Anne
Tyler writes novels about commonplace people who may be quirky or just
mediocre; families that are deficient if not dysfunctional; and daily
life in which nothing earthshaking generally happens. And yet she
manages to give her characters reasons for self-examination. They
second-guess choices, they have insights about themselves and their
loved ones, they find hope.
In Back When We Were
Grownups,
Tyler's 15th novel, Rebecca Davitch is at 53 the matriarch of a large
clan, most of whom aren't her blood relatives. There are three
stepdaughters, a biological daughter, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and
her husband's 99-year-old uncle. Rebecca husband, Joe, was killed in a
car crash six years into their marriage, leaving her with four little
girls, his widowed uncle, and a dilapidating old Baltimore row house
where the family business, giving parties, is conducted.
Now, with everyone out of the house except Uncle Poppy, Rebecca is
ruminating about the road not taken when she married Joe. Engaged to
someone else when Joe swept her off her feet, Rebecca had been a
promising scholar at 20. Now she never reads a book. Had she become the
wrong person? Rebecca spends the rest of the book trying to answer that
question. She tracks down the suitor she spurned. She doesn't have to
look far — he's physics department chair at the college that
they
both attended and she abruptly left before graduating. Through their
renewed companionship, Rebecca revisits the quiet, serious, studious
young woman she remembers, inevitably comparing her with the jolly,
party-giving family caretaker she became. The answer Rebecca has been
seeking finally comes from Uncle Poppy at his 100th birthday party:
"There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with,
whatever it may be."
Some readers find Tyler
simplistic and sentimental, but Tyler's fans find her inspiring. Along with Tyler's
characters, they refuel their own appetite for life.
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