When My Father Was in Prison
We had this bird called Smokey that my brother taught to say Nevermore, but he (Smokey) couldn’t ever really do it since he was the wrong kind of bird. Not a talker, my mother said.
There was a girl across the street whose father was a government functionary. My brother made me repeat the words to get the sounds right and when I asked what that was, he said it was almost the same thing as being in prison, except her father slept at home.
The State We’re In by Ann Beattie (Scribner 2015)
Reviewed by Anthony Correale
Three stories in particular constitute the emotional core of Beattie’s loosely linked story collection. Each takes as its main character seventeen-year old Jocelyn and carries forward the same narrative. They are arranged in the collection like a frame: a Jocelyn story opens the collection, another is located like a support beam in its middle, and a third closes the collection. The middle story, “Endless Rain into a Paper Cup,” is, arguably, the high-point of the collection. Read more…
