Anne Tyler is more than just a brilliant writer.
You read her books and get inside people's heads, lives, experiences and understand them, and end up making better sense of your own. There were bits in this book so funny that I looked like a crazy person laughing out loud by myself and at the same time was not too far away from crying.
If you think Anne Tyler is just about the best writer in English then this book will not disappoint because she combines the humour and vulnerability she did so well in The Accidental Tourist with the compassion and understanding of the complexity of relationships in say, Digging to America.
This book is about a house and the family who lived in it through the stories of the individuals who were born into it, married, were friends with, were tolerated by or worked for over time. So you get to meet people at the different ages and turning points in their lives as their stories interconnect.
Anne Tyler is at her best in the kitchen, the tool shed, the theatre of the everyday chores of cooking and eating where she uses the thoughts and conversations as a palette to paint a portrait of contemporary family life. She will be read for many years to come when people want to understand relationships in the early twenty first century - and gain universal insight into their own - whenever that might be.
It seems ludicrous to be reviewing something las good as this tapping the words with one finger in my own inarticulate prose so I"ll finish by saying, this book is wonderful. Absolutely read it.
- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: CHATTO & WINDUS - TRADE; 1 edition (15 February 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0701189517
- ISBN-13: 978-0701189518
- Product Dimensions: 16.2 x 3.3 x 24 cm
- Boxed-product Weight: 581 g
- Average Customer Review: 31 customer reviews
