Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.

Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.




BRILLIANT CHARACTERISATION AND DIALOGUE., 18 Dec 2007
Many novelists have problems with either characterisation so that you can't remember who is who in the books, or dialogue so that everyone speaks the same, but not Anne Tyler.

'The Clock Winder' begins with Mrs Emerson, who reminds one so much of Amanda Wingfield, the mother in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' and is not only identifiable by her clothes and 'her spike-heeled shoes that made her arches ache' but by her insistence on appearance and also by her speech :
' I never did think much of those streets of gold and pearly gates. Wouldn't you like to just go on like this forever? With something always about to happen and someone new always showing up? Oh wouldn't that make dying all right?'

Well, someone new does turn up but things don't just go on like this forever. Elizabeth brings with her a wave of new thinking and although she doesn't say very much in the house, it is transformed from a boring place where nothing gets any better, to a place where old ideas are shaken up and improvements, both physical and spiritual, are made.

There are tragedies and there is sorrow and great mistakes are made, but the different characters survive and live to tell their stories.

Instead of a sad tailing off at the end, there is a clever little twist which keeps the reader interested until the last.

This is excellent writing and this book is well worth buying and keeping to read again and again.


Nothing is finer than Tyler at her best, 01 Feb 2005
This is an author who could wring magic from a mud puddle. Her material is ordinary human relationships in all their ordinary dysfunctional tangle. This one has Elizabeth as the most reluctant of heroines, drawn into a family that is waging pointless war on itself. She is hailed by them as their only hope to bring order to chaos, and is somehow unable to escape their clutches. Elizabeth says to one of the sons of the house "You all present me with your problems and lay them at my feet in heaps!" They do. But those heaped problems are not the real drama of the book, it is the quieter emotions that matter. And it is Anne Tyler's genius that she can portray them with such precision that their softly insistent voices are heard above the clamour. A superb book.

Driving Miss Daisy - with Charlie Dimmock at the wheel!, 20 Jun 2001
One of Anne Tyler's best novels, the story tells of an every-changing relationship between recently widowed Mrs Emerson (who spends her days winding the clocks) and her newly acquired gardener/handywoman, Elizabeth. Mrs Emerson's friendship with and dependency on Elizabeth is reminiscent of "Driving Miss Daisy", and from Ms Tyler's description of Elizabeth I couldn't help picturing her as Charlie Dimmock!

Mrs Emerson's family enter, leave, and inevitably change the relationship between employer and employee, bringing with them humour, sorrow and tragedy as their story unfolds.

As with all Ms Tyler's novels, do not expect a fairytale happy ending, but be assured the story leaves its characters with a genuine contentment; despite sacrifices and compromises made they show us a real-life happiness is attainable.

This version is all the easier to read if, like me, as you get older you find publishers are using smaller and smaller print!

Elizabeth is captivating., 01 Jan 2001
Possibly my favourite Tyler. Elizabeth is infuriating and wonderful. The family of the "clock" is reminiscent of any family - everyone has their own quirks and foibles. The novel has a great twist and has moments of high drama. Romantic, humourous and vivid.

Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.




BRILLIANT CHARACTERISATION AND DIALOGUE., 18 Dec 2007
Many novelists have problems with either characterisation so that you can't remember who is who in the books, or dialogue so that everyone speaks the same, but not Anne Tyler.

'The Clock Winder' begins with Mrs Emerson, who reminds one so much of Amanda Wingfield, the mother in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' and is not only identifiable by her clothes and 'her spike-heeled shoes that made her arches ache' but by her insistence on appearance and also by her speech :
' I never did think much of those streets of gold and pearly gates. Wouldn't you like to just go on like this forever? With something always about to happen and someone new always showing up? Oh wouldn't that make dying all right?'

Well, someone new does turn up but things don't just go on like this forever. Elizabeth brings with her a wave of new thinking and although she doesn't say very much in the house, it is transformed from a boring place where nothing gets any better, to a place where old ideas are shaken up and improvements, both physical and spiritual, are made.

There are tragedies and there is sorrow and great mistakes are made, but the different characters survive and live to tell their stories.

Instead of a sad tailing off at the end, there is a clever little twist which keeps the reader interested until the last.

This is excellent writing and this book is well worth buying and keeping to read again and again.


Nothing is finer than Tyler at her best, 01 Feb 2005
This is an author who could wring magic from a mud puddle. Her material is ordinary human relationships in all their ordinary dysfunctional tangle. This one has Elizabeth as the most reluctant of heroines, drawn into a family that is waging pointless war on itself. She is hailed by them as their only hope to bring order to chaos, and is somehow unable to escape their clutches. Elizabeth says to one of the sons of the house "You all present me with your problems and lay them at my feet in heaps!" They do. But those heaped problems are not the real drama of the book, it is the quieter emotions that matter. And it is Anne Tyler's genius that she can portray them with such precision that their softly insistent voices are heard above the clamour. A superb book.

Driving Miss Daisy - with Charlie Dimmock at the wheel!, 20 Jun 2001
One of Anne Tyler's best novels, the story tells of an every-changing relationship between recently widowed Mrs Emerson (who spends her days winding the clocks) and her newly acquired gardener/handywoman, Elizabeth. Mrs Emerson's friendship with and dependency on Elizabeth is reminiscent of "Driving Miss Daisy", and from Ms Tyler's description of Elizabeth I couldn't help picturing her as Charlie Dimmock!

Mrs Emerson's family enter, leave, and inevitably change the relationship between employer and employee, bringing with them humour, sorrow and tragedy as their story unfolds.

As with all Ms Tyler's novels, do not expect a fairytale happy ending, but be assured the story leaves its characters with a genuine contentment; despite sacrifices and compromises made they show us a real-life happiness is attainable.

This version is all the easier to read if, like me, as you get older you find publishers are using smaller and smaller print!

Elizabeth is captivating., 01 Jan 2001
Possibly my favourite Tyler. Elizabeth is infuriating and wonderful. The family of the "clock" is reminiscent of any family - everyone has their own quirks and foibles. The novel has a great twist and has moments of high drama. Romantic, humourous and vivid.

Macon Leary - one of my heroes, 23 Sep 2008
This has been my favourite book for over ten years, and one which I read again and again. Each read reveals a new layer to the story. The biggest enjoyment I get from it is that someone like Macon has the ability to change, just by meeting that one special person.

Touching and wise, 21 Sep 2008
The Accidental Tourist is a wonderful novel. It is beautifully written and very wise and sensitive. The characters are ordinary people and the plot is full of everyday occurences, and yet I was turning the pages as if I was reading a nail biting thriller.

I'm always hearing that good writers should 'show and not tell', and Anne Tyler does this to perfection. The first chapter alone is a masterclass in how to create an original and moving marriage break-up scene. At the beginning of the novel, we find out that Macon and Sarah's son has died. In other books there would have been endless pages about the death and flashbacks to the family before the tragedy, but Tyler manages to convey the parents's terrible loss without going down this rather tired route. As the book progresses, Macon and Sarah separate, and then Macon meets Muriel, an unusual dog trainer who seems determined to work her way into his life.

All of the characters seem like living, breathing people - with good and bad points. Macon, the main character, is an excellent invention. Being an introvert myself, I felt like I could understand much of his motivation and attitude towards life. I also grew to admire Muriel a great deal and the physical descriptions of her - her frizzy hair and clothes ('I look like the Wrath of God') - were particularly good. I was glad the author didn't go down the stereotypical route of having her be tremendously good looking. And yet, the tension was there the whole time about whether Macon would return to his wife, if she would have him back. The novel made me care deeply for all the characters, and I was utterly torn as to what I thought Macon should do.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The author has a very compassionate way of writing about people, but not so that they come across as cloying or too good to be true. The humour and kindness in the book is matched by tragedy and sadness. I also thought the ending was beautiful - it had me in tears and gave me a lot to think about. Real life is full of complications and grey areas and misunderstandings and it is wonderful that Anne Tyler has managed to capture this on paper.

A slow boiler, 07 Aug 2008
Have never read an Anne Tyler novel before and felt i should try her out as she's such an acclaimed author. To begin with i regretted starting "The Accidental Tourist". Although the story of Macon (What a name?!)intrigued me, i wanted to see how he coped with his new life, i found it to start with quite boring. It wasn't until his relationship with Muriel developed that i found the story more interesting. Two totally unsuited people who somehow managed to have a good life together. The ending of the book i think can produce one of two reactions, you will either think that Macon has made the best or the worst decision of his life and i was left wondering if he had in fact made the right decision. In the end i was glad i read the book, i came to care about what happened to Macon.

I adored this book, 16 Dec 2007
Macon and Sarah have lost a child, Ethan, and this tragedy has torn them apart and Sarah decides to leave. Macon is a very quirky person, unconventional and unsociable. He likes everything to be very controlled and organized. He works as a travel guide writer for business men who really don't want to be away from home and advises on how to cope in strange cities by keeping everything as similar as possible to life at home.

Macon's dog is uncontrollable and frequently attacks people and this is how he comes to meet Muriel who works as a dog trainer. She is the opposite of him - casual, untidy, talkative and sociable. He is drawn to her and her child, Alexander, a weakly child who in turn warms to Macon.

I adored this book. There are some beautiful characterisations - a whole range of quirky, oddball people. I found myself empathising with Macon's heartbreak at losing his son and his genuine confusion about life. I desperately wanted to get to the end to find out what happened!

There is even a heartwarming subplot of his siblings and his editor....

Enter Muriel., 02 Sep 2006
Macon the traveller who hates travelling can be forgiven for being boring. Macon lost his only child in a senseless murder and his marriage collapses. A recipe for despair you might think! Well, yes and no. Yes because he cannot properly grieve or piece his life together. No because the process of his life is comic in the face of inevitable twists and turns. Enter Muriel. Muriel takes life by the scruff of the neck with zest. She more than overlaps into his life. She knows what she wants and he does not - but it is not just about the two of them.

It is a romantic comedy but without the romance as we know it. I found easy to read dusted with just the right amount of expression. Great language, you can really hear the characters speaking and see the dynamic in the dialogue. Once again Tyler wonderfully presents the ordinary like a refreshing breeze to the reader dancing cheerfully page after page.

Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.




BRILLIANT CHARACTERISATION AND DIALOGUE., 18 Dec 2007
Many novelists have problems with either characterisation so that you can't remember who is who in the books, or dialogue so that everyone speaks the same, but not Anne Tyler.

'The Clock Winder' begins with Mrs Emerson, who reminds one so much of Amanda Wingfield, the mother in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' and is not only identifiable by her clothes and 'her spike-heeled shoes that made her arches ache' but by her insistence on appearance and also by her speech :
' I never did think much of those streets of gold and pearly gates. Wouldn't you like to just go on like this forever? With something always about to happen and someone new always showing up? Oh wouldn't that make dying all right?'

Well, someone new does turn up but things don't just go on like this forever. Elizabeth brings with her a wave of new thinking and although she doesn't say very much in the house, it is transformed from a boring place where nothing gets any better, to a place where old ideas are shaken up and improvements, both physical and spiritual, are made.

There are tragedies and there is sorrow and great mistakes are made, but the different characters survive and live to tell their stories.

Instead of a sad tailing off at the end, there is a clever little twist which keeps the reader interested until the last.

This is excellent writing and this book is well worth buying and keeping to read again and again.


Nothing is finer than Tyler at her best, 01 Feb 2005
This is an author who could wring magic from a mud puddle. Her material is ordinary human relationships in all their ordinary dysfunctional tangle. This one has Elizabeth as the most reluctant of heroines, drawn into a family that is waging pointless war on itself. She is hailed by them as their only hope to bring order to chaos, and is somehow unable to escape their clutches. Elizabeth says to one of the sons of the house "You all present me with your problems and lay them at my feet in heaps!" They do. But those heaped problems are not the real drama of the book, it is the quieter emotions that matter. And it is Anne Tyler's genius that she can portray them with such precision that their softly insistent voices are heard above the clamour. A superb book.

Driving Miss Daisy - with Charlie Dimmock at the wheel!, 20 Jun 2001
One of Anne Tyler's best novels, the story tells of an every-changing relationship between recently widowed Mrs Emerson (who spends her days winding the clocks) and her newly acquired gardener/handywoman, Elizabeth. Mrs Emerson's friendship with and dependency on Elizabeth is reminiscent of "Driving Miss Daisy", and from Ms Tyler's description of Elizabeth I couldn't help picturing her as Charlie Dimmock!

Mrs Emerson's family enter, leave, and inevitably change the relationship between employer and employee, bringing with them humour, sorrow and tragedy as their story unfolds.

As with all Ms Tyler's novels, do not expect a fairytale happy ending, but be assured the story leaves its characters with a genuine contentment; despite sacrifices and compromises made they show us a real-life happiness is attainable.

This version is all the easier to read if, like me, as you get older you find publishers are using smaller and smaller print!

Elizabeth is captivating., 01 Jan 2001
Possibly my favourite Tyler. Elizabeth is infuriating and wonderful. The family of the "clock" is reminiscent of any family - everyone has their own quirks and foibles. The novel has a great twist and has moments of high drama. Romantic, humourous and vivid.

Macon Leary - one of my heroes, 23 Sep 2008
This has been my favourite book for over ten years, and one which I read again and again. Each read reveals a new layer to the story. The biggest enjoyment I get from it is that someone like Macon has the ability to change, just by meeting that one special person.

Touching and wise, 21 Sep 2008
The Accidental Tourist is a wonderful novel. It is beautifully written and very wise and sensitive. The characters are ordinary people and the plot is full of everyday occurences, and yet I was turning the pages as if I was reading a nail biting thriller.

I'm always hearing that good writers should 'show and not tell', and Anne Tyler does this to perfection. The first chapter alone is a masterclass in how to create an original and moving marriage break-up scene. At the beginning of the novel, we find out that Macon and Sarah's son has died. In other books there would have been endless pages about the death and flashbacks to the family before the tragedy, but Tyler manages to convey the parents's terrible loss without going down this rather tired route. As the book progresses, Macon and Sarah separate, and then Macon meets Muriel, an unusual dog trainer who seems determined to work her way into his life.

All of the characters seem like living, breathing people - with good and bad points. Macon, the main character, is an excellent invention. Being an introvert myself, I felt like I could understand much of his motivation and attitude towards life. I also grew to admire Muriel a great deal and the physical descriptions of her - her frizzy hair and clothes ('I look like the Wrath of God') - were particularly good. I was glad the author didn't go down the stereotypical route of having her be tremendously good looking. And yet, the tension was there the whole time about whether Macon would return to his wife, if she would have him back. The novel made me care deeply for all the characters, and I was utterly torn as to what I thought Macon should do.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The author has a very compassionate way of writing about people, but not so that they come across as cloying or too good to be true. The humour and kindness in the book is matched by tragedy and sadness. I also thought the ending was beautiful - it had me in tears and gave me a lot to think about. Real life is full of complications and grey areas and misunderstandings and it is wonderful that Anne Tyler has managed to capture this on paper.

A slow boiler, 07 Aug 2008
Have never read an Anne Tyler novel before and felt i should try her out as she's such an acclaimed author. To begin with i regretted starting "The Accidental Tourist". Although the story of Macon (What a name?!)intrigued me, i wanted to see how he coped with his new life, i found it to start with quite boring. It wasn't until his relationship with Muriel developed that i found the story more interesting. Two totally unsuited people who somehow managed to have a good life together. The ending of the book i think can produce one of two reactions, you will either think that Macon has made the best or the worst decision of his life and i was left wondering if he had in fact made the right decision. In the end i was glad i read the book, i came to care about what happened to Macon.

I adored this book, 16 Dec 2007
Macon and Sarah have lost a child, Ethan, and this tragedy has torn them apart and Sarah decides to leave. Macon is a very quirky person, unconventional and unsociable. He likes everything to be very controlled and organized. He works as a travel guide writer for business men who really don't want to be away from home and advises on how to cope in strange cities by keeping everything as similar as possible to life at home.

Macon's dog is uncontrollable and frequently attacks people and this is how he comes to meet Muriel who works as a dog trainer. She is the opposite of him - casual, untidy, talkative and sociable. He is drawn to her and her child, Alexander, a weakly child who in turn warms to Macon.

I adored this book. There are some beautiful characterisations - a whole range of quirky, oddball people. I found myself empathising with Macon's heartbreak at losing his son and his genuine confusion about life. I desperately wanted to get to the end to find out what happened!

There is even a heartwarming subplot of his siblings and his editor....

Enter Muriel., 02 Sep 2006
Macon the traveller who hates travelling can be forgiven for being boring. Macon lost his only child in a senseless murder and his marriage collapses. A recipe for despair you might think! Well, yes and no. Yes because he cannot properly grieve or piece his life together. No because the process of his life is comic in the face of inevitable twists and turns. Enter Muriel. Muriel takes life by the scruff of the neck with zest. She more than overlaps into his life. She knows what she wants and he does not - but it is not just about the two of them.

It is a romantic comedy but without the romance as we know it. I found easy to read dusted with just the right amount of expression. Great language, you can really hear the characters speaking and see the dynamic in the dialogue. Once again Tyler wonderfully presents the ordinary like a refreshing breeze to the reader dancing cheerfully page after page.


A brilliant novel of family dynamics, 15 Dec 2002
Pearl Tull is dying. As she slips into unconciousness she thinks about her struggle to raise her two sons, Cody and Ezra and her daughter Jenny after her husband walked out on her when they were very young. Now grown up, her children, however, see their childhood quite differently. As family events are told from their varying viewpoints, a complex story of hurt, jealousy, resentment and disappointment arises.

I have never yet read an Ann Tyler novel that disappoints and this is no exception. In her easy style she brilliantly exposes the reality beneath the outer skin. Her characters are so real, you can almost touch them. Sometimes you want to hug them; at other times you want to wring their necks!

Was Pearl a good mother? The answer, as in all Ann Tyler's novels, is yes and no. She did what she thought was best in the circumstances. And is this family any happier or more damaged than any other? The answer again is more complex than any other novel I have read. But this is not a heavy read. It is witty, funny, but above all, true. Wonderful.

The Center of the Family, 14 Nov 2002
This is a delicate loving piece of fiction. What is harder in life than to try to understand the perspective of the other people in our family? Anne Tyler gives us an intimate look at each of the family member's thoughts and from this we draw a large picture of a complex set of family relations. Where else does a family join together but the dinner table? It is a spot of joyous reunions and a catalyst for causing severe fractures, but it is a place where every person in the family ultimately returns. By placing this at the center of her tale she is able to jump of on all the character's many stories. This novel makes you reconsider the point of view of people in your family you might have given up on. Your sympathy always goes with Ezra, forever trying to hold the family together. But you also learn to see the perspective of the other members through hearing small poignant details of their lives from Pearl's apple apple apple to the devastating reunion and confrontation with the missing father at the end. Their actions aren't just quirky details, but strong philosophies by which they live and rich points of difference that cause friction in their relations. This is handled with tremendous sympathy and understanding by the author. Anyone who has had strained relations with members of their family will be able to relate to this book and be wildly entertained by its twists and turns.

Disappointingly mundane, 01 Oct 2001
"How plotless real life was! In novels, events led up to something" Maybe those words from her novel point us to the plot of Anne Tylers novel. The short story chapters of family life that are crafted carefully throughout this book lead to nothing that is new. Excellent prose but a novel that didn't leave me wanting more.

Literary masterpiece, 04 Jun 2001
What is it exactly that makes Anne Tyler's characters to be so believable, so real, and so close to our own personae that we have the awkward feeling that the book is written about us and not about some made-up family? Whatever the plot, whatever the lifestyles of the leading characters, we see our life in a mirror, and to tell the truth, this mirror is not skewed enough to warrant our comfort. Indeed, we perceive the character traits as our own; their attitudes none other. Anne masterfully vows in the pieces of real life into the character development, and as it is, we cannot resist her books, as they immediately appeal to us. They are real.

"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" is a perfect example of Anne Tyler's literary artwork. The prose is never wooden, the storyline and plot never obscure what the book is really about; and it's about the life long struggle of one particular family. The Tull family may be perceived as dysfunctional, for apparently the head of the family is missing, and the abandoned wife must tailor her dreams and expectations to fit the barren reality of the hardship of raising three children on her own. Yet, does that fatherless property of the family immediately condition dysfunctionality? No such direct and universal implication exists , and we should look deeper into the history of the family members and their experiences in order to be able to make a judgment.

In fact, I claim that despite obvious character traits of all members of the family, and the Mother in particular, all of them managed to survive in one piece. One often underestimates the fact that living through poor childhood or early motherhood, respectively - is a success in itself. Furthermore, none of them had trodden a criminal path, an occurrence frequent within the set of dysfunctional families as we know them. Of course none of them achieved what they longed for initially, but then, who ever did? No, my friends; this family is far from dysfunctional. Quite to the contrary, it is successful for reasons I will summarize in the closing paragraph of this review.

I enjoyed every single chapter, every single page of this beautiful piece of contemporary prose. I scolded myself for not having discovered Anne Tyler earlier in my life. I would have learned the important truths of life much earlier than I otherwise did. That's because the book carries a significant number of moral lessons to us and I will leave you the pleasure of discovering them for yourself. Why? I claim that except the obvious pleasure of reading the novels of such a skilled writer, it's the lessons we learn, and the insights into life we gain - that justify the position of Anne Tyler's books in our private literary pantheon. Every time I read her book, it makes me rethink my attitude towards, and perception of my own life and, predominantly, my past. We are what we think, what moral values we follow, and what we achieved, in that order. Thus it should not be surprising that we could consider "Dinner" a notable book of our life if it had changed our view on ourselves, the past included. There are not very many books which have the same impact as Anne Tyler's, and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" in particular.

The Mother seems to be living in some delusional world of her own, burdened heavily by her past, by her everyday hardship, and by the divergence of her children's lifestyles and behavior from the patterns she set for them to follow. Yet, as we see, her life was completely successful, and although not full of happiness, it was purposeful. And which of us mortal beings could have claimed the same at the end of our life? The hard truth of life is that we are happy only in the short intervals granted by the fate. Being happy, no matter for how long, does not make life purposeful in itself.

Yet, it is the children that constitute the character spine of the novel. It's too personal for me to analyze their lives, yet I shall only note that they are very familiar. Too familiar. I see myself in them, I love their imperfections, I welcome their traits, I follow their life decisions with a heartbeat, as I have an overwhelming impression that whatever choice they make, the choice will affect me here and now.

"Dinner..." is a real novel. It's heartbreaking. It is almost too real to be read. Well, on the other hand it should be read for precisely that reason, as it will never leave you; it shall stay with you forever after. Goodness, Anne - there is no way I can thank you for the best literary novel I have ever read, now can I?

Very moving and thought provoking. One of her best books., 02 Oct 2000
This book follows the lives and thoughts of three children whose travelling salesman father leaves them with a strict mother when they are quite young. It is all about family relationships and the ups-and-downs of growing up with a single parent.

The point that this book brought home to me is that everyone's relationship with their parents is unique - even if they share the same parents, their perceptions are entirely different.

It is a very difficult book to put down and is ideal holiday reading.

Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.




BRILLIANT CHARACTERISATION AND DIALOGUE., 18 Dec 2007
Many novelists have problems with either characterisation so that you can't remember who is who in the books, or dialogue so that everyone speaks the same, but not Anne Tyler.

'The Clock Winder' begins with Mrs Emerson, who reminds one so much of Amanda Wingfield, the mother in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' and is not only identifiable by her clothes and 'her spike-heeled shoes that made her arches ache' but by her insistence on appearance and also by her speech :
' I never did think much of those streets of gold and pearly gates. Wouldn't you like to just go on like this forever? With something always about to happen and someone new always showing up? Oh wouldn't that make dying all right?'

Well, someone new does turn up but things don't just go on like this forever. Elizabeth brings with her a wave of new thinking and although she doesn't say very much in the house, it is transformed from a boring place where nothing gets any better, to a place where old ideas are shaken up and improvements, both physical and spiritual, are made.

There are tragedies and there is sorrow and great mistakes are made, but the different characters survive and live to tell their stories.

Instead of a sad tailing off at the end, there is a clever little twist which keeps the reader interested until the last.

This is excellent writing and this book is well worth buying and keeping to read again and again.


Nothing is finer than Tyler at her best, 01 Feb 2005
This is an author who could wring magic from a mud puddle. Her material is ordinary human relationships in all their ordinary dysfunctional tangle. This one has Elizabeth as the most reluctant of heroines, drawn into a family that is waging pointless war on itself. She is hailed by them as their only hope to bring order to chaos, and is somehow unable to escape their clutches. Elizabeth says to one of the sons of the house "You all present me with your problems and lay them at my feet in heaps!" They do. But those heaped problems are not the real drama of the book, it is the quieter emotions that matter. And it is Anne Tyler's genius that she can portray them with such precision that their softly insistent voices are heard above the clamour. A superb book.

Driving Miss Daisy - with Charlie Dimmock at the wheel!, 20 Jun 2001
One of Anne Tyler's best novels, the story tells of an every-changing relationship between recently widowed Mrs Emerson (who spends her days winding the clocks) and her newly acquired gardener/handywoman, Elizabeth. Mrs Emerson's friendship with and dependency on Elizabeth is reminiscent of "Driving Miss Daisy", and from Ms Tyler's description of Elizabeth I couldn't help picturing her as Charlie Dimmock!

Mrs Emerson's family enter, leave, and inevitably change the relationship between employer and employee, bringing with them humour, sorrow and tragedy as their story unfolds.

As with all Ms Tyler's novels, do not expect a fairytale happy ending, but be assured the story leaves its characters with a genuine contentment; despite sacrifices and compromises made they show us a real-life happiness is attainable.

This version is all the easier to read if, like me, as you get older you find publishers are using smaller and smaller print!

Elizabeth is captivating., 01 Jan 2001
Possibly my favourite Tyler. Elizabeth is infuriating and wonderful. The family of the "clock" is reminiscent of any family - everyone has their own quirks and foibles. The novel has a great twist and has moments of high drama. Romantic, humourous and vivid.

Macon Leary - one of my heroes, 23 Sep 2008
This has been my favourite book for over ten years, and one which I read again and again. Each read reveals a new layer to the story. The biggest enjoyment I get from it is that someone like Macon has the ability to change, just by meeting that one special person.

Touching and wise, 21 Sep 2008
The Accidental Tourist is a wonderful novel. It is beautifully written and very wise and sensitive. The characters are ordinary people and the plot is full of everyday occurences, and yet I was turning the pages as if I was reading a nail biting thriller.

I'm always hearing that good writers should 'show and not tell', and Anne Tyler does this to perfection. The first chapter alone is a masterclass in how to create an original and moving marriage break-up scene. At the beginning of the novel, we find out that Macon and Sarah's son has died. In other books there would have been endless pages about the death and flashbacks to the family before the tragedy, but Tyler manages to convey the parents's terrible loss without going down this rather tired route. As the book progresses, Macon and Sarah separate, and then Macon meets Muriel, an unusual dog trainer who seems determined to work her way into his life.

All of the characters seem like living, breathing people - with good and bad points. Macon, the main character, is an excellent invention. Being an introvert myself, I felt like I could understand much of his motivation and attitude towards life. I also grew to admire Muriel a great deal and the physical descriptions of her - her frizzy hair and clothes ('I look like the Wrath of God') - were particularly good. I was glad the author didn't go down the stereotypical route of having her be tremendously good looking. And yet, the tension was there the whole time about whether Macon would return to his wife, if she would have him back. The novel made me care deeply for all the characters, and I was utterly torn as to what I thought Macon should do.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The author has a very compassionate way of writing about people, but not so that they come across as cloying or too good to be true. The humour and kindness in the book is matched by tragedy and sadness. I also thought the ending was beautiful - it had me in tears and gave me a lot to think about. Real life is full of complications and grey areas and misunderstandings and it is wonderful that Anne Tyler has managed to capture this on paper.

A slow boiler, 07 Aug 2008
Have never read an Anne Tyler novel before and felt i should try her out as she's such an acclaimed author. To begin with i regretted starting "The Accidental Tourist". Although the story of Macon (What a name?!)intrigued me, i wanted to see how he coped with his new life, i found it to start with quite boring. It wasn't until his relationship with Muriel developed that i found the story more interesting. Two totally unsuited people who somehow managed to have a good life together. The ending of the book i think can produce one of two reactions, you will either think that Macon has made the best or the worst decision of his life and i was left wondering if he had in fact made the right decision. In the end i was glad i read the book, i came to care about what happened to Macon.

I adored this book, 16 Dec 2007
Macon and Sarah have lost a child, Ethan, and this tragedy has torn them apart and Sarah decides to leave. Macon is a very quirky person, unconventional and unsociable. He likes everything to be very controlled and organized. He works as a travel guide writer for business men who really don't want to be away from home and advises on how to cope in strange cities by keeping everything as similar as possible to life at home.

Macon's dog is uncontrollable and frequently attacks people and this is how he comes to meet Muriel who works as a dog trainer. She is the opposite of him - casual, untidy, talkative and sociable. He is drawn to her and her child, Alexander, a weakly child who in turn warms to Macon.

I adored this book. There are some beautiful characterisations - a whole range of quirky, oddball people. I found myself empathising with Macon's heartbreak at losing his son and his genuine confusion about life. I desperately wanted to get to the end to find out what happened!

There is even a heartwarming subplot of his siblings and his editor....

Enter Muriel., 02 Sep 2006
Macon the traveller who hates travelling can be forgiven for being boring. Macon lost his only child in a senseless murder and his marriage collapses. A recipe for despair you might think! Well, yes and no. Yes because he cannot properly grieve or piece his life together. No because the process of his life is comic in the face of inevitable twists and turns. Enter Muriel. Muriel takes life by the scruff of the neck with zest. She more than overlaps into his life. She knows what she wants and he does not - but it is not just about the two of them.

It is a romantic comedy but without the romance as we know it. I found easy to read dusted with just the right amount of expression. Great language, you can really hear the characters speaking and see the dynamic in the dialogue. Once again Tyler wonderfully presents the ordinary like a refreshing breeze to the reader dancing cheerfully page after page.


A brilliant novel of family dynamics, 15 Dec 2002
Pearl Tull is dying. As she slips into unconciousness she thinks about her struggle to raise her two sons, Cody and Ezra and her daughter Jenny after her husband walked out on her when they were very young. Now grown up, her children, however, see their childhood quite differently. As family events are told from their varying viewpoints, a complex story of hurt, jealousy, resentment and disappointment arises.

I have never yet read an Ann Tyler novel that disappoints and this is no exception. In her easy style she brilliantly exposes the reality beneath the outer skin. Her characters are so real, you can almost touch them. Sometimes you want to hug them; at other times you want to wring their necks!

Was Pearl a good mother? The answer, as in all Ann Tyler's novels, is yes and no. She did what she thought was best in the circumstances. And is this family any happier or more damaged than any other? The answer again is more complex than any other novel I have read. But this is not a heavy read. It is witty, funny, but above all, true. Wonderful.

The Center of the Family, 14 Nov 2002
This is a delicate loving piece of fiction. What is harder in life than to try to understand the perspective of the other people in our family? Anne Tyler gives us an intimate look at each of the family member's thoughts and from this we draw a large picture of a complex set of family relations. Where else does a family join together but the dinner table? It is a spot of joyous reunions and a catalyst for causing severe fractures, but it is a place where every person in the family ultimately returns. By placing this at the center of her tale she is able to jump of on all the character's many stories. This novel makes you reconsider the point of view of people in your family you might have given up on. Your sympathy always goes with Ezra, forever trying to hold the family together. But you also learn to see the perspective of the other members through hearing small poignant details of their lives from Pearl's apple apple apple to the devastating reunion and confrontation with the missing father at the end. Their actions aren't just quirky details, but strong philosophies by which they live and rich points of difference that cause friction in their relations. This is handled with tremendous sympathy and understanding by the author. Anyone who has had strained relations with members of their family will be able to relate to this book and be wildly entertained by its twists and turns.

Disappointingly mundane, 01 Oct 2001
"How plotless real life was! In novels, events led up to something" Maybe those words from her novel point us to the plot of Anne Tylers novel. The short story chapters of family life that are crafted carefully throughout this book lead to nothing that is new. Excellent prose but a novel that didn't leave me wanting more.

Literary masterpiece, 04 Jun 2001
What is it exactly that makes Anne Tyler's characters to be so believable, so real, and so close to our own personae that we have the awkward feeling that the book is written about us and not about some made-up family? Whatever the plot, whatever the lifestyles of the leading characters, we see our life in a mirror, and to tell the truth, this mirror is not skewed enough to warrant our comfort. Indeed, we perceive the character traits as our own; their attitudes none other. Anne masterfully vows in the pieces of real life into the character development, and as it is, we cannot resist her books, as they immediately appeal to us. They are real.

"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" is a perfect example of Anne Tyler's literary artwork. The prose is never wooden, the storyline and plot never obscure what the book is really about; and it's about the life long struggle of one particular family. The Tull family may be perceived as dysfunctional, for apparently the head of the family is missing, and the abandoned wife must tailor her dreams and expectations to fit the barren reality of the hardship of raising three children on her own. Yet, does that fatherless property of the family immediately condition dysfunctionality? No such direct and universal implication exists , and we should look deeper into the history of the family members and their experiences in order to be able to make a judgment.

In fact, I claim that despite obvious character traits of all members of the family, and the Mother in particular, all of them managed to survive in one piece. One often underestimates the fact that living through poor childhood or early motherhood, respectively - is a success in itself. Furthermore, none of them had trodden a criminal path, an occurrence frequent within the set of dysfunctional families as we know them. Of course none of them achieved what they longed for initially, but then, who ever did? No, my friends; this family is far from dysfunctional. Quite to the contrary, it is successful for reasons I will summarize in the closing paragraph of this review.

I enjoyed every single chapter, every single page of this beautiful piece of contemporary prose. I scolded myself for not having discovered Anne Tyler earlier in my life. I would have learned the important truths of life much earlier than I otherwise did. That's because the book carries a significant number of moral lessons to us and I will leave you the pleasure of discovering them for yourself. Why? I claim that except the obvious pleasure of reading the novels of such a skilled writer, it's the lessons we learn, and the insights into life we gain - that justify the position of Anne Tyler's books in our private literary pantheon. Every time I read her book, it makes me rethink my attitude towards, and perception of my own life and, predominantly, my past. We are what we think, what moral values we follow, and what we achieved, in that order. Thus it should not be surprising that we could consider "Dinner" a notable book of our life if it had changed our view on ourselves, the past included. There are not very many books which have the same impact as Anne Tyler's, and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" in particular.

The Mother seems to be living in some delusional world of her own, burdened heavily by her past, by her everyday hardship, and by the divergence of her children's lifestyles and behavior from the patterns she set for them to follow. Yet, as we see, her life was completely successful, and although not full of happiness, it was purposeful. And which of us mortal beings could have claimed the same at the end of our life? The hard truth of life is that we are happy only in the short intervals granted by the fate. Being happy, no matter for how long, does not make life purposeful in itself.

Yet, it is the children that constitute the character spine of the novel. It's too personal for me to analyze their lives, yet I shall only note that they are very familiar. Too familiar. I see myself in them, I love their imperfections, I welcome their traits, I follow their life decisions with a heartbeat, as I have an overwhelming impression that whatever choice they make, the choice will affect me here and now.

"Dinner..." is a real novel. It's heartbreaking. It is almost too real to be read. Well, on the other hand it should be read for precisely that reason, as it will never leave you; it shall stay with you forever after. Goodness, Anne - there is no way I can thank you for the best literary novel I have ever read, now can I?

Very moving and thought provoking. One of her best books., 02 Oct 2000
This book follows the lives and thoughts of three children whose travelling salesman father leaves them with a strict mother when they are quite young. It is all about family relationships and the ups-and-downs of growing up with a single parent.

The point that this book brought home to me is that everyone's relationship with their parents is unique - even if they share the same parents, their perceptions are entirely different.

It is a very difficult book to put down and is ideal holiday reading.

An Absolute Joy, 02 Jan 2008
This novel is an absolute joy - and I can see why it won a purlitzer prize. Beautifully crafted it brilliantly illustrates the way people are with each other - the way in which people who know each other so well act toward each other, how the old arguments and resentments resurface quickly and with out warning. Maggie and Ira's conversations while driving to Deer Lick are wonderfully real - you can just hear them, a middle aged couple having the same arguments they have had before, going over the same old ground. Anne Tyler's characters are real people - you believe them absolutely - and thats what made this novel so enjoyable. I think however that it is Maggie's unfailing optimism and heartbreaking refusual to accept the inevitable that I will remember most.

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler, 01 Oct 2007
Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons is a giant of a book, a giant because of the way in which it gently wraps you into its character's world and allows you to feel their lives being lived. It's a giant of a book in a very small world, a world inhabited by Maggie and her husband, Ira, and, it seems, by precious little else. They are long married, happy, perhaps without really knowing it, and replete with generally unacknowledged failure.

Breathing Lessons starts with Maggie picking up the family car after its repair job and spruce up. She immediately runs into a truck and doesn't stop. She and Ira then head off on a long drive to a funeral of a long lost friend. Memories revisit high school and adolescence as the widow attempts to recreate her wedding service to bid farewell to her husband. The songs her friends originally sang turn out to be highly inappropriate, depending on your point of view, and some don't want to try to recreate their youth and so become dignified spoil sports. Some old scores are re-tallied, none settled, of course.

Then Ira and Maggie set off home and decide to call in on their son's estranged wife and their granddaughter, a girl of seven, it turns out, they haven't seen since she was an infant. On the way there is a strange encounter with a fellow traveller. Maggie invents a story, for some reason, which he believes. She pursues the scam, is as duplicitous as hell and carries the whole thing off as if it had been gospel from the start. A strange episode.

Maggie is surprised that she does not recognise her granddaughter. Perhaps Anne Tyler is suggesting that the only really important things for Maggie are those she keeps within the confines of her head. Fiona, the estranged daughter-in-law, seems surprisingly accommodating, even more so when details emerge of how poorly treated she has been by Maggie and her son, Jesse. Maggie and Ira clearly weren't too good at being parents, or grandparents, either.

Maggie convinces herself that she can get the separated couple back together and cajoles her daughter-in-law and granddaughter to motor back to Baltimore with them She phones her son and arranges for him to call round later that day, after the travellers have reached the family home. It seems that everyone except Maggie is both indifferent and sceptical, but, for some reason, everyone goes along with her suggestions. And, of course, it all goes nowhere. None of these folk, by the way, could be described as intellectual. Not one of them ever seems to have read a book or, indeed, ever suffered the trauma of a moment of self-reflection since birth. All anyone ever does is react, and then usually wrongly.

Maggie is the book's central and essential character. Ira, her husband, for the most part busies himself driving, playing solitaire or teaching Frisbee. But basically he seems to hover around the edge of Maggie's universe, occasionally putting his foot in it by pointing out the odd reality here and there, realities that Maggie expends massive resources trying to ignore or deny. She makes mistakes. She crashes the car every time she drives (two out of two in the book). She constantly imagines herself as God's gift, a sort of Mrs Fix-It for everyone else's problems. But she is singularly unable to organise her own existence. She is overweight and yet over-eats. She is full of self-justification, almost invariably based on obviously false premises. And she seems to have developed absolutely no powers of self-analysis or reflection, even when reality occasionally forces its way into her existence to contradict her assumptions and undermine her intentions.

I have to admit that I tried to start the book at least three times without success. For me, Maggie's character was just not quite credible and, if it were credible, I could find no reason why I would want to read about such a person. I persevered this time, however, and the result was a rewarding insight into an uncultured and eventually valueless approach to life that, I suspect, Anne Tyler suspects may be widespread, though I feel that she would not be as judgmental about it as myself.

In the end, all of the characters in Breathing Lessons are failures, who consistently render their own lives a chaotic mess, both inside and outside their heads. They are surrounded by their own mistakes and missed opportunities. These are people who really work at their incompetence and succeed brilliantly. I can't help feeling that at least one of them, in the normal run of things, would display an intellect superior to a demented parrot and a facility for self-reflection greater than a sooty fireback. But no one ever does. Perhaps that's the point.


A day in the life..., 17 Sep 2006
A day in the life of Maggie - who is rather naïve and interfering (albeit for the right reasons) - and her husband of 25 years, Ira.
Although the novel only covers a day, it flashes back into their lives and glimpses into the dynamics of their marriage.

Though the book is beautifully written, its pace was a little too leisurely (borderline annoying) for me.


Love Battles with Reality in Humorous Ways, 19 Jul 2004
Most people love a lover. Also, most of us would like more love in our lives. If you read nonfiction books on the subject, they tell you to be more loving to others to receive more love in return. But most of us feel frustrated in that quest. What would it be like to pursue love in a more unrestricted way? That's the subject of Breathing Lessons.

Now, this could be a pretty heavy subject so Ms. Tyler wisely chooses to leaven her lessons with humor. Her protagonist, Maggie Morgan, will remind many of other fictional characters beginning with the lovable red head, Lucy Ricardo, in I Love Lucy. Those who have Dreamed the Impossible Dream while watching Man of La Mancha (or while reading Don Quixote) will recognize elements of Don Quixote in her character. The humor plays the same role that the fools play in Shakespeare's tragedies, to lighten the atmosphere from profoundly sad situations.

Maggie is a klutz who doesn't let her klutziness stop her. She's a one-woman pile driver intent on her purposes of spreading love and connection among all she meets. Her husband, Ira, plays the foil (the Desi Ricardo/Sancho Panza role) to help us know what the real situation is. Ira is almost all reason while Maggie is almost all love. You will find Ira to be interesting for examples of how reason needs to accommodate love.

Breathing Lessons shows a typical day for Maggie and Ira in an atypical environment . . . while on an out-of-town trip on a Saturday for a memorial service for the husband of Maggie's old friend. That environment turns the day into a quest (like Don Quixote) and they meet many interesting characters on whom Maggie has an unforgettable impact.

Many will look for a heroic ending featuring accomplishment. But did Don Quixote have such an ending? Ms. Tyler redefines heroism in terms of continuing to love and hope for the best . . . even when everything crumbles into dust. I think anyone will be inspired by the example of Maggie to do the right thing.

As you probably know, this book won a Pulitzer Prize which it certainly deserved. Seldom has a book created such a new an ennobling expression of human potential in the context of our all-too-human tendency to err.

Many will find Maggie's klutziness to be overdone . . . and possibly annoying. I, too, found it a little overdone, but enjoyed the book nevertheless. Ms. Tyler doesn't want us to miss the point that we should make the most of our talents . . . however modest or great they are.

Nice job, Ms. Tyler!

The EXTRA-Ordinary Maggie, 14 Nov 2002
Let me tell you why I liked this book. It gave me a different perspective. Although many people (both readers and characters in the book) have criticised her for being one-dimensional I found her to be quite extraordinary. Her sensitivity and sense of place within her family is touching. The reason why her image radiates ordinariness is because everyone has labelled her that way. I found this to be true in the way that people often create labels for others and then the label is accepted as some kind of truth. Maggie may not be a likeable person or even a realistic person you can picture in your life, but certainly everyone can empathise with the tendency people have to suffocate other people with images they have created for them. I don't think Maggie is that simple. If she were than she could never imagine a life outside of her own. But, when she and Ira get in a fight in the car and she demands to be let out she imagines a completely different life for herself. This is the imaginary flight that is carried out in actuality in Ladder of Years. You could say that this is the off-handed daydream of a flat character because it is just as immediately forgotten as it is conjured. However, I think this suggests a more complex state of mind. One which can envision other states of being but consciously rejects them. Incidentally this is a very ordinary trait, one that I imagine many people can sympathise with. In some ways she is more ordinary than most people because she is always actively trying to normalise other people. She is not only suppressed by other people's images of her, but she is trying to mould everyone into the image she wants them to be. Her intentions are always positive. She wants them to be better people and fulfil their potential, but at the same time she is stifling their sense of individual identity by imaging them to inhabit an image that isn't realistic. This is a common difficulty with people who are "well-wishers". A major reason for why I appreciated this novel so much is because of its comic perspective. While dealing with the difficult relations between people, especially family, it is able to not take itself too seriously. There are incredibly comic moments such as the car accident and when Maggie and Ira are caught making out in the friend's bedroom. Anne Tyler is able to balance the serious and the comic while making shrewd observations about human nature. She shows us we all have the ability to be just like everyone else and wholly our own person at the same time.

Barnaby Gaitlin is one of Anne Tyler's most promising unpromising characters. At 30, he has yet to graduate from college, is already divorced and is used to defeat. His mother thrives on reminding him of his adolescent delinquency and debt to his family, and even his daughter is fed up with his fecklessness. Still, attuned as he is to "the normal quota for misfortune," Barney is one of the star employees of Baltimore's Rent-a-Back, Inc., which pays him an hourly wage to help old people (and one young agoraphobe) run errands and sort out their basements and attics. Anne Tyler makes you admire most of these mothball eccentrics (though they're far from idealised) and hope that they can stave off nursing homes and death. There is, for example, "the unstoppable little black grandma whose children phoned us on an emergency basis whenever she threatened to overdo." And then there's Barnaby's new girlfriend's aunt, who will eventually accuse him of theft--"Over her forearm she carried a Yorkshire terrier, neatly folded like a waiter's napkin. "This is my doorbell," she said, thrusting him toward me. "I'd never have known you were out here if not for Tatters." These people are wonderful creations, but their lives are more brittle than cuddly; Barnaby knows better than to think of them as friends, because they'll only die on him. Yet his job offers at least glimpses of roots and affection. Helping an old lady set up her Christmas tree (on New Year's Eve!) gives him the chance to hang a singular ornament--a snowflake "pancake-sized, slightly crumpled, snipped from giftwrap so old that the Santas were smoking cigarettes." And Barnaby himself is sharp and impatient at painful--and painfully funny--family dinners, apparently unable to keep his finger off the auto-self-destruct button every time his life improves. As much as his superb creator, he is a poet of disappointment, resignation, and minute transformation. --Kerry Fried

Another slice of American life, 29 Oct 2008
2 Korean girls are adopted on the same day by two very different American families, this book follows the girls and the intertwining of the 2 families. A great insight into the process and a slice of American life. I spent a year living in China, and saw many an American couple coming to collect their adopted children. This book answered some of the questions that I was too British to ask.

Digging to America, 12 Sep 2008
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation, 23 Jul 2008
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story..., 23 May 2008
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.

Will not be recommending, 03 Jan 2008
This was my first Anne Taylor novel and unfortunately I have to agree with a couple of other reviews in that this book was quite boring.

My favorite character was Maryam, she was a very interesting Iranian lady who had come over to America as part of an arranged marriage. Her role in the book was mother to Sami, who along with his wife Ziba adopted a Korean baby Susan-june. The other couple in the book Bitsy and Brad, who also adopted a Korean baby were very mundane, although Bitsy did have a bit of a flare, organising parites and binky throw aways however in the most part these characters were very flat.

The main focus was the adoption of the two Korean babies, from the moment they arrive in the country until there, sorry lost count, say 4th arrival party.

There is light at the end of the tunnel as we are allowed a brief glance at Maryam's life, I think this saved the book.




BRILLIANT CHARACTERISATION AND DIALOGUE., 18 Dec 2007
Many novelists have problems with either characterisation so that you can't remember who is who in the books, or dialogue so that everyone speaks the same, but not Anne Tyler.

'The Clock Winder' begins with Mrs Emerson, who reminds one so much of Amanda Wingfield, the mother in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie' and is not only identifiable by her clothes and 'her spike-heeled shoes that made her arches ache' but by her insistence on appearance and also by her speech :
' I never did think much of those streets of gold and pearly gates. Wouldn't you like to just go on like this forever? With something always about to happen and someone new always showing up? Oh wouldn't that make dying all right?'

Well, someone new does turn up but things don't just go on like this forever. Elizabeth brings with her a wave of new thinking and although she doesn't say very much in the house, it is transformed from a boring place where nothing gets any better, to a place where old ideas are shaken up and improvements, both physical and spiritual, are made.

There are tragedies and there is sorrow and great mistakes are made, but the different characters survive and live to tell their stories.

Instead of a sad tailing off at the end, there is a clever little twist which keeps the reader interested until the last.

This is excellent writing and this book is well worth buying and keeping to read again and again.


Nothing is finer than Tyler at her best, 01 Feb 2005
This is an author who could wring magic from a mud puddle. Her material is ordinary human relationships in all their ordinary dysfunctional tangle. This one has Elizabeth as the most reluctant of heroines, drawn into a family that is waging pointless war on itself. She is hailed by them as their only hope to bring order to chaos, and is somehow unable to escape their clutches. Elizabeth says to one of the sons of the house "You all present me with your problems and lay them at my feet in heaps!" They do. But those heaped problems are not the real drama of the book, it is the quieter emotions that matter. And it is Anne Tyler's genius that she can portray them with such precision that their softly insistent voices are heard above the clamour. A superb book.

Driving Miss Daisy - with Charlie Dimmock at the wheel!, 20 Jun 2001
One of Anne Tyler's best novels, the story tells of an every-changing relationship between recently widowed Mrs Emerson (who spends her days winding the clocks) and her newly acquired gardener/handywoman, Elizabeth. Mrs Emerson's friendship with and dependency on Elizabeth is reminiscent of "Driving Miss Daisy", and from Ms Tyler's description of Elizabeth I couldn't help picturing her as Charlie Dimmock!

Mrs Emerson's family enter, leave, and inevitably change the relationship between employer and employee, bringing with them humour, sorrow and tragedy as their story unfolds.

As with all Ms Tyler's novels, do not expect a fairytale happy ending, but be assured the story leaves its characters with a genuine contentment; despite sacrifices and compromises made they show us a real-life happiness is attainable.

This version is all the easier to read if, like me, as you get older you find publishers are using smaller and smaller print!

Elizabeth is captivating., 01 Jan 2001
Possibly my favourite Tyler. Elizabeth is infuriating and wonderful. The family of the "clock" is reminiscent of any family - everyone has their own quirks and foibles. The novel has a great twist and has moments of high drama. Romantic, humourous and vivid.

Macon Leary - one of my heroes, 23 Sep 2008
This has been my favourite book for over ten years, and one which I read again and again. Each read reveals a new layer to the story. The biggest enjoyment I get from it is that someone like Macon has the ability to change, just by meeting that one special person.

Touching and wise, 21 Sep 2008
The Accidental Tourist is a wonderful novel. It is beautifully written and very wise and sensitive. The characters are ordinary people and the plot is full of everyday occurences, and yet I was turning the pages as if I was reading a nail biting thriller.

I'm always hearing that good writers should 'show and not tell', and Anne Tyler does this to perfection. The first chapter alone is a masterclass in how to create an original and moving marriage break-up scene. At the beginning of the novel, we find out that Macon and Sarah's son has died. In other books there would have been endless pages about the death and flashbacks to the family before the tragedy, but Tyler manages to convey the parents's terrible loss without going down this rather tired route. As the book progresses, Macon and Sarah separate, and then Macon meets Muriel, an unusual dog trainer who seems determined to work her way into his life.

All of the characters seem like living, breathing people - with good and bad points. Macon, the main character, is an excellent invention. Being an introvert myself, I felt like I could understand much of his motivation and attitude towards life. I also grew to admire Muriel a great deal and the physical descriptions of her - her frizzy hair and clothes ('I look like the Wrath of God') - were particularly good. I was glad the author didn't go down the stereotypical route of having her be tremendously good looking. And yet, the tension was there the whole time about whether Macon would return to his wife, if she would have him back. The novel made me care deeply for all the characters, and I was utterly torn as to what I thought Macon should do.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. The author has a very compassionate way of writing about people, but not so that they come across as cloying or too good to be true. The humour and kindness in the book is matched by tragedy and sadness. I also thought the ending was beautiful - it had me in tears and gave me a lot to think about. Real life is full of complications and grey areas and misunderstandings and it is wonderful that Anne Tyler has managed to capture this on paper.

A slow boiler, 07 Aug 2008
Have never read an Anne Tyler novel before and felt i should try her out as she's such an acclaimed author. To begin with i regretted starting "The Accidental Tourist". Although the story of Macon (What a name?!)intrigued me, i wanted to see how he coped with his new life, i found it to start with quite boring. It wasn't until his relationship with Muriel developed that i found the story more interesting. Two totally unsuited people who somehow managed to have a good life together. The ending of the book i think can produce one of two reactions, you will either think that Macon has made the best or the worst decision of his life and i was left wondering if he had in fact made the right decision. In the end i was glad i read the book, i came to care about what happened to Macon.

I adored this book, 16 Dec 2007
Macon and Sarah have lost a child, Ethan, and this tragedy has torn them apart and Sarah decides to leave. Macon is a very quirky person, unconventional and unsociable. He likes everything to be very controlled and organized. He works as a travel guide writer for business men who really don't want to be away from home and advises on how to cope in strange cities by keeping everything as similar as possible to life at home.

Macon's dog is uncontrollable and frequently attacks people and this is how he comes to meet Muriel who works as a dog trainer. She is the opposite of him - casual, untidy, talkative and sociable. He is drawn to her and her child, Alexander, a weakly child who in turn warms to Macon.

I adored this book. There are some beautiful characterisations - a whole range of quirky, oddball people. I found myself empathising with Macon's heartbreak at losing his son and his genuine confusion about life. I desperately wanted to get to the end to find out what happened!

There is even a heartwarming subplot of his siblings and his editor....

Enter Muriel., 02 Sep 2006
Macon the traveller who hates travelling can be forgiven for being boring. Macon lost his only child in a senseless murder and his marriage collapses. A recipe for despair you might think! Well, yes and no. Yes because he cannot properly grieve or piece his life together. No because the process of his life is comic in the face of inevitable twists and turns. Enter Muriel. Muriel takes life by the scruff of the neck with zest. She more than overlaps into his life. She knows what she wants and he does not - but it is not just about the two of them.

It is a romantic comedy but without the romance as we know it. I found easy to read dusted with just the right amount of expression. Great language, you can really hear the characters speaking and see the dynamic in the dialogue. Once again Tyler wonderfully presents the ordinary like a refreshing breeze to the reader dancing cheerfully page after page.


A brilliant novel of family dynamics, 15 Dec 2002
Pearl Tull is dying. As she slips into unconciousness she thinks about her struggle to raise her two sons, Cody and Ezra and her daughter Jenny after her husband walked out on her when they were very young. Now grown up, her children, however, see their childhood quite differently. As family events are told from their varying viewpoints, a complex story of hurt, jealousy, resentment and disappointment arises.

I have never yet read an Ann Tyler novel that disappoints and this is no exception. In her easy style she brilliantly exposes the reality beneath the outer skin. Her characters are so real, you can almost touch them. Sometimes you want to hug them; at other times you want to wring their necks!

Was Pearl a good mother? The answer, as in all Ann Tyler's novels, is yes and no. She did what she thought was best in the circumstances. And is this family any happier or more damaged than any other? The answer again is more complex than any other novel I have read. But this is not a heavy read. It is witty, funny, but above all, true. Wonderful.

The Center of the Family, 14 Nov 2002
This is a delicate loving piece of fiction. What is harder in life than to try to understand the perspective of the other people in our family? Anne Tyler gives us an intimate look at each of the family member's thoughts and from this we draw a large picture of a complex set of family relations. Where else does a family join together but the dinner table? It is a spot of joyous reunions and a catalyst for causing severe fractures, but it is a place where every person in the family ultimately returns. By placing this at the center of her tale she is able to jump of on all the character's many stories. This novel makes you reconsider the point of view of people in your family you might have given up on. Your sympathy always goes with Ezra, forever trying to hold the family together. But you also learn to see the perspective of the other members through hearing small poignant details of their lives from Pearl's apple apple apple to the devastating reunion and confrontation with the missing father at the end. Their actions aren't just quirky details, but strong philosophies by which they live and rich points of difference that cause friction in their relations. This is handled with tremendous sympathy and understanding by the author. Anyone who has had strained relations with members of their family will be able to relate to this book and be wildly entertained by its twists and turns.

Disappointingly mundane, 01 Oct 2001
"How plotless real life was! In novels, events led up to something" Maybe those words from her novel point us to the plot of Anne Tylers novel. The short story chapters of family life that are crafted carefully throughout this book lead to nothing that is new. Excellent prose but a novel that didn't leave me wanting more.

Literary masterpiece, 04 Jun 2001
What is it exactly that makes Anne Tyler's characters to be so believable, so real, and so close to our own personae that we have the awkward feeling that the book is written about us and not about some made-up family? Whatever the plot, whatever the lifestyles of the leading characters, we see our life in a mirror, and to tell the truth, this mirror is not skewed enough to warrant our comfort. Indeed, we perceive the character traits as our own; their attitudes none other. Anne masterfully vows in the pieces of real life into the character development, and as it is, we cannot resist her books, as they immediately appeal to us. They are real.

"Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" is a perfect example of Anne Tyler's literary artwork. The prose is never wooden, the storyline and plot never obscure what the book is really about; and it's about the life long struggle of one particular family. The Tull family may be perceived as dysfunctional, for apparently the head of the family is missing, and the abandoned wife must tailor her dreams and expectations to fit the barren reality of the hardship of raising three children on her own. Yet, does that fatherless property of the family immediately condition dysfunctionality? No such direct and universal implication exists , and we should look deeper into the history of the family members and their experiences in order to be able to make a judgment.

In fact, I claim that despite obvious character traits of all members of the family, and the Mother in particular, all of them managed to survive in one piece. One often underestimates the fact that living through poor childhood or early motherhood, respectively - is a success in itself. Furthermore, none of them had trodden a criminal path, an occurrence frequent within the set of dysfunctional families as we know them. Of course none of them achieved what they longed for initially, but then, who ever did? No, my friends; this family is far from dysfunctional. Quite to the contrary, it is successful for reasons I will summarize in the closing paragraph of this review.

I enjoyed every single chapter, every single page of this beautiful piece of contemporary prose. I scolded myself for not having discovered Anne Tyler earlier in my life. I would have learned the important truths of life much earlier than I otherwise did. That's because the book carries a significant number of moral lessons to us and I will leave you the pleasure of discovering them for yourself. Why? I claim that except the obvious pleasure of reading the novels of such a skilled writer, it's the lessons we learn, and the insights into life we gain - that justify the position of Anne Tyler's books in our private literary pantheon. Every time I read her book, it makes me rethink my attitude towards, and perception of my own life and, predominantly, my past. We are what we think, what moral values we follow, and what we achieved, in that order. Thus it should not be surprising that we could consider "Dinner" a notable book of our life if it had changed our view on ourselves, the past included. There are not very many books which have the same impact as Anne Tyler's, and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" in particular.

The Mother seems to be living in some delusional world of her own, burdened heavily by her past, by her everyday hardship, and by the divergence of her children's lifestyles and behavior from the patterns she set for them to follow. Yet, as we see, her life was completely successful, and although not full of happiness, it was purposeful. And which of us mortal beings could have claimed the same at the end of our life? The hard truth of life is that we are happy only in the short intervals granted by the fate. Being happy, no matter for how long, does not make life purposeful in itself.

Yet, it is the children that constitute the character spine of the novel. It's too personal for me to analyze their lives, yet I shall only note that they are very familiar. Too familiar. I see myself in them, I love their imperfections, I welcome their traits, I follow their life decisions with a heartbeat, as I have an overwhelming impression that whatever choice they make, the choice will affect me here and now.

"Dinner..." is a real novel. It's heartbreaking. It is almost too real to be read. Well, on the other hand it should be read for precisely that reason, as it w