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A review by tipi
Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie
5.0
The comfiest title and the comfiest novel. What it might have looked like had Raymond Carver ever sat down to write a full length project, and it's arguably better than anything he ever wrote. It's about young adults plagued by disenchantment, but not in the adolescent sort of way. Where the prospect of financial independence might excite a teenager, it only makes these characters wearier. Independence is really only another word for loneliness, we quickly learn.
Twenty-somethings with their own apartments who sleep over at their friends' places not because they love each other, but because it's better than sleeping alone. Anytime somebody mistakenly refers to their significant other as "Mom" or "Dad," I recommend them Chilly Scenes of Winter.
It gets my vote for the most under-appreciated novel of all time.
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Reread. Now that I'm 22 going on 23, and only just a few years shy of 26‰ЫУthe age of the protagonist, Charles‰ЫУI figured this was due for a reread. I was a freshman in college when I read Chilly Scenes of Winter for the first time, and it didn't hit me nearly as hard then as it does now that I'm entering my first year of postgraduate life. But god damn. I forgot just how dismal this is. The characters are in an absolute rut, and that fact only further reveals itself as the novel progresses. At the onset, Charles spends most of his time with his best (and arguably only) friend Sam, and two-hundred odd pages later, not much has changed. My heart breaks a little bit when Charles and Sam go out for pizza and beer on the third Friday night in a row, or when Charles fails to actualize a party he spends a bulk of the novel planning. These are real problems that twenty-somethings face. But what's even more heartbreaking is when Charles gets on the phone with his aging stepfather, a man who never has anything interesting to say beyond that he got a new car, or what he cooked for dinner last night, and whose life is so pathetic that he seeks vicarious amusement from his stepson's reluctant intimations of his own banal life.
Chilly Scenes is set in the winter of 1975, a fact we're constantly reminded of whenever a character expresses his or her anticipation of a Bob Dylan album which is about to release. Whenever Charles turns on the radio, he keeps expecting to hear the lead single, but never does. The characters have no way of knowing it, but no album befits their gloomy lives better than the one they can't wait to hear. The novel ends just before Blood on the Tracks hits the shelves, but I just hope that it helped them all feel a little less alone.
- I don't know. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for everybody.
- If you just categorically feel sorry for everyone, it must be something bothering you.
Twenty-somethings with their own apartments who sleep over at their friends' places not because they love each other, but because it's better than sleeping alone. Anytime somebody mistakenly refers to their significant other as "Mom" or "Dad," I recommend them Chilly Scenes of Winter.
It gets my vote for the most under-appreciated novel of all time.
------------------------
Reread. Now that I'm 22 going on 23, and only just a few years shy of 26‰ЫУthe age of the protagonist, Charles‰ЫУI figured this was due for a reread. I was a freshman in college when I read Chilly Scenes of Winter for the first time, and it didn't hit me nearly as hard then as it does now that I'm entering my first year of postgraduate life. But god damn. I forgot just how dismal this is. The characters are in an absolute rut, and that fact only further reveals itself as the novel progresses. At the onset, Charles spends most of his time with his best (and arguably only) friend Sam, and two-hundred odd pages later, not much has changed. My heart breaks a little bit when Charles and Sam go out for pizza and beer on the third Friday night in a row, or when Charles fails to actualize a party he spends a bulk of the novel planning. These are real problems that twenty-somethings face. But what's even more heartbreaking is when Charles gets on the phone with his aging stepfather, a man who never has anything interesting to say beyond that he got a new car, or what he cooked for dinner last night, and whose life is so pathetic that he seeks vicarious amusement from his stepson's reluctant intimations of his own banal life.
Chilly Scenes is set in the winter of 1975, a fact we're constantly reminded of whenever a character expresses his or her anticipation of a Bob Dylan album which is about to release. Whenever Charles turns on the radio, he keeps expecting to hear the lead single, but never does. The characters have no way of knowing it, but no album befits their gloomy lives better than the one they can't wait to hear. The novel ends just before Blood on the Tracks hits the shelves, but I just hope that it helped them all feel a little less alone.
- I don't know. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for everybody.
- If you just categorically feel sorry for everyone, it must be something bothering you.