From Goodreads:
From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career--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.
From Me:
I would agree that you enter an Anne Tyler book, you just don't read it.
You get to know and understand and recognize the characters and you can love them even if you don't like them --that happens in families right?
Tyler can make you feel for the characters in her books/stores, just the way you feel for your own family.
But sometimes her stories are very melancholy. Like, a lot of the time.
I like a good melancholy read tho -- it makes me ponder the meaning of things; life, love, happiness.
I enjoyed listening to this book. She had some quirky characters, but if I stepped outside of myself, I can see some of those quirky characters in my extended family.
And yours.
She's able to capture that honesty in her characters and her writing that keeps me captivated.
I liked it very much.
Still -- if you've read Anne Tyler before, you will understand when I say melancholy, right?
Her books just are.
