Friends: Do all of Ann Beattie's characters really know one another?

You might notice as you read through Ann Beattie's "The New Yorker Stories" one peculiar fact about Beattie's stories: the characters all know one another. Rarely if ever does she introduce a stranger or an outsider to the scene. This insularity creates and accounts for the particular mood of Beattie's fiction, a tight social network made up of an intricate patter of romantic and amicable alliances and misalliances. I'm tempted to say that each one is like the starting point for a sit-com, but that's not really true because they the stories are not driven by plot, more by mood and incident and wry observation - though some of the quirky characters could be drafted by a sit-com and would fit in well. Having said all that, a few stories in the mid-'80s begin to break this mold: thinking particular of Summer People from the Where You'll Find Me collection, which is definitely one of her strongest (and strangest), a couple in a Vermont (?) house, aimless in their careers, dealing with the difficult, sullen child of husband's first marriage, like so many Beattie characters, and then a guy shows up on the small country road, Mr. Rickman, and indicates he's wanted to buy their house but didn't know it was up for sale, and then he starts making ominous, slightly but not overtly threatening comments, and he hovers over the rest of the story - we're never sure whether his threats are credible, but as story progresses we learn more about dark elements in husband's past, in the marital relationship. Similarly, somewhat later story Home to Marie, another great one, about woman walking out on husband in shocking manner, and in last paragraphs, story take an unexpected plot swoop and we learn of a time the husband was mugged outside a bar - what does this tell us about him? He was unfaithful, unlucky? Why was he at a bar in the "bad" side of town? The story darkens and opens, dramatically, just as it hits its last stride. Beattie continues to explore, and surprise us, with her unusual narrative rhythms.