What Was Mine Summary
Ann Beattie

What Was Mine Summary

As the title implies, many of the stories in What Was Mine are concerned with characters' recovering and understanding their own past. Many characters face loss and a sense of failure, but others are able to come to terms with and even build on their past lives. The protagonist of "Imagine a Day at the End of Your Life," who had worked as a milkman until his wife's career took off, reminisces about his marriage of over forty years to a busy detective story writer who has also produced five children. Portrayed as a sort of still and unifying force in a whirlwind of creation and procreation, a counterpoint to his wife, the narrator's imaginative efforts to bring together his life, both by his scrapbook of leaves and his imagined day, are deeply felt expressions of a predominantly good and loving family man. In the far sadder title...

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