I’ve been making an effort to get books from the library and this is one I found while browsing (I was looking for Sarah Waters). It one the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
I liked this one – Maggie is so annoying. She interferes with the best of intentions and then just makes every thing worse. The characters are fabulous and the situations so believable. Ms Tyler works on a small canvas – not many characters and people don’t move far from their hometown. A bit like Austen’s ‘three or four families in a country village’.
Here is the blurb …
Maggie and Ira Moran have been married for twenty-eight years–and it shows: in their quarrels, in their routines, in their ability to tolerate with affection each other’s eccentricities. Maggie, a kooky, lovable meddler and an irrepressible optimist, wants nothing more than to fix her son’s broken marriage. Ira is infuriatingly practical, a man “who should have married Ann Landers.” And what begins as a day trip to a funeral becomes an adventure in the unexpected. As Maggie and Ira navigate the riotous twists and turns, they intersect with an assorted cast of eccentrics–and rediscover the magic of the road called life and the joy of having somebody next to you to share the ride . . . bumps and all.
This is a novel for people (like me) who don’t need a lot of action, but like to see the plot slowly unfold and reveal more and more about the characters.
Here are some other sites that might be of interest.