Digging Anne Tyler
September 3rd 2006 08:30
Anne Tyler is one of those perpetually favoured novellists. Once you have read one of her novels, you must read another, and another, until eventually you find yourself on a list of library-users signing up to borrow a copy of her next one, regardless of when it will be published. The Accidental Tourist (1985) is one of Tyler's most well-known novels, and is still book-listed in English classrooms throughout Australia.
Tyler writes prolifically about everyday middle America and she is unsurpassed as a writer who can reveal the intensity and strangeness that often lies behind closed doors and in personal relationships. The pleasure in reading an Anne Tyler novel is to be found in the ease with which her work can be read, and in the lack of its frivolity.
Digging to America, Anne Tyler’s latest offering, does not disappoint, offering that welcome readability and a diverse suite of characters as distinct by their ethnicity as they are by their approach to the world.
Two large families collide and bond as they meet at an airport, having each adopted a Korean baby. One family – having migrated from Iran – endures varying degrees of assimilation and difference. The other – all stars and stripes and apple pie – are painfully determined to provide their adopted child with cultural knowledge relevant to her biological background.
With Digging to America, Anne Tyler casts her eye over American society as it manifests itself right now and reveals to the reader the role of friendship and personal connection, particularly that which cross cultural boundaries.
Anne Tyler's Back Catalogue:
If Morning Ever Comes [I](1964)
The Tin Can Tree (1965)
A Slipping-Down Life (1970)
The Clock Winder (1972)
Celestial Navigation (1974)
Searching for Caleb (1975)
Earthly Possessions (1977)
Morgan's Passing (1980)
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)
The Accidental Tourist (1985)
Breathing Lessons (1988)
Saint Maybe (1991)
Ladder of Years (1995)
A Patchwork Planet (1998)
Back When We Were Grownups (2001)
The Amateur Marriage (2003)
Digging to America (2006)[/I]
Tyler writes prolifically about everyday middle America and she is unsurpassed as a writer who can reveal the intensity and strangeness that often lies behind closed doors and in personal relationships. The pleasure in reading an Anne Tyler novel is to be found in the ease with which her work can be read, and in the lack of its frivolity.
Digging to America, Anne Tyler’s latest offering, does not disappoint, offering that welcome readability and a diverse suite of characters as distinct by their ethnicity as they are by their approach to the world.
Two large families collide and bond as they meet at an airport, having each adopted a Korean baby. One family – having migrated from Iran – endures varying degrees of assimilation and difference. The other – all stars and stripes and apple pie – are painfully determined to provide their adopted child with cultural knowledge relevant to her biological background.
With Digging to America, Anne Tyler casts her eye over American society as it manifests itself right now and reveals to the reader the role of friendship and personal connection, particularly that which cross cultural boundaries.
Anne Tyler's Back Catalogue:
If Morning Ever Comes [I](1964)
The Tin Can Tree (1965)
A Slipping-Down Life (1970)
The Clock Winder (1972)
Celestial Navigation (1974)
Searching for Caleb (1975)
Earthly Possessions (1977)
Morgan's Passing (1980)
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)
The Accidental Tourist (1985)
Breathing Lessons (1988)
Saint Maybe (1991)
Ladder of Years (1995)
A Patchwork Planet (1998)
Back When We Were Grownups (2001)
The Amateur Marriage (2003)
Digging to America (2006)[/I]
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