Mrs. Nixon, Ann Beattie
Mrs. Nixon, Ann Beattie
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Mrs. Nixon
A Novelist Imagines a Life

Author: Ann Beattie

Narrator: Ann Beattie

Unabridged: 7 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/15/2011

Synopsis

Pat Nixon remains one of our most mysterious and intriguing public figures, the only modern First Lady who never wrote a memoir. Beattie, like many of her generation, dismissed Richard Nixon's wife: 'interchangeable with a Martian,' she said. Decades later, she wonders what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man. Drawing on a wealth of sources Beattie reconstructs dozens of scenes in an attempt to see the world from Mrs. Nixon's point of view. Beattie packs insight and humor into her examination of the First Couple with whom baby boomers came of age. Mrs. Nixon is a startlingly compelling and revelatory work.

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ruth on March 10, 2012

I was intrigued by the premise of this 'novel' and even more intrigued once I started reading it. This is in no way, shape or form a 'novel' as we know it - or even entirely fiction. It is, rather, Beattie's rather intellectual exploration of what it would be like to write a historical novel if one......more

Goodreads review by Stephen on September 17, 2023

I got through this book the first time about a month ago, and included it in a list of favorites for the year over on my blog. But I wasn't finished with it then and have continued to paw back and forth among the various sections to admire what the author has done here. Ann Beattie has been a well-kn......more

Goodreads review by Robert on February 12, 2012

Not as much a guide to the craft of writing as those by Welty, King, Gardner and Davies, but more of an annotated tour. A very self conscious book but enjoyable because on one level it really is about Mrs. Nixon, or the person Ann Beattie believes her to be. Once you finally realize that this is not......more

Goodreads review by Cynthia on October 24, 2011

This is an intriguing book. It's about more than just Mrs. Nixon; it's about Richard Nixon, Watergate, writing, authors, fiction and nonfiction. Ann Beattie is quite taken with Mrs. Nixon, not just because she was a public figure but because she was a public figure who never allowed the public to kn......more

Goodreads review by Matt on November 11, 2023

It's interesting to read so many criticisms centered around what the object is not, rather than what it is. I get that entitlement naturally comes with a purchase of any product. We must interact with art, even when it's challenging, rather than dismissing it for what it's not. Now I've came from th......more

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