Our March Author of the Month: ANNE TYLER
Tuesday, Mar 01, 2022 at 12:11pm
ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
French Braid is a major new novel from the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author — a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family’s foibles, from the 1950s up to our pandemic present.
The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humour that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close — yet how unknowable — every family is to itself.
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French Braid
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Hardcover
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Reader Reward Price: $29.66
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--a funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family's foibles, from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild in our pandemic present.
The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.
Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close--yet how unknowable--every family is to itself.
A Spool of Blue Thread
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Trade paperback
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From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family's life.
"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.
Breathing Lessons
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Maggie and Ira Moran have been married 28 years, an average couple leading an average life. Except that Maggie Moran is a klutzy, impetuous busybody who will borrow the ear of any sympathetic listener who crosses her path, while her husband Ira is resigned to his wife's machinations, even as he himself remains steadfastly uncommunicative and judgmental. As a funeral draws the Morans out from their Baltimore home to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania, their trip is derailed by a number of unexpected and comical detours, as the incompatibility in Maggie and Ira's marriage reveals itself, alongside the joy, pain, and love that continues to hold them together.
With wry humour, charm, and keen observation, Breathing Lessons instructs us in times of stress: keep calm and remember to breathe.
Redhead by the Side of the Road
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Trade paperback
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the beloved and bestselling Anne Tyler, a sparkling new novel about misperception, second chances and the sometimes elusive power of human connection.
Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a "girlfriend") tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever. An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.
The Amateur Marriage
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Painfully funny and heartachingly true, Anne Tyler draws our eyes to an ill-matched couple, and the slow, tragicomic disintegration of their marriage.
When Pauline Barclay whirls into Michael Anton's grocery store in 1941, he is convinced he's in love. In due course they marry, and so begins their misadventure of wedded misery. Over the course of sixty years, Michael and Pauline endure their marriage (and each other) through anniversaries, affairs, and children, as the union of two people slowly devolves into a parting of ways. Injecting a touch of mischief with a dash of wisdom, Anne Tyler plays out an American marriage and its sometimes unavoidable end.
Clock Dance
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A charming new novel of self-discovery and second chances from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread.
Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn't sure she ever will be. Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to look after a young woman she's never met, her nine-year-old daughter, and their dog, Airplane. This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory--and surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she'll find solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers.
