We have our grey-eyed, blond-haired serious men/brothers and our woman from a rackety background who is just about getting by. Like in “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” we also have little snatches of side-stories, notably from Macon’s neighbour. So we have one of those large eccentric families grown up and without the influence of their parents, although it turns out they do have a mother who is alive and well and odd in her own way (notably, she has rushes of enthusiasm for different hobbies, like lots of the men we’ve met before in Tyler).
Of course we have the famous eccentric, Macon Leary, who hates to travel but writes travel books for a living (for people who hate to travel, and I love it when he meets a couple of his fans during the novel), and his special ways of organising the house which, when his wife ups and leaves, combine to bring about his literal downfall and his moving in with his sister and two brothers, all equally weirdly over-organised (I have never forgotten Rose’s extreme alphabetisation of her kitchen, which always makes me feel better when I’m turning tins the “right way round” in the cupboards). But he could not have said, not in a million years, why he was so moved by the sight of Muriel’s thin quilt trailing across the floor where she must have dragged it when she rose in the morning. It occurred to him (not for the first time) that the world was divided sharply down the middle: Some lived careful lives and some lived careless lives, and everything that happened could be explained by the difference between them. I’m adding links to these reviews plus all the reviews I am alerted to to the project page, so do pop there to see what other people have thought, too. If you’re reading along with the project or just this one or whatever, please do share your thoughts in the comments at the bottom or add a link to your review on your blog or Goodreads, etc. Of course I’m continuing with the project and I found a lot to engage with in this one, even with its dark heart of tragedy which creeps out through the pages to affect everyone’s lives. And I suppose I did buy most of these copies 20 years ago. Interestingly, when I was talking with my husband about how I’m having trouble remembering a lot of these novels, and also engaging with a couple of them, he was surprised and said, “Really, when I met you you were all about Anne Tyler”. My second May read for my Anne Tyler 2021 project and we’re back to the standard Vintage editions which now alternate with the big Quality Paperbacks Direct editions I sometimes had of later books.
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