Analysis of Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 9, 2026

Ann Beattie once said of her characters, “They are suffering. They are suffering” (Rothstein, 2). Chilly Scenes of Winter examines the particular suffering of 27-year-old Charles while he attempts to cope with his mother’s mental illness, works at a government job, talks and drinks with his sister Susan and friend Sam, and obsessively remembers a romance with a married ex-coworker named Laura. Beattie maintains a painstakingly focused and detailed gaze at Charles’s daily actions and emotions; we find out what he eats, wears, and, most important, thinks. She manages both to ground the novel in realism and to continue in the traditions of Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, writers who allowed the specifics of a character’s interior life to pile up. In the words of J. D. O’Hara, who reviewed the book for The New York Times in 1976, “Beattie dramatizes our own formlessness. She is especially the artist of situations, not plots, and her novel is an excellent example of this predilection” (O’Hara, 1). Following both modernists like Joyce, and American masters like J. D. Salinger and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Beattie is preoccupied with the day-to-day emotions of characters rather than complex plot developments.

The novel opens with Sam, Charles’s best friend, who has been drinking heavily since the recent death of his dog. Sam is successful with women in that he easily seduces them, but, like Charles, maintaining any kind of emotional attachment is nearly impossible for him. Along with his sister, Susan, Charles attempts to cope with his mother’s mental illness as well as their needy stepfather, Pete. Lonely and helpless in the face of his wife’s problems, Pete finds small happiness in novelty when he buys a Honda Civic. The purchase of the car takes on supreme importance for Pete, a man trapped seeking love from his stepchildren and trying to cure a woman whose illness he cannot control. Another lost character, Pamela Smith, Charles’s ex-girlfriend, travels to and from California twice in the short time frame of the novel. Undecided about her sexual orientation and incapable of becoming attached to any person or place, Pamela reappears in Charles’s life twice in the novel asking for help and shelter. Charles provides both, and he and Sam even travel the New Jersey Turnpike in a storm to try and save her. She, too, feels no true connection to Charles, continually calling him “nice,” and leaves with her brother to return West without telling Charles.

Flashbacks make up a large part of Charles’s stream of consciousness; he spends a lot of time remembering his childhood and his time with Laura. His memories of his early years are full of shame and anxiety, leading him to fear policemen and obsessively check his wallet to make sure he has enough money. At various times in the book, Charles tries to remember his father, who died when he was young. He is only able to recall a picture of a father on a glass that said “Number One Dad.” Like Pete’s attachment to his Honda Civic and Sam’s desire to hear the new Dylan song, Charles’s memory of the glass stands in for any real feeling he might have for his lost father. Charles’s boss, Bill, seeks a lost pen, a gift from his college-age son that his wife purchased for the son to give, and Beattie is interested in the way these things stand in for the connections they are supposed to symbolize.

The music of the 1960s and mid-1970s create a backdrop for this novel about characters who strive for a sense of connection and true emotion in a world where even understanding one another or feeling anything at all has become difficult. The attention Beattie pays to the music playing in the background of the characters’ lives both creates a novel of a specific season and city and shows the isolation of the characters; we hear the story of a woman who, obsessed with Bob Dylan, sits looking out the window awaiting his arrival. Like Samuel Beckett’s characters in Waiting for Godot, Charles and Sam search for the new Dylan song or the truth about Rod Stewart’s fate for lack of anything more meaningful to think about.

In a 1980 interview, Ann Beattie says about her novelistic endings, “I get into a lot of trouble with endings. They either come to me or they don’t” (Maynard, 6). She ends Chilly Scenes of Winter with Charles successfully winning back Laura, a character he has sought after and remembered for most of the book. The final scene is not a comfort, however, because one closes the book unconvinced that Laura and, particularly, Charles, will be able to overcome their own difficulties. Beattie not only chronicles the malaise of a generation in this novel, she also brings the reader to experience the internal life of her lost characters.

Sources

Beattie, Ann. Chilly Scenes of Winter. New York: Doubleday, 1976.

Maynard, Joyce. “Visiting Ann Beattie,” The New York Times on the Web (11 May 1980). Available online. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/11/reviews/beattieinterview.html. Accessed June 13, 2025.

O’Hara, J. D. Review of Chilly Scenes of Winter and Distortions, New York Times on the Web (15 August 1976). Available online. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/specials/beattie-winter.html. Accessed June 13, 2025.

Rothstein, Mervyn. “Ann Beattie’s Life After Real Estate,” New York Times on the Web (30 December 1985). Available online. URL: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/28/specials/beattie-estate.html. Accessed June 13, 2025.