This year I’ve been joining in Liz’s Anne Tyler readalong for most of the novels I own and hadn’t read yet. I’ve discovered a few terrific new-to-me ones: Earthly Possessions, Saint Maybe, The Amateur Marriage … but there have also been some slight duds. Alas, this one falls into the latter category. A Tyler novel is never less than readable, but a habit that I find irksome is on show here, and she’s used this story template more successfully before.

In 2006, Liam Pennywell is forced to start a new life at age 60. After being laid off from his private school teaching job, he downsizes to a smaller apartment further out from central Baltimore. On his first night in the place, he’s assaulted by a would-be burglar and wakes up in hospital with no memory of the lost hours. As he tries to piece together what happened, his three daughters, grandson and ex-wife flit in and out of his life, tutting at his bachelor ways and later disapproving of his budding relationship with a much younger woman.

The focus on a hapless male trying to do better is a familiar setup for Tyler (Saint Maybe, The Accidental Tourist, A Patchwork Planet, The Beginner’s Goodbye, and Redhead by the Side of the Road, at least – have I missed any?). Liam especially reminded me of Michael in The Amateur Marriage: they feel they have been sleepwalking through life and wish they had appreciated it more and shaped it more through their decisions. As Liam says at one point, “It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life.” Dating Eunice is his only bid for freedom and happiness. But, in the book’s most memorable scene, a visit to his elderly father is a revelation to Liam: he never wanted to be like this man, but accidentally almost was.

Much as I enjoy sinking into a Tyler novel (the closest I come to a ‘guilty pleasure’ read?), I get exasperated with the way she includes an ostensibly momentous event that doesn’t actually matter much, or only insomuch as it sets up the plot. (Clock Dance is the worst offender in this respect.) There is a suicide in the background, but the assault and memory loss soon fade into the background, to be replaced by well-worn, breezy dysfunctional family happenings. The title, from a Sunday school-based conversation Liam has with his grandson, is cute and meaningful in context – about a drifting life in search of direction – but won’t help as an aide-mémoire for the story. The same goes for the twee cover image on my Vintage paperback.

So, a rather forgettable one – which, unfortunately, has largely been my experience of Tyler’s later work (with the exception of the punchy Shakespearean fun of Vinegar Girl). But you can do much worse than pick up one of her paperbacks on a sunny afternoon.

See also Liz’s review. She’s as lukewarm as I am on this one. (Secondhand purchase from Thatcham Library sale trolley)

My rating:

The 16 Tyler novels I’ve read, in order of preference (greatest to least), are:

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Saint Maybe

The Amateur Marriage

Ladder of Years

The Accidental Tourist

Earthly Possessions

Breathing Lessons

Digging to America

Vinegar Girl

Back When We Were Grown-ups

Clock Dance

A Blue Spool of Thread

The Beginner’s Goodbye

Noah’s Compass

Redhead by the Side of the Road

The Clock Winder

The only unread Tyler I have remaining on my shelves is A Patchwork Planet, which I started in July but didn’t get far with. I’ll try it again another time. And there’s not long to wait now for her NEW novel, French Braid, coming out in March. (Even though I’m sure she announced in 2015 that she was retiring, we’ll have had four novels since then.) The other one that this readalong project has piqued my interest in is Celestial Navigation. I don’t think I’ll bother with her first four novels, which she’d like to see struck from the record. Morgan’s Passing and Searching for Caleb I’m unsure about. Should I find them very cheap secondhand, I’d probably have a go.