Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The State We're In: Maine Stories
    The State We're In: Maine Stories
    The State We're In: Maine Stories
    Audiobook5 hours

    The State We're In: Maine Stories

    Written by Ann Beattie

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    “Ann Beattie at her most magnificent…Her first new collection in ten years...These tales explore the range of emotional states the author is famous for: longing, disaffection, ambivalence, love, regret. It’s nice to hear her voice again” (People).

    “A peerless, contemplative page-turner” (Vanity Fair), The State We’re In is about how we live in the places we have chosen—or been chosen by. It’s about the stories we tell our families, our friends, and ourselves, the truths we may or may not see, how our affinities unite or repel us, and where we look for love.

    Many of these stories are set in Maine, but The State We’re In is about more than geographical location. Some characters have arrived in Maine by accident, others are trying to escape. The collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn’s, sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view.

    “Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown: an iconic presentation, each line and fold falling into place but allowing room for surprise” (O, The Oprah Magazine). “Splendid...memorable...every page…fitted out with the blessed finery of hypnotic storytelling” (The Washington Post), these stories describe a state of mind, a manner of being. The State We’re In explores, through women’s voices, the unexpected moments and glancing epiphanies of daily life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 11, 2015
    ISBN9781442389588
    Author

    Ann Beattie

    Ann Beattie has been included in five O. Henry Award Collections, in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. The former Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, she is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine, Virginia, and Florida.

    More audiobooks from Ann Beattie

    Related to The State We're In

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Olga Tokarczuk Explores the Live Chain That Connects and Fetters Us in ‘Flights’

      Aug 9, 2018

      In a section of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s Man Booker International Prize-winning novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, the wife and toddler of a man named Kunicki disappear while they are on vacation on a tiny island. After a long day spe

      7 min read

    • Article

      Birnam Wood By Eleanor Catton Review – The Root Of All Evil

      Feb 26, 2023

      In his great critical work The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode wrote about the end-directedness of fiction, the way that novels rehearse and forestall their endings – a process he called peripeteia. One thing he doesn’t discuss in that book is what

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rachel Gets Remarried

      Jun 4, 2018

      RACHEL CUSK IS NOT A RADICAL—AT LEAST NOT anymore. Critics lambasted her as a “bad mom” when she asserted that marriage and motherhood deprive women of any sense of self in her memoirs A Life’s Work (2002) and Aftermath (2012). Years later, she’s sti

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      Golden Gate Park As any poet will tell you, the weight of the lineis essential, but here these practitioners havemore on their minds than poems. The weight of their lines is uniformly light, the line selectedto land and then rest gently on the surfac

      2 min read

    • Article

      Samantha Irby On Oversharing And The Art Of Confessional Writing

      May 9, 2018

      Samantha Irby is not shy about her shortcomings. The blogger and author of the essay collections "We Are Never Meeting in Real Life" and "Meaty" writes both openly and hilariously about dealing with Crohn's disease, awkward dating experiences and bad

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Look Ahead To The Best New Books In 2021: From Marcus Rashford To Bill Gates

      Jan 7, 2021

      Celebrity self-help titles, race, colonialism, gender and identity politics are the big themes in non-fiction, while in fiction publishers have splurged on commissioning lots of débuts alongside the more established names. Plenty of treats in store -

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Natalie Bakopoulos

      Dec 8, 2020

      I felt so wrecked, so torn apart—yet somehow, miraculously, also shored back up. The post A Year in Reading: Natalie Bakopoulos appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      How to Be Lonely: A Booklist

      Oct 12, 2017

      The Door wrecked me in an already wrecked state last January. The book dwells on humans and their secrets and suggests a gruff sort of love that might entail just leaving people alone. The post How to Be Lonely: A Booklist appeared first on The Milli

      4 min read

    • Article

      Minor Aesthetics: On Helen DeWitt’s ‘The English Understand Wool’

      Nov 17, 2022

      The story that 'The English Understand Wool' tells is a DeWittian distillate. The post Minor Aesthetics: On Helen DeWitt’s ‘The English Understand Wool’ appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      'Wellness' Is A Perfect Novel For Our Age, Its Profound Sadness Tempered With Humor

      Sep 20, 2023

      Nathan Hill's stunning new novel about the stories we tell about our lives and our loves, and how we sustain relationships throughout time, is both funny and heartbreaking, sometimes on the same page.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crimes of the Heart

      Nov 5, 2016

      Like many of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marías’ new book, Thus Bad Begins, isn’t exactly a mystery, though it is mysterious. Here, the 65-year-old perennial Nobel favorite tells the story of Juan de Vere, a young man working for a film directo

      1 min read

    • Article

      Motherhood Makes You Obscene

      Oct 1, 2019

      Motherhood Makes You Obscene
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Humanity of Being Freakish: The Millions Interviews Kevin Wilson

      Nov 15, 2019

      The goal is that my sons, Griff and Patch, eventually don’t need me anymore. But I can’t reconcile that yet. So, again, I write about that anxiety. The post The Humanity of Being Freakish: The Millions Interviews Kevin Wilson appeared first on The Mi

      7 min read

    • Article

      Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West

      Dec 27, 2019

      This list of must-read crime titles forms part of a lesser-known West, an awesomely weird landscape in which the line between Good and Evil shimmers like a mirage. The post Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West appeared first on The Mill

      4 min read

    • Article

      Jenny Offill Exerts Herself

      Jan 15, 2020

      I don’t love the language that’s available to talk about this stuff. If you’re not drawn to earnestness, how do you make yourself a more engaged person? The post Jenny Offill Exerts Herself appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Trial Run

      Mar 15, 2022

      Trial Run
      18 min read

    • Article

      Most Anticipated: The Great 2023B Book Preview

      Jul 3, 2023

      Six months. 179 books. Here's what we can't wait to read in the second half of 2023. The post Most Anticipated: The Great 2023B Book Preview appeared first on The Millions.

      48 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The State We're In

    4.5/5

    12 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I have been reading Ann Beattie novels and short stories for 35 years. She has always been one of my favorite authors. When I was working, I rarely read short stories but she was one that I did read. The is a collection that is loosely centered around the state of Main. Her characters are quirky and her prose tends to start with something and go off into major digressions. She is a lot like Jim Harrison. If you can follow the thread, then you really get to see how creative she is. Like many short story writers, she tends to give us ambiguous endings, but that is what real life is like. If you have never read her, then this collection is an excellent introduction to a great writer. It is only 200 pages long. I also suggest "Chilly Scenes of Winter", one of her first novels set in the 70's. It was made into a move, but the book is excellent. A good way to look at an author's work at the beginning and later stages of her career.
    • 5/5
      In my early days of book collecting, I avidly searched out authors whose books I admired. My goal was signed copies. I was not so careful in those days, because I have a lot of inscribed copies that are book club editions, or sometimes many editions removed from the first. I only cared about the signature for my own personal collection ? never about collection values. Most authors gladly signed my books, but sometimes I had to use some minor subterfuge to gain access to those authors shy about meeting strangers. When I heard Anne Beattie had been asked to speak at Rutgers University, I headed there with a few of her novels. I learned there would be no signing after the lecture, but I told the guard I was a free-lance writer and reviewer, and wanted to talk to her about an article I was writing. She agreed to see me, and she graciously signed my copies and answered a few questions, which I dutifully wrote into my notebook. All true, although the article never found its way into print. When I admire an author, I will go to many lengths to establish a connection ? no matter how brief. Now, Beattie has come out with a collection of short stories, The State We?re In. While I really love her novels, I am thoroughly seduced by her short stories.These 15 stories are loosely connected. Most deal with teenagers suffering under the onus of parents, who are all, to my mind, parents normally concerned about the welfare of their offspring. The peek into the mind of teenagers at the beginning and middle of their rebellious years awakens memories of my teen years and reminds me of what my students endure today.One character who appears in the first story, ?What Magic Realism Would Be,? and in the seventh story, ?Endless Rain into a Paper Cup,? is Jocelyn. In ?Magic Realism,? she agonizes over an assignment in her English class, and in ?Endless,? Uncle Raleigh, now worries about her passing algebra. He encourages her, because he knows she is smart. Beattie writes, ??Thanks for saying something nice to me.? // ?That?s because I believe you deserve niceness, Jocelyn.? [?] ?If you don?t mind, could you print [your essay] out, because I can?t read that little screen, as you know. And as I tell you every night.? // She got up from his office chair, where she?d been slumped, writing and picking at her pedicure. She turned on his printer. When it printed out, it was not quite two pages. // ?Yesterday?s was three pages,? he said immediately. // ?She?s tired of reading long papers.? Jocelyn lied to Raleigh and Bettina ? certainly to Bettina ? and to her sort of best friend, who was lucky enough to be in Australia this summer, even if it did have to be with her family and her retarded ? really, actually retarded ? brother, the challenged Daniel Junior, who picked his nose right in front of you? (3). No political correctness in Jocelyn, and she certainly spares no one.In ?Endless,? Jocelyn has a conversation with her English teacher. Beattie writes, ?Ms. Nementhal held open the side door. Jocelyn trotted ahead of her, her ears a little zingy, for some reason. Just listening to Ms. Nememthal had been exciting. She seemed to think she could do anything. If Jocelyn ever got into any college, it would be a miracle. Her mother said that tutoring for the SAT was too expensive, and she couldn?t disagree. All you could do was read stuff on the Internet and get pointers from your friends, the most helpful so far being that the questions were essentially simple, but they pointed you in a direction that made you question your own perceptions, so you?d change things at the last second and answer wrong? (76). English professors can be quite influential.I found the occasional use of second person a bit off putting, but I see that in my students? essays, so I guess that?s the way of the world. Anne Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award collections, in John Updike?s The Best Short Stories of the Century, and in The Best American Short Stories of 2014. She has won numerous other awards. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Virginia. If Anne Beattie is an unfamiliar name, The State We?re In is a fine entre into the world of Anne Beattie. 5 stars--Jim, 10/3/15