Showing posts with label Anne Tyler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne Tyler. Show all posts

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler


"From beginning to end, she thought, she'd done everything wrong."-Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
Second chances, do-overs, reinventing oneself, rebirth, awakenings--are they wish-fulfillment fantasies? Can we change our lives? Or are we wound up by childhood experiences and genetics and parental models to whirl across the stage of a life we have no control over?

This is the essence of Anne Tyler's novel Clock Dance, the story of Willa, a woman who comes at life slant, passive and bending.

The story follows the life of Willa from her childhood in 1967 and through marriage and motherhood, the loss of her spouse and remarriage. She has never asserted her own needs, doing what is expected or what keeps others happy.

A phone call from a stranger informs that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot and the neighbor is tired of caring for the girlfriend's child, Cheryl. The neighbor thinks Willa is the girl's grandmother. Willa has longed for grandchildren and decides to leave Arizona for Baltimore to care for the child. Her husband disapproves.

What happens in Baltimore changes Willa's life.

I read the novel in a day, enchanted by the characters and Willa's journey of discovery.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through First To Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Clock Dance
by Anne Tyler
Knopf Publishing Group
Publication July 10, 2018
ISBN: 13 9780525521228

SPOILER ALERT VERSION
After a Goodreads friend complained I told too much, I excised the following from my review.

The story begins in 1967 when Willa and her younger sister are children. Their mother is temperamental and unreliable, their father long-suffering and depressed. Willa picks up the pieces when her mother disappears for days at a time.

Ten years later finds Willa surprised to be the love interest of the older Derek, a jock and BMOC, "rescued from handsomeness" by freckles. He pushes her into leaving school to marry him, and pregnancy soon derails her plans to finish her degree. Derek's fatal flaw of angry impatience with others brings an early and tragic death, leaving Willa with two children to raise.

"Now she settled into the dailiness of grief-not that first piercing stab but the steady, persistent ache of it, the absence that feels like a presence."

2017 finds Willa remarried to Peter, an older, childless man, a successful and handsome lawyer who, though retired, still puts his business first. Peter is condescending and self-centered. Willa's children are grown and her sister is emotionally and physically distant. Willa is struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life.

A phone call from a stranger informs that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot and the neighbor is tired of caring for the girlfriend's child. The neighbor thinks Willa is the girl's grandmother. Willa has longed for grandchildren and decides to leave Arizona for Baltimore to care for the child. Peter thinks she is crazy.

Nine-year-old Cheryl is no poster-child with her round tummy and pudgy cheeks. She loves baking and the Space Junk cartoon series. Cheryl is also wise and grounded. And looking for a grandmother in her life.

As Willa becomes enmeshed in Cheryl's world and neighborhood, she defies Peter's demands, until she must decide how she will spend the last of her life.


Thursday, June 1, 2017

Mini-Reviews: Troubled Families

Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread was my book club's May pick. I had two friends, and a spouse, who didn't finish the book because it lacked a compulsive narrative.

I found that around page 140 things got very interesting, and in the last sections, devastating. What seems to be a boring family is revealed to be a sad failure spanning generations.

There are remarkably funny scenes. I laughed at loud at the complaint asking why people only bring casseroles to the grieving; why not wine?

And in the end, there is hope that, regardless of how messed up our family is, we will survive and perhaps learn to do better ourselves.

Several of my book club members enjoyed the book, but others who read Tyler's other books were disappointed. In the end, I was glad to have read the book.


The Bronte family had more than its share of troubles, and Charlotte was not spared.

Brian Wilk's Charlotte in Love: The Courtship and Marriage of Charlotte Bronte considers the famous writer's relationships with the important men in her life: her father, The Reverend Patrick; her brilliant but doomed brother Branson; her teacher Professor Heger, who Charlotte fell for; her young publisher George Smith who introduced her to the literary world; and Arthur Nicholas Bell, her father's lowly curate who fell madly in love with his boss's plain and dutiful daughter, even if she was a brilliant novelist.

The story of Bell's patient courtship and how Charlotte turned from ridiculing the curate to pity to accepting him as the love of her life is also the story of a strong and controlling father protecting against the loss of his only surviving child.

Although the writing is a bit stodgy, the information is fascinating. Make no mistake about it: Charlotte was a woman of independent spirit and high passion and desperate to connect emotionally and physically.




Sunday, June 26, 2016

Shakespeare Retold: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

The Hogarth Press, founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf in 1917, launched the Hogarth Shakespeare project last year. Acclaimed and best selling contemporary novelists are retelling the Bard's stories for modern audiences.

Anne Tyler's Vinegar Girl is based on The Taming of the Shrew. The play has been adapted into movies and the Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate and is the inspiration behind 10 Things I Hate About You.

Vinegar Girl introduces us to the quirky Battista family. Kate is a college drop out working as a teacher's assistant and running the house for her eccentric scientist father and younger vacuous sister Bunny.

Kate's father has a problem. His valued assistant Pyotr Shcherbakov's O-1 visa is ending. Kate's dad has hatched a plan to match Kate and Pyotr, if not for love at least for a marriage of convenience. After all, at twenty-nine Kate has no other suitors. Kate is beautiful, but as her employer puts it, she is lacking tact, restraint, and diplomacy. Her directness delights her preschool charges, but gets her in trouble with their parents.

Pyotr is no charmer himself. He is attractive, but for all his research ability he is unwittingly disorganized and is oblivious about appearances. Pyotr seems cheerful, but he is lonely and homesick and his life is 'meager.'

Tyler's story is funny and her characters interesting. It is a wild ride to the altar, with stolen lab mice and fist fights. The book is light and fluffy, a nice beach read. The misogyny of the original story is gone. Tyler has given us a happy ending where two misfits allow each other space to be themselves.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Vinegar Girl
by Anne Tyler
Hogarth/Crown Publishing
publication date June 21, 2016
$25 hard cover
ISBN: 9780804141260