Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.
Fiction
2001 Alfred A. Knopf
Finished in November 2001
Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)
Publisher's Blurb:
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s?
On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.
Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.
As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.
My Original Thoughts (2001):
Typical Tyler! Strange names. NoNO, Poppy, Jeep, Patch, Biddy, and MinFoo. Explores questions of love & loss, of identity and of family. Self-absorbed family!
My Current Thoughts:
Anne Tyler has a huge following, but she's hit-or-miss with me. I have a copy of her new book, French Braid, on my TBR shelf and I hope it falls in the hit category rather than the miss!
Wow! Those names made me laugh :)
ReplyDeleteVicki, they certainly make it easy to remember who's who!
DeleteI think I've only read one Anne Tyler (Accidental Tourist), but I liked it.
ReplyDeleteHelen, I think I've read at least a half dozen. Some were 4-star reads, but several were just "fair." I do not think I've read Accidental Tourist, but I might have seen the movie many, many years ago.
DeleteI have French Braid, too, but like you Tyler can be hit or miss for me. I loved her work, all of it, when I was in my twenties, but books like Spool of Blue Thread left me wanting more. I like how you are “catching up” by posting your earlier thoughts on your blog. I, however, have done just the reverse: returned to Blogger without importing any of my old posts. A fresh start, so to speak, because I have been lonesome for the old days.
ReplyDeleteMeredith, I gave Spool of Blue Thread a 2-star rating, so we agree on that one! Welcome back to Blogger. I'll jump over and see what you've been posting. xoxo
DeleteCrap, the last comment is from Meredith/Bellezza.🤭
ReplyDeleteI guess right! :)
Delete