The story left me emotionally apathetic, untouched, yet, sad. I did not identify with anyone, but that was not the purpose of the book. The readers is suppose to understand the characters, and it happens quite rightly in this story. Anne Tyler builds a strong tale with strong figures filling in around the family theme, and that speaks to me. I love books about families. Romantic love does not play such an important role. The connection to reality is much more important and believable, and in some readers' s choice of preferences, more acceptable. Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humor. This new novel delighted me - perhaps her best so far. New York Times children themselves knew it. The body of the work is structured as a series of artfully paced life stories within which are embedded the images and episodes that shape each child's relationships with siblings, mates and parents. Anne Tyler is different. She writes with so much clarity and her characters are so interesting you could almost see, feel, smell and taste them. Her settings are all in heartland USA (Baltimore, mostly) and so, reading her books feels like you are watching afternoon drama series of American families, regardless of how dysfunctional or typical they are. A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well Newsweek

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant BBC Radio 4 Extra - Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

art is sure, and her right to trust her feeling for the complications both of our nature and of our nurturing arrangements stands beyond question. Speculating about this artist's future is, in short, a perfectly natural movement This book is about family and the memories we keep about our childhood. Why does one choose to remember only the bad, and the other the good? That was the evening that Cody first got his strange notion. It came about so suddenly: they were playing Monopoly on Cody's bed, the three of them, and Cody was winning as usual and offering Luke a loan to keep going. "Oh, well, no. I guess I've lost," said Luke. isn't off to a roaring start for me. Twice now, I've been foiled by much beloved books. Anne Tyler now joins the ranks of John Boyne in the club I am now naming: "I came, I saw, I shrugged."Once again, Anne Tyler has written a terrific book about broken families and eccentric, wounded people. The Tull family appears to have survived their father walking out on them as children but every family member seems to remember the events of their childhood a bit differently. Was Pearl a loving mother or an abusive shrew? Or was she just doing the best she could in a difficult situation? When you come [to a baseball game] in person, you direct your own focus, you know? The TV or the radio men, they might focus on the pitcher when you want to see what first base is doing; and you don't have any choice but to accept it.” I wish the author had written a sequel- I really want to know where their lives went after this book.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - AbeBooks Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - AbeBooks

Anne Tyler is a character creator, the ones you may not like, but you know they exist, they breathe, they live, they die. Having read this book twice now I find that each time I am absorbed in its world, absorbed with its people. Occasionally while reading I would find myself a little sad. Wistful and melancholy. Then suddenly, as often happens in real life, a moment of joy would spring up and I would find myself happy. That is a fundamental truth of life right there! The novel examines how siblings may share the same events yet experience them differently; e.g. Cody remembers his childhood as a harsh time. He blames himself for his father abandoning him and considers himself left to the mercy of an angry mother who favors Ezra. Meanwhile, Ezra remembers his childhood fondly and creates a nostalgic family-themed restaurant. Cody, listen. I was special too, once, to someone. I could just reach out and lay a fingertip on his arm while he was talking and he would instantly fall silent and get all confused. I had hopes; I was courted; I had the most beautiful wedding. I had three lovely pregnancies, where every morning I woke up knowing something perfect would happen in nine months, eights months, seven months...so it seemed I was full of light; it was light and plans that filled me. And then while you children were little, why, I was the center of your worlds! I was everything to you! It was Mother this and Mother that, and 'Where's Mother? Where's she gone to?' and the moment you came in from school, 'Mother? Are you home?' It's not fair, Cody. It's really not fair; now I'm old and I walk along unnoticed, just like anyone else. It strikes me as unjust, Cody.”

Ezra, the family baby, his mother's favorite, and (owing to Cody Tull's greed) a bachelor, runs an original, down-homey restaurant in inner-city Baltimore, dwells in the house he grew up in, ceaselessly imagines a world of affection freely exchanged, The child didn't wake. She only nestled closer and sighed. So after all, Ezra could have put his coat beneath her head. He had missed an opportunity. It was like missing a train - or something more important, something that would never come again. There was no explanation for the grief that suddenly filled him.”

Books by Anne Tyler - Anne Tyler

and regularly schedules splendid family dinner reunions at his eating place (they give the book its quirky-perfect title) - occasions that disintegrate, usually, into fearful rows. There's a touch of Dostoyevsky's ''idiot'' There are a few key episodes in the Tull family history, and we see them refracted from different angles throughout the book. What strikes me as profound upon second reading (when of course I'm much older) is how wise Tyler is about time and memory. The Tull children remember their mother's angry outbursts and severity – one even compares her to a witch – but from Pearl's perspective she was merely a put-upon single mom trying to raise her kids as best as she could. The resentments among the siblings run deep and evolve over time, especially between manipulative Cody and the guileless Ezra, who was always his mother's favourite.There was the briefest pause--a skipped beat. Cody looked over at Ruth, who was counting her deed cards. "He sounds just like Ezra," he told her. own wife and son, emerging in middle age as a rich, time-obsessed efficiency engineer whose embitterment stops barely short of selfdestructiveness. Jenny, the second child, is a thrice-married pediatrician who buzzes with lively contradictions