My Life, Starring Dara Falcon

Couverture
Knopf, 1997 - 307 pages
Dara Falcon is brilliant. She is manipulative. She is seductive. She makes things happen. She is someone for whom the novel's narrator, Jean Warner, is a perfect complement. Jean, an appealing but unformed young woman, is an only child brought up by an aunt after her parents' death. She has married into a large New England family, in which she happily -- if somewhat passively -- immerses herself. Until Dara Falcon arrives in town. Almost immediately they are friends; almost immediately everything about Dara fascinates Jean -- Dara's secret and perfect room, her past, her clothes, her acting career, her unabashed assault on the town's men. And almost immediately the ordinary stresses and strains of the family Jean has idealized become apparent as Dara insinuates herself into their lives. Suddenly Dara is everywhere -- moving in with the man who may drive the family's business under; writing mysteriously to Jean's favorite and supposedly happily married brother-in-law; horning in on Jean's part-time typing job; setting herself up as the star of the local play. And soon Jean's life, her marriage, her very idea of herself, have been dramatically wrenched out of their seemingly innocent, if unexamined, balance, sending her off in uncharted directions.

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Section 1
10
Section 2
15
Section 3
18
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À propos de l'auteur (1997)

Ann Beattie was born in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1947. She received a B.A. from American University in 1969 and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1970. She began her writing career when she was just twenty-five, with the short story A Platonic Relationship, published in The New Yorker. Regular contributions to the magazine resulted in her first collection of short stories, Distortions, published in 1976. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, was also published that year. Later works include Park City, Another You, Where You'll Find Me, and Walks with Men. Her work was honored with a Guggenheim fellowship in 1978, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1980, and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2005. She has taught at Harvard College, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Virginia.

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