[Ann Beattie] has become perhaps our most authoritative translator-transcriber of the speech-patterns, nonverbal communications, rituals, and tribal customs of those members (white, largely middle-class) of a generation who came of age around 1970—who attended or dropped out of college, smoked dope, missed connections, lived communally, and drifted in and out of relationships with a minimum of self-recognized affect or commitment….
[Throughout] the novel purposeful action and even consistent desire are largely suspended, thereby limiting our involvement; in their place we find shifting alliances, aimlessness, and a pervasive depression masked occasionally by bursts of manic exuberance and the need to turn everything—sex, love, jobs, parenthood—into wacky or bitter jokes.
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