My Life, Starring Dara Falcon

The Story

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. Exploring the nature of fascination, the sometimes subtle and sometimes startling difference between the way things look and the way they actually are, and the logic of mutual need that underlies many an unlikely friendship, Ann Beattie has given us one of her finest and most compelling novels.

A hardcover edition from 1997 of My Life, Starring Dara Falcon by Ann Beattie. It runs to 307 pages, in very good condition. We hold one copy, so once it is gone it is gone. Shelved under Health, Mind & Body. Wrapped with care for collectors and shipped from Kuwait.