If you'd given me this book and blocked out the author's name I still would have known who wrote it.I had no problems with it; read easily, made sense, in the same way all Tyler's novels do.All her characters seem like they're in their 60s, though, no matter how old they really are supposed to be...
Life is too short to keep reading a book that doesn't interest you. I used to never give up on a book. I just knew that it would pay off in the end and the book would actually be great. However, as I get older, I realize that idea is like sitting at a slot machine that you are convinced will f...
My first Anne Tyler. About to finish my second (Back when we were grown ups). Very similar themes, and not sure what the deal is with Baltimore. A mundane background for mundane lives, that have moments of contentment, acceptance, and in the latter, self realization? Also, what's the deal with du...
For many years Anne Tyler was among my very favorite authors. I cooled on her a while back when trying unsuccessfully to read The Amateur Marriage (just couldn't bear seeing the mess those characters made of their lives). But when browsing the library for my next audiobook I was glad to try this ...
I've always been delighted that Anne Tyler's novels are always a lot less fluffy than they seem, given the plot synopses on the back of my paperbacks.The truth is, Tyler better captures more than almost any other author the inner lives of regular folks. I was surprised to find myself and constant...
Anne Tyler has run so much water over the elements of her quirky Baltimore families that she risks becoming the high priestess of homeopathic fiction. Now, with "The Amateur Marriage," the bittersweet perception that infused her earlier work is so attenuated that only the most faithful fans will ...
Reading the back-of-the-book synopsis, I expected Saint Maybe to be a sort of grace-centered retread of 1980's Ordinary People, in which a teenager struggles to come to terms with the death of his older, "better" brother (for which he feels partially responsible) with the help of a compassionate ...
Noting the relationship between my goodreads friends and acquaintances, and Anne Tyler makes me wonder. Is Jane Austen some sort of token? We have to like somebody who writes about domesticity, so...Is that it? Tyler does indeed write about domesticity. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, most...
"The marriage wasn't going well and I decided to leave my husband."So begins Anne Tyler's story of a woman named Charlotte, 35, from a small town in Maryland, sometime in the mid-1970s. A tale of ordinary people, with all the strengths and limitations that implies. Tyler has been ploughing this s...
The Accidental Tourist really surprised me. I have never read Anne Tyler before and I don’t usually get into general fiction like this but this was, to put it very simply, a beautiful novel and story. It is amazingly well-written, the characters are totally unique but believable, and the plot is ...
I surprised myself by enjoying this novel quite a lot more than I'd expected, since I'm not the most enthusiastic of Anne Tyler fans (or of these sorts of novels) and usually reserve them, in fact, for when I'm stuck and have nothing else at hand to read or when I'm really, really tired/stressed ...
It had been so long since I read Anne Tyler, I began to miss her. So I decided to reread Morgan’s Passing because it’s one of the books I least remember, likely because this book isn’t so much a well-plotted story as it is a great character study of protagonist, Morgan Gower. But this is typical ...
Sad people are the only real ones. They can tell you the truth about things; they have always known that there is no one you can depend upon forever and no change in your life, however great, that can keep you from being in the end what you were in the beginning: lost and lonely, sitting on an oi...
Anne Tyler has been one of my favorite writers for the last 30 years. I don't think it's because I grew up a few neighborhoods away from her; I think it's because she's talented, tender, and wise. "The Tin Can Tree" is her second novel and will celebrate it's 50th anniversary next year. It's t...
This is my first time to read 3 books by an author in succession: one, two, three... Just like the saying when it rains, it pours, I am having an Anne Tyler Book Festival. After reading her The Accidental Tourist I went to the bookstore and bought Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and read right...
Family, you can never leave nor forsake them. Anne Tyler's "Searching for Caleb" examines family ties and the impact they so blatantly have on you. Tyler's use of wavering characters, Justine and her husband Duncan, explain how their misplacement did not necessarily exclude them from their " perf...
The critics say that Anne Tyler writes novels with quirky characters. I say that we are all quirky characters. Certainly, I grew up with and am a member of a family of quirky characters. I find the characters in Anne Tyler's novels real, they are people one meets everyday. As I began to read ...