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1.5 

Mrs. Nixon

By Ann Beattie
Mrs. Nixon by Ann Beattie digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

From the award-winning author The New York Times Book Review called “a national treasure,” a fascinating, wholly original book about Pat Nixon that is also “a fully realized account of fiction, fiction writing, and the fiction writer” (The Boston Globe).

The rare First Lady who did not write a book, Pat Nixon remains one of the most mysterious and enigmatic public figures in recent history. Ann Beattie, like many of her generation, dismissed Richard Nixon’s wife. Decades later, she wonders what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man.

Beattie uses the elusive persona of Mrs. Nixon to examine how writers create characters, how they use detail, and what drives their storytelling. Like Stephen King’s On Writing, this fascinating and intimate account offers readers a rare glimpse into the imagination of a writer.

A startlingly compelling and revelatory work, Mrs. Nixon is an insightful and humorous examination of the First Couple who occupied the White House as the baby boomers came of age.

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3 Reviews

1.5
“I first read excerpts of this book in the New Yorker a few months ago and I was intrigued! I picked it up and started reading it and it feels like I'm being lectured to while the author tries valiantly to compare Pat Nixon's life to characters in literature. I honestly thought that this would be a full-fledged novel, and instead i'm getting the feeling like I'm in a class and I'm reading the instructor's notes for a lecture. From the reviews I've been reading, it sounds like several people are feeling the same way.”

About 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.

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