a litany of hideous advice
Walks with Men by Ann Beattie is 4.75 x 7.25 x 0.28 inches & 101 pages.
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When I was reading Ann Beattie’s Walks With Men, I kept thinking about the cliché-ed flavor of “ill-advised.” But sometimes, someone does take bad advice, or the good advice comes from the wrong person, and this person’s actions are undeniably “ill-advised.”
As the title of Walks With Men warns you, there are a small handful men involved in this wisp of a novel. The main man—who’s married when the narrator meets him, then she quickly marry him herself—loves nothing more than dispensing advice. He advises all the live-long-day. His ex-wife also tries to advise his new wife on the matter. But the narrator, a seething contrarian, only takes the worst advice she gets.
The collection of bad advice in this book is truly astonishing. In this pile of excerpts below: there is one piece of advice that’s infallible, one that intrigues, and one bad one which is just too fun to ignore. You’ll be able to tell right away!
So, as much as I tried to avoid “ill-advised” to describe the dynamics in this book, that’s what I had, and also sometimes you must give into the cliché.