Times Book Review (front page)

"Like a boxed set of Miles Davis CDs . . . both superb in itself and an essential piece of history. . . .[Beattie is] one of our era's most vital masters of the short form." —The Washington Post Book World

"Graceful and rewarding." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Beattie has a facility . . . that is breathtaking, a fluidity that delights. . . . [She is] one of the most influential short-fiction writers of her generation." —Newsday