Author is older; her tales, wiser

Follies

New Stories

Ann Beattie

Scribner: 320 pp., $25

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Age takes a toll on all of us. In some cases, it's a punishing toll, and in others -- as with the short stories of Ann Beattie -- a mellowing occurs that only enhances beauty. Like a society matron with good bones, the stories of her newest collection, "Follies," shine with the insights of time, having become even more distilled versions of themselves.

Long known as one of the American masters of the short story, Beattie gained a stellar reputation in the mid-1970s when she was in her 20s. As the voice of the disillusioned upper-middle-class youth of her generation, she created inscrutable tales of social dissolution -- stories in which drugs, parental divorce and ennui undo characters, and readers are offered little, if any, hint of redemption. This is just the way it is, her stories suggest.

With the passing of decades, her characters have matured, but her story lines remain enigmatic and incisive. The opening piece, "Flechette Follies," is a meandering, complicated novella focusing on George Wissone, a CIA operative who constantly changes his identity and residence. New to Charlottesville, Va., he gets into a fender bender with Nancy Gregerson, a convalescent-care nurse whose adult son has disappeared amid the drug and street life of London.

What starts out as a casual encounter -- exchanging insurance information -- becomes a life-altering event. Nancy asks George to help locate her son, a task far removed from the high-adrenaline covert work he normally does. George agrees, not so much to help Nancy but to "see if he could still be a responsive human being who'd do a person a favor when he wasn't motivated by money, or sex, or -- in this case -- danger. He was trying to do something he thought a more normal person, with a more normal life, would do."

Nancy and George are resolute loners, fiercely protective of their privacy, yet they're tied to an assemblage of supporting figures. When George, on the hunt for the lost son, goes missing, these figures push and pull against each other, trying to find coherence.

Though the characters know each other, Beattie asks us to consider how well we really know the people in our lives. To care about others carries a price; sometimes it's just too high. And even when we pay that price, we often miss the point. Worse yet, her story suggests, we may never realize we missed the point. In this novella, for instance, readers learn what happens to George, but the folks back home -- his friends, his lover, the woman who hired him -- will never know.