What do you think a story about a thorny family would include? If it’s by Anne Tyler, and if it covers a period of sixty years, you can expect to see that things don’t always work out. For example, the central character, named Mercy, does not have a close relationship … Read More
Tag: Anne Tyler
“Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines . . . where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldly…”
If you could ask one novelist to write a story about your life, who would you pick? For me, it would be Anne Tyler, whose power lies in her ability to capture both truth and humanity in profound metaphors. For example, the main character in this novel is a runner … Read More
“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”
Stating the premise of your work simply and clearly in the first sentence requires courage. Readers might say, “Is that all?” Or, some might feel skeptical about your ability to show how an original story can follow from a classic premise that Kafka, Dante, and other masters have already used. … Read More
“The waitress seemed to sense that this was not the moment to ask if they had everything they needed.”
Of course, the waitress was right: these people clearly didn’t have everything they needed. This is familiar territory for fans of Anne Tyler. We count on seeing an “eccentric ecosystem of relatives and neighbors” who aren’t getting the assurances, stability or respect they need. When the New York Times… Read More
“He felt as if he was never again going to know the reason for anything he did.”
Why read novels? Jonathan Franzen argues in a Harper’s essay that people are drawn to strong fiction because they like to engage in complex stories that don’t have simple resolutions. In Anne Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, the central character, a law student, tries to learn … Read More
“You need to develop some social skills. Some tact, some restraint, some diplomacy.”
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Hogarth commissioned “today’s best-loved novelists” to retell “the world’s favourite playwright’s” dramas. Anne Tyler’s novel Vinegar Girl is based on “The Taming of the Shrew,” a play that Tyler said she hated because it’s “totally misogynistic” and the people “behave … Read More
“It was as if nothing I’d ever done in my life prior to this counted.”
The wonderful thing about 600-page sagas is, in my view, the opportunity to develop a wide perspective. Readers get to see the consequences of decisions as they play out over the span of decades. Sometimes characters come to see things differently, and sometimes readers do, too. Moments of reconsideration can … Read More
“But, like most families, they imagined they were special.”
What makes this family special? Anne Tyler provides this list: They thought their uncanny ability to keep their dogs alive for eons set them apart, as did their fierce disapproval of any adults who wear jeans, and their air of good-natured patience “that was not entirely deserved.” They also have … Read More
“The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.”
Oh, how I love an unreliable narrator! Our quote is the first sentence of the novel, and it’s clearly a flat-out lie. (The strangest thing about anyone’s return from the dead is that it happened — of course people thought it’s strange.) So, if the main character tells us in … Read More