Many of her favourite subjects are, quite frankly, difficult people. Saint Maybe, perhaps the most moving of all her books, is about a lifelong act of atonement for a single sentence that, once spoken, kills two people and leaves three small children abandoned – the plot has some of the gravity of Conrad’s Lord Jim. The Accidental Tourist takes place in the wake of the senseless murder of a child, and the dog the child left behind has teeth that draw blood. They know all about the cost of maintaining likeability, and some of her most memorable inventions, like Rebecca in Back When We Were Grownups, are studies in keeping the show on the road. But they don’t minimise suffering, or automatically reward likeability. They are optimistic books, and are evidently the work of someone who genuinely likes and is interested in human beings. The old accusation of suburban cosiness, of what used to be called a middlebrow quality, no longer convinces, now that many of her books have demonstrated real, lasting worth. The best American writers now, from Elizabeth Strout to Michael Cunningham, give the impression of having learnt much more from Anne Tyler than from John Updike. While critics were busy lauding authors with much more obviously weighty and portentous topics, Tyler’s technically flawless novels of domestic relationships, mostly in Baltimore, were drawing the attention of writers. Anne Tyler may, in the end, prove to be one of the most influential novelists of her generation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |