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July 25, 2024 · 2:07 pm

Vinegar Girl – Anne Tyler

I was suppose to see Taming of the Shrew at the Globe in London, but there was some shenigans with the date and we didn’t make it. Hence, I decided to read this one.

I am a fan of Anne Tyler,

The blurb …

Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?

I am not really sure about this one. Of course Anne Tyler writes beautifully, but I felt Kate lacked wit. I did like the plotting by her father and Pyotr (and the adventure with the mice), but ultimately I didn’t warm to this novel.

A review.

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May 4, 2024 · 11:53 am

French Braid – Anne Tyler

I have read a number of Anne Tyler novels. I like the domesticness and ordinariness of them.

The blurb …

When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice.

Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won’t allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond.

Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts’ family life over the decades, whether that’s a painstaking Easter lunch or giving a child a ride, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming.

And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It’s the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

This is a family saga, but it has an interesting structure. At the start there is a couple and one of them finds it strange that the other one thinks she sees her cousin at the train station but can’t be sure. How is it possible to not recognize your cousin? We then get the life of the Garretts from different time periods and different perspectives.

I find it difficult to separate my thoughts about the novel from my thoughts about the characters. And I didn’t really like Mercy (and when she took the cat, Desmond, to the animal shelter and then threw out all of his belongings I wanted to cry). I wasn’t a fan of Robin either, although, to be fair, I did warm to them both by the end.

This is a novel about an American family – with all of the rivalries and every day pettiness, but also the connections.

A review.

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April 11, 2024 · 11:07 am

Redhead by the Side of the Road – Anne Tyler

I like Anne Tyler. I have read a number of her novels. This one is quite short, more of a novella.

Here’s the blurb …

Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work – his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car – maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life.

But then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a ‘girlfriend’) tells him she’s facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.

Redhead by the Side of the Road is an intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach – and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.

This had all of the hall marks of an Anne Tyler novel – A Baltimore setting, a close look at an ordinary person. Micah is a very orderly man – he has a daily cleaning roster and he drives very carefully – and life has taken a bit of a toll on him. He left college early to start up a tech company, but couldn’t work with the investor, and several relationships have failed (and the one with Cass is looking doomed). He is a good man trying to do the right thing, he just doesn’t know sometimes what the right thing to do is.

A review.

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October 16, 2016 · 5:06 pm

A Patchwork Planet – Anne Tyler

I do like Anne Tyler novels, so when someone donated this one to the second hand book stall at my daughter’s school fete I had to have it. One of the perks of volunteering is that we see the books first. It was clearly a well-loved novel and might even have had a bath at some stage!

Here’s the blurb …

Barnaby Gaitlin is a loser – just short of thirty he’s the black sheep of a philanthropic Baltimore family. Once upon a time he had a home, a loving wife, a little family of his own; now he has an ex-wife, a 9-year-old daughter with attitude, a Corvette Sting Ray that’s a collectors item but unreliable, and he works as hired muscle for Rent-a-Back, doing heavy chores for old folks. He has an almost pathological curiosity about other people’s lives, which has got him into serious trouble in the past, and a hopeless charm which attracts the kind of angelic woman who wants to save him from himself. Tyler’s observation is more acute and more delicious than ever; her humour slyer and more irresistible; her characters so vividly realised that you feel you’ve known this quirky collection for ever. With perfect pitch and poise, humor and humanity, Anne Tyler chronicals, better than any writer today, the sublime and the ridiculous of everyday living, the foibles and frailties of the ordinary human heart.

At first I wondered what type of book I was reading, as Barnaby stalked a women he met at the train station, but my sympathy for Barnaby grew as the story progressed. He appeared to be a hopeless case – troubled youth, unskilled job and divorced with a bad relationship with his daughter, but as the story unfolds you realise there is more to Barnaby than appears at first sight.

All of the Gaitlin men meet an ‘angel’ who changes the direction of their lives. Barnaby thinks the woman on the train, Sophia, might just be his angel. She does change the direction of his life, but not in the way you would expect. She finds him charming on the train and is intrigued (and attracted) by his job. So much so she encourages her ageing aunt to employ him several hours a week. Meanwhile we meet Barnaby’s mother a ‘poor girl who has married well’ who can’t let go of Barnaby’s mis-spent youth. Frequently reminding him of the money they had to spend to pay-off the neighbours after his thefts. Barnaby and Sophia embark on a relationship and Barnaby decides to pay his mother back the money and so free himself from her forever. The other interesting character is Martine Barnaby’s co-worker and friend (they have a lovely bantering relationship). Sophia’s aunt accuses Barnaby of stealing her money (everyone knows she keeps it in the flour tin). It turns out she moved it and then forgot, but Sophia replaces the money in the tin (therefore proving herself to doubt Barnaby). Sophia is originally attracted to Barnaby because of his job, but then she wants him to change – get a better job (perhaps at her bank) and keep the money his mother refuses to take to buy the occasional luxury.

This brings me to theme or idea that I have been thinking about since finishing this novel – life style choices and how hard it is to go against the conventional view of success. By all accounts Barnaby’s life is a failure – failed marriage, dead-end job and living in someone’s basement, but his job is valuable (and brings joy and companionship to the people he helps) and he doesn’t have extravagant needs or wants. He is content.

“The way I see it, everyone has a choice: living rich and working hard to pay for it, or living a plain uncomplicated life and taking it easy”

As with all Anne Tyler novels the writing is beautiful.

If I had to eat one more stewy-tasting, mixed and mingled, gray-colored one-dish meal, I’d croak!

More reviews …

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/19/reviews/980419.19shieldt.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/apr/13/why-men-love-anne-tyler-novels

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April 23, 2015 · 4:51 pm

A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is one of my favourite authors. I love her narrow focus – like Austen’s three or four families in a country village. It is the common experience made extraordinary. I have read Breathing Lessons, The Beginner’s Goodbye and Breathing Lessons and was keen to read A Spool of Blue Thread. I went to the Lane Book store (my small attempt to keep an independent book store alive).

Here is the blurb …

“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.” This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family–their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog–is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red’s father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler’s hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.

I really enjoyed the sections about Abby and Red – their courting days and as an elderly couple with adult children. The story is mostly told from Abby’s point of view, but you get snippets from the other family members. Abby is generous and caring always bringing ‘strays’ home for Sunday lunch. It is clear that her children (well at least one) recent her attention being elsewhere. This novel is about the give and take of relationships, differing expectations, secrets and what is required from each member of a family.

However, I didn’t enjoy the section on Junior and Linnie. I thought Junior was repellent. Although I did enjoy reading about his craftsmanship and the beautiful home he built – just whose burglar kit was it?

As always, the writing was lovely and I have a real feel for the house – the porch, sun-room and the intricate woodwork. And I want to know what happens next – how will Red cope in his small apartment, will Denny finally settle down, and what about Stem?

More reviews …

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/01/spool-of-blue-thread-anne-tyler-observer-review

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/books/review/a-spool-of-blue-thread-by-anne-tyler.html?_r=0

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February 18, 2013 · 3:46 pm

The Beginner’s Goodbye – Anne Tyler

I’m a Anne Tyler fan – a review here and here – I like how she can make the ordinary extraordinary.

I picked this one up from the library and it was quite an easy read (shorter than other Tyler novels).

Here is the blurb …

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances–in their house, on the roadway, in the market.

Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron has spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, independent young woman, she is like a breath of fresh air. Unhesitatingly, he marries her, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage.

But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Only Dorothy’s unexpected appearances from the dead help him to live in the moment and to find some peace.

Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life, that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye.

A beautiful, subtle exploration of loss and recovery, pierced throughout with Anne Tyler’s humor, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles.

This was an intriguing premise – right from the start we know Dorothy is dead and that she is visiting Aaron. It does take her a while to come back and at first she is just there not speaking, but then she talks and then they argue. This was a lovely way to show the progress of grief – at first Dorothy (and their life together) is perfect, but then he starts thinking other things – like how nice it is to sort his cupboards and know they will stay sorted, how Dorothy wasn’t very interested in food and how she didn’t pay much attention to how she looked.

The great thing about this novel is the fine detail – almost a series of vignettes of Aaron and Dorothy’s life together is portrayed. The first date – where Dorothy wears her white coat, the wedding – very small, the search for the triscuits, which ended so badly. Through all of these incidents character is revealed and the plot moves slowly forward.

Aaron’s publishing company publishes beginners guides to things – The Beginner’s Dinner Party – and this novel is a beginner’s guide to goodbye.

More reviews…

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/the-beginners-goodbye-by-anne-tyler.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/20/beginners-goodbye-anne-tyler-review

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