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Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Through every family run memories which bind it together - despite everything. The Tulls of Baltimore are no exception. Abandoned by her salesman husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone - Cody, a flawed devil, Ezra, a flawed saint, and Jenny, errant and passionate. Now as Pearl lies dying, stiffly encased in her pride and solitude, the past is unlocked and with it, secrets.
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 12, 1982
About the author
Anne Tyler
95 books7,372 followersAnne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being
If Morning Ever Comes
in (1964). Her eleventh novel,
Breathing Lessons
, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,655 reviews
March 26, 2012
This is my first time to read 3 books by an author in succession: one, two, three... Just like the saying when it rains, it pours, I am having an Anne Tyler Book Festival. After reading her The Accidental Tourist I went to the bookstore and bought Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and read right away. Then last Friday, when I was winding down with the second book, I bought Breathing Lessons and I am now reading it. The whole experience is like finding a gold mine. Here is Anne Tyler who I never thought to be an author I would enjoy reading.
A couple of years back, with only 200+ read books, I was having a hard time naming my favorite contemporary female authors. Jodi Piccoult was a turn off. Jennifer Egan was a disappointment. Elizabeth Gilbert was a dud. Of course, I loved Virginia Woolf, Emilie Bronte, Muriel Sparks, Carlson McCullers, Flannery O’Brien, and Iris Murdoch but they are all dead. Let’s not talk about Emma Donaghue. The two Alices - McDemott and Munro - won my heart but not enough motivation for me to look, buy and read their other books right away.
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.
I was blown over by the eccentric characters in her The Accidental Tourist but I admired how she narrated the flight of the Tull family in this book, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. The book has 3 themes and each of them is emphasized at different parts of the book:
Anne Tyler (born 1941) has so far written 17 novels. I blame her for adding 14 more to my hunting-for-this folder. If only I could read two books at the same time, one book per eye/hand, I would read all her other 14 books straight without letup.
A couple of years back, with only 200+ read books, I was having a hard time naming my favorite contemporary female authors. Jodi Piccoult was a turn off. Jennifer Egan was a disappointment. Elizabeth Gilbert was a dud. Of course, I loved Virginia Woolf, Emilie Bronte, Muriel Sparks, Carlson McCullers, Flannery O’Brien, and Iris Murdoch but they are all dead. Let’s not talk about Emma Donaghue. The two Alices - McDemott and Munro - won my heart but not enough motivation for me to look, buy and read their other books right away.
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.
I was blown over by the eccentric characters in her The Accidental Tourist but I admired how she narrated the flight of the Tull family in this book, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. The book has 3 themes and each of them is emphasized at different parts of the book:
1. The effects of a father’s abandonment of his family. Beck Tull, because of some flimsy personal reasons, abandons his family that includes his three kids, Cody, Jenny and Ezra. Underneath their life stories is the pain that they have to live through because their father just, without telling them so, stepped out of their lives at the time they needed him to be there.I am now reading her Pulitzer (1989)-award winning book Breathing Lessons and one thing that is very apparent is Tyler’s ability to make each of her book distinct and different from each other. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant has different POVs and the story is centered on a single family. The Accidental Tourist has only one POV, that of Macom Leary’s. Breathing Lessons opens with a couple who has two kids and at least judging from its opening, has a different taste compared to the first two books.
2. The difficulty of the remaining parent to try to make ends meet for the family. With Beck Tull gone, Pearl Tull, the mother has to support her 3 kids. This book shows that a mother, however loving she wants to be, can be neurotic and lose her temper because of the tall responsibility of raising her kids single-handedly. Mothers are human beings and they can do wrong. However, it is up to us to understand their shortcomings. Sometimes, however, some of us may not be as understanding as our siblings.
3. The passing of time, No matter how much painful our childhood was, we are now adults and we have our own lives to live: our own wife, children and grandchildren. We tend to do to them what our parents showed us. At the end of our life’s journey, however, it all boils down to the passing of time and this theme was brilliantly encapsulated in this paragraph (let me give you a sample of Tyler’s wonderful prose):
”Everything,” his father said, “comes down to time in the end- to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn’t it all based on minutes going by? Isn’t happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn’t sadness wishing time back again? Even big things – even mourning a death: aren’t you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos – ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? Long-ago people smiling, a child who would be an old lady now, a cat that died, a flowering plant that’s long since withered away and the pot itself broken or misplaced… Isn’t it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
Anne Tyler (born 1941) has so far written 17 novels. I blame her for adding 14 more to my hunting-for-this folder. If only I could read two books at the same time, one book per eye/hand, I would read all her other 14 books straight without letup.
September 8, 2019
“How plotless real life was!”
Having completed my second read of “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” about a decade after the first I am thrilled to find that this text holds up.
This novel originally sat on my "to read" pile for years, and boy do I regret that. This is one of the best written character studies I have ever come across in my reading life. From the first page I was struck by the clarity and humanity of the writing, and the depth of reality that oozed from the characters as I kept turning the pages.
I won't rehash plot points, but contrary to what some of these reviews say, there actually is a story here. We peek into the life of Pearl Tull from teenage years to death, and those people that her life encapsulates, mainly her three children. This is not a depressing text, or even an uplifting text. It defies such simple categorization. It is a book that examines life, and family, and how those two forces shape each other. As I was reading the novel I vacillated between hating and loving certain characters, mainly Pearl's oldest son Cody, but as the book continued I realized that there is always more to the story, and that none of the characters are really "bad" people so to speak. They all do very unlikable and even downright cruel things, but actions are rarely just what they appear on the surface to be. The shifting point of view between members of the Tull family aids the reader in seeing more than one side of the story. I kept thinking of Kurt Vonnegut as I was reading, and how he said he never wrote heroes and villains in his books. He meant we are oftentimes both, and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" demonstrates that idea.
Once I completed the novel I realized I loved the characters. You can only feel that emotion when the author has created a complex and rich reality. These characters are real...they are me and you and our brothers, and our mothers, and our fathers, etc. And it made me grateful for them, even though it is not always ideal or perfect, and often is the exact opposite, it is family and that is a gift.
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!
This novel won't change your life, but it will enrich your appreciation of it. Our motives, and our actions are complicated, and Anne Tyler has captured that essence of human existence in this excellent novel. That is no easy feat, and this book deserves your attention.
I will be reading it again.
Having completed my second read of “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” about a decade after the first I am thrilled to find that this text holds up.
This novel originally sat on my "to read" pile for years, and boy do I regret that. This is one of the best written character studies I have ever come across in my reading life. From the first page I was struck by the clarity and humanity of the writing, and the depth of reality that oozed from the characters as I kept turning the pages.
I won't rehash plot points, but contrary to what some of these reviews say, there actually is a story here. We peek into the life of Pearl Tull from teenage years to death, and those people that her life encapsulates, mainly her three children. This is not a depressing text, or even an uplifting text. It defies such simple categorization. It is a book that examines life, and family, and how those two forces shape each other. As I was reading the novel I vacillated between hating and loving certain characters, mainly Pearl's oldest son Cody, but as the book continued I realized that there is always more to the story, and that none of the characters are really "bad" people so to speak. They all do very unlikable and even downright cruel things, but actions are rarely just what they appear on the surface to be. The shifting point of view between members of the Tull family aids the reader in seeing more than one side of the story. I kept thinking of Kurt Vonnegut as I was reading, and how he said he never wrote heroes and villains in his books. He meant we are oftentimes both, and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" demonstrates that idea.
Once I completed the novel I realized I loved the characters. You can only feel that emotion when the author has created a complex and rich reality. These characters are real...they are me and you and our brothers, and our mothers, and our fathers, etc. And it made me grateful for them, even though it is not always ideal or perfect, and often is the exact opposite, it is family and that is a gift.
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!
This novel won't change your life, but it will enrich your appreciation of it. Our motives, and our actions are complicated, and Anne Tyler has captured that essence of human existence in this excellent novel. That is no easy feat, and this book deserves your attention.
I will be reading it again.
June 18, 2023
VITE SOTTRATTE ALL’OMBRA
Negli anni Novanta del secolo scorso mi sono dedicato abbastanza alla lettura dei romanzi di Ann Tyler: ho letto sempre e solo romanzi, mai racconti. Anche perché mi risultano usciti solo su riviste, mai in raccolta.
È molto probabile che il primo passo l’ho fatto sull’onda del buon film di Lawrence Kasdan (che a quell’epoca per tutti noi era un faro: in pochi anni Body Heat - Brivido caldo, The Big Chill - Il grande freddo, Silverado, The Accidental Tourist - Turista per caso, poi più niente di notevole).
Parodia del celebre quadro di Norman Rockwell “Thanksgiving”.
Da allora mi pare che la narrativa di Ann Tyler non è più tornata sul grande schermo, prima e unica volta: dopo quel buon film, solo televisione.
E questo per me qualcosa vuol dire: ci vedo riflesso bene il mio entusiasmo iniziale che col tempo si è andato stemperando, smorzando davanti a una certa reiterazione di temi e situazioni, fino a portarmi al completo allontanamento, che ormai dura da una quindicina d’anni.
Eppure anche lei è scrittrice pluripremiata: leggo tutto di Elizabeth Strout, ma ho smesso di leggere Ann Tyler. Dipende probabilmente dal fatto che Strout sa rinnovarsi, Tyler non mi pare.
Big Night, 1996.
Lunga premessa prima di tentare di fissare qualche pensiero su questo suo romanzo, che io considero il suo migliore, sicuramente il mio preferito (leggo in una delle sue rare interviste, che credo dia solo via mail, che la stessa Tyler lo considera il suo migliore, e quello che le ha creato più problemi di scrittura, il più faticoso da scrivere).
La storia è ambientata come di consueto sulla costa est degli Stati Uniti (la città preferita da Tyler è la Baltimora dove abita), e come di consueto c’è una famiglia: la madre Pearl, abbandonata dal marito, i tre figli, il maggiore Cody, l’uomo di successo, il secondo Ezra, così dolce e impacciato da spezzarti il cuore, e Pearl si era sentita più in pericolo che mai, proprietario di un ristorante dove la famiglia si riunisce una volta all’anno per una cena, e la terza nata, finalmente la femmina, Jenny.
Chiaro che nella famiglia la brace cova sotto la cenere: il padre se ne è andato, è una ferita non rimarginata, per alcuni più per altri apparentemente meno; Pearl non ha superato l’abbandono: il primogenito, per quanto affermato è geloso del rapporto privilegiato di sua madre col fratello minore – talmente geloso dal portargli via la donna che Ezra ama; Jenny s’è sposata tre volte; di Ezra s’è detto, è buono e impacciato da spezzarti il cuore, e il suo desiderio di riunire e rappacificare la famiglia attraverso una cena nel suo ristorante si capisce che avrà limitato successo. I nodi verranno al pettine.
Mai mettere insieme i membri di una famiglia tra le stesse pareti, men che meno intorno a un desco. Le fratture non si sanano: ma forse quelle fratture sono come una ragnatela che li tieni avvinti, e vicini.
Ripensamenti, ricordi, perdite, bilanci, mai troppo tardi per ricominciare, il tutto espresso con una complessiva simpatia e comprensione per il genere al quale apparteniamo, l’umanità.
Il che non impedisce a Tyler di essere ironica, perfino divertente.
Gente ordinaria a cui succedono cose piccole, marginali (minimaliste?), piccole esistenze periferiche: lo straordinario è che possiamo specchiarci tutti, e tutti riconoscerci. Con grazia e raffinatezza Tyler ci parla di noi.
Con quel suo metodo che così descrive:
osservo e descrivo come dietro i vetri di una finestra, in modo che tutta la mia curiosità deve trovare risposta dentro di me, e non attraversando la strada e domandando che cosa succede.
La finestra di fronte.
Negli anni Novanta del secolo scorso mi sono dedicato abbastanza alla lettura dei romanzi di Ann Tyler: ho letto sempre e solo romanzi, mai racconti. Anche perché mi risultano usciti solo su riviste, mai in raccolta.
È molto probabile che il primo passo l’ho fatto sull’onda del buon film di Lawrence Kasdan (che a quell’epoca per tutti noi era un faro: in pochi anni Body Heat - Brivido caldo, The Big Chill - Il grande freddo, Silverado, The Accidental Tourist - Turista per caso, poi più niente di notevole).
Parodia del celebre quadro di Norman Rockwell “Thanksgiving”.
Da allora mi pare che la narrativa di Ann Tyler non è più tornata sul grande schermo, prima e unica volta: dopo quel buon film, solo televisione.
E questo per me qualcosa vuol dire: ci vedo riflesso bene il mio entusiasmo iniziale che col tempo si è andato stemperando, smorzando davanti a una certa reiterazione di temi e situazioni, fino a portarmi al completo allontanamento, che ormai dura da una quindicina d’anni.
Eppure anche lei è scrittrice pluripremiata: leggo tutto di Elizabeth Strout, ma ho smesso di leggere Ann Tyler. Dipende probabilmente dal fatto che Strout sa rinnovarsi, Tyler non mi pare.
Big Night, 1996.
Lunga premessa prima di tentare di fissare qualche pensiero su questo suo romanzo, che io considero il suo migliore, sicuramente il mio preferito (leggo in una delle sue rare interviste, che credo dia solo via mail, che la stessa Tyler lo considera il suo migliore, e quello che le ha creato più problemi di scrittura, il più faticoso da scrivere).
La storia è ambientata come di consueto sulla costa est degli Stati Uniti (la città preferita da Tyler è la Baltimora dove abita), e come di consueto c’è una famiglia: la madre Pearl, abbandonata dal marito, i tre figli, il maggiore Cody, l’uomo di successo, il secondo Ezra, così dolce e impacciato da spezzarti il cuore, e Pearl si era sentita più in pericolo che mai, proprietario di un ristorante dove la famiglia si riunisce una volta all’anno per una cena, e la terza nata, finalmente la femmina, Jenny.
Chiaro che nella famiglia la brace cova sotto la cenere: il padre se ne è andato, è una ferita non rimarginata, per alcuni più per altri apparentemente meno; Pearl non ha superato l’abbandono: il primogenito, per quanto affermato è geloso del rapporto privilegiato di sua madre col fratello minore – talmente geloso dal portargli via la donna che Ezra ama; Jenny s’è sposata tre volte; di Ezra s’è detto, è buono e impacciato da spezzarti il cuore, e il suo desiderio di riunire e rappacificare la famiglia attraverso una cena nel suo ristorante si capisce che avrà limitato successo. I nodi verranno al pettine.
Mai mettere insieme i membri di una famiglia tra le stesse pareti, men che meno intorno a un desco. Le fratture non si sanano: ma forse quelle fratture sono come una ragnatela che li tieni avvinti, e vicini.
Ripensamenti, ricordi, perdite, bilanci, mai troppo tardi per ricominciare, il tutto espresso con una complessiva simpatia e comprensione per il genere al quale apparteniamo, l’umanità.
Il che non impedisce a Tyler di essere ironica, perfino divertente.
Gente ordinaria a cui succedono cose piccole, marginali (minimaliste?), piccole esistenze periferiche: lo straordinario è che possiamo specchiarci tutti, e tutti riconoscerci. Con grazia e raffinatezza Tyler ci parla di noi.
Con quel suo metodo che così descrive:
osservo e descrivo come dietro i vetri di una finestra, in modo che tutta la mia curiosità deve trovare risposta dentro di me, e non attraversando la strada e domandando che cosa succede.
La finestra di fronte.
August 28, 2018
The last time my eyes teared up during a movie was the opening scene for Pixar's Up in 2009. The only time I've done this with a novel is Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award which Anne Tyler considers her best work. Published in 1982, not only is there no dust on this book--which could've been released today without seeming out of touch--but no imperfections either, in particular the way Tyler connected me with her characters, their dreams and regrets without any artificial flavoring. This is storytelling at its absolute finest.
The novel begins with eighty-one year Pearl Tull refusing advice from her family doctor to be treated for possible pneumonia at a hospital. She prefers the comforts of home, where her meditative son Ezra cares for her, having lived with his mother in this rowhouse on Calvert Street in Baltimore his entire life. Pearl's mind wanders back to her youth. Small and slender, she has suitors and little intuition for why she should still be single at the age of thirty. She refuses the college education offered by her uncle, not wanting to burden him. No churchgoer, she attends a Baptist service with a friend and meets Beck Tull, a twenty-four year old salesman of farm equipment.
A dashing gentleman, Beck proposes marriage to Pearl, and after six years of moving around, the couple settle in Baltimore to start a family. Cody is a strong but competitive boy whose mean streaks grow meaner in an effort to hurt his earnest brother Ezra, who only wants to make others happy. Their younger sister Jenny is flighty but serious. Rather than form friendships with others, they stick together. The children are fourteen, eleven and nine when Beck notifies Pearl that he's accepted a job transfer and will send money. Asked if he'll want to visit, he replies, "No." Pearl determines it best not to tell the children right away that their father has left them.
She planned how she would do it; she would gather them around her on the sofa, in the lamplight, some evening after supper. "Children. Dear ones," she would say. "There's something you should know." But she wouldn't be able to continue; she might cry. It was unthinkable to cry in front of the children. Or in front of anyone. Oh, she had her pride! She was not a tranquil woman; she often lost her temper, snapped, slapped the nearest cheek, said things she later regretted--but thank the Lord, she didn't expose her tears. She wouldn't allow any tears. She was Pearl Cody Tull, who'd ridden out of Raleigh triumphant with her new husband and never looked back. Even now, even standing at the kitchen window, all alone, watching her tense and aging face, she didn't cry.
A check for fifty dollars arrives each month from Beck, sometimes with a pithy note sharing a success he's had at work. He never phones or visits. Pearl takes a job as a cashier at Sweeney Bros. Grocery and works mornings. She returns home to make supper or repairs on the house, an aptitude her children never develop. After supper, Pearl sometimes plays board games with them; Cody is a cheater, but the only one confident enough to sing and dance with mom. Pearl dotes on Ezra and holds high expectations for Jenny, but her anger is sometimes loosed physically and emotionally on the children, who figure out that their father isn't coming back.
Cody's feelings of abandonment lead him play juvenile pranks on his brother, which Ezra shrugs off like a puppy. Cody catalogs every oversight and begins feeding into a jealous narrative that Ezra is loved and he is not. He ultimately finds lucrative work as an efficiency expert, spending as much time on the road as his father. Pearl has high hopes that Ezra will become an educator, but he spends most of his time at Scarlatti's Restaurant, where Jenny learns her brother's ultimate desire is to manage the place, providing old-fashioned meals for customers who miss the comforts of home. Jenny goes to college to study medicine, meeting the first of three husbands there.
Ezra takes over Scarlatti's and announces his engagement to Ruth, a hick from Pennsylvania who works as a cook. Cody becomes obsessed with seducing her away from his brother and manages to do so, marrying her and bearing a son named Luke. Ezra, who remains cordial with his brother and sister-in-law, never shows interest in a woman again. Jenny has a daughter by her second husband but as a single mom, is as abusive toward the child as Pearl was to her. She marries a man with six kids of his own, while Ezra tries over and over to plan a nice family dinner which the Tulls can finish without someone getting their feelings hurt and leaving the table.
Pearl believes now that her family has failed. Neither of her sons is happy, and her daughter can't seem to stay married. There is no one to accept the blame for this but Pearl herself, who raised three children single-handed and did make mistakes, oh, a bushel of mistakes. Still, she sometimes has the feeling that it's simply fate, and not a matter of blame at all. She feels that everything has been assigned, has been preordained; everyone must play his role. Certainly she never intended to foster one of those good son/ bad son arrangements, but what can you do when one son is consistently good and the other is consistently bad? What can the son do, even? "Don't you see?" Cody had cried, and she had imagined, for an instant, that he was inviting her to look at his whole existence--his years of hurt and bafflement.
Often, like a child peering over the fence at somebody else's party, she gazes wistfully at other families and wonders what their secret is. They seem so close. Is it that they're more religious? Or stricter, or more lenient? Could it be the fact that they participate in sports? Read books together? Have some common hobby? Recently, she overheard a neighbor woman discussing her plans for Independence Day: her family was having a picnic. Every member--child or grownup--was cooking his or her specialty. Those who were too little to cook were in charge of paper plates.
Pearl felt such a wave of longing that her knees went weak.
I've read nearly 270 novels since joining Goodreads, including two others by Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Years, which are both wonderful and make the concerns of fussy WASPs in Baltimore not only compelling, but relatable. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of the very best novels I've read. Outside of a spirited Yankee wit and simmering passion that I respond to, what makes Tyler unique is her authenticity. Her book plucked my emotions but there isn't a single note in it that's artificial. There's no more "plot" than life has a plot, and instead of moments of high drama, what Tyler does so well is fill in the spaces between the drama, the compulsion we have to understand and often end up hurting ourselves as a result.
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.
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.
She frowned at Baltic Avenue.
"Didn't you hear what he said? He said it just like Ezra."
"Really?"
"Ezra would do that," Cody told Luke. "Your Uncle Ezra. It was no fun beating him at all. He'd never take a loan and he wouldn't mortgage the least little thing, not even a railroad or the waterworks. He'd just cave right in and give up."
"Well, it's only that ... you can see that I've lost," Luke said. "It's only a matter of time."
"Sometimes you're more like Ezra's child, not mine."
"Cody Tull! What a thought," said Ruth.
But it was too late. The words hung in the air. Luke felt miserable; he had all he could do to finish the game. (He knew his father never thought much of Ezra.) And Cody though he dropped the subject, remained dissatisfied in some way. "Sit up straighter," he kept telling Luke. "Don't hunch. Sit straight. God. You look like a rabbit."
As soon as he could, Luke said good night and went to bed.
I wanted to blubber by the final page of this book out of joy for how much I related to it. It would be easy to chalk this up to being at a junction in my life where I feel I've failed more than I've succeeded, where family has passed away and holidays seem emptier than full. And yet my reaction to the book was consistent whether Tyler's characters were examining themselves at fourteen, forty or eighty, or male or female. Her fiction reveals something essential about being human, with passion, humor, disappointments and redemption stumbling everyone. Watching them recover themselves filled me with hope.
The novel begins with eighty-one year Pearl Tull refusing advice from her family doctor to be treated for possible pneumonia at a hospital. She prefers the comforts of home, where her meditative son Ezra cares for her, having lived with his mother in this rowhouse on Calvert Street in Baltimore his entire life. Pearl's mind wanders back to her youth. Small and slender, she has suitors and little intuition for why she should still be single at the age of thirty. She refuses the college education offered by her uncle, not wanting to burden him. No churchgoer, she attends a Baptist service with a friend and meets Beck Tull, a twenty-four year old salesman of farm equipment.
A dashing gentleman, Beck proposes marriage to Pearl, and after six years of moving around, the couple settle in Baltimore to start a family. Cody is a strong but competitive boy whose mean streaks grow meaner in an effort to hurt his earnest brother Ezra, who only wants to make others happy. Their younger sister Jenny is flighty but serious. Rather than form friendships with others, they stick together. The children are fourteen, eleven and nine when Beck notifies Pearl that he's accepted a job transfer and will send money. Asked if he'll want to visit, he replies, "No." Pearl determines it best not to tell the children right away that their father has left them.
She planned how she would do it; she would gather them around her on the sofa, in the lamplight, some evening after supper. "Children. Dear ones," she would say. "There's something you should know." But she wouldn't be able to continue; she might cry. It was unthinkable to cry in front of the children. Or in front of anyone. Oh, she had her pride! She was not a tranquil woman; she often lost her temper, snapped, slapped the nearest cheek, said things she later regretted--but thank the Lord, she didn't expose her tears. She wouldn't allow any tears. She was Pearl Cody Tull, who'd ridden out of Raleigh triumphant with her new husband and never looked back. Even now, even standing at the kitchen window, all alone, watching her tense and aging face, she didn't cry.
A check for fifty dollars arrives each month from Beck, sometimes with a pithy note sharing a success he's had at work. He never phones or visits. Pearl takes a job as a cashier at Sweeney Bros. Grocery and works mornings. She returns home to make supper or repairs on the house, an aptitude her children never develop. After supper, Pearl sometimes plays board games with them; Cody is a cheater, but the only one confident enough to sing and dance with mom. Pearl dotes on Ezra and holds high expectations for Jenny, but her anger is sometimes loosed physically and emotionally on the children, who figure out that their father isn't coming back.
Cody's feelings of abandonment lead him play juvenile pranks on his brother, which Ezra shrugs off like a puppy. Cody catalogs every oversight and begins feeding into a jealous narrative that Ezra is loved and he is not. He ultimately finds lucrative work as an efficiency expert, spending as much time on the road as his father. Pearl has high hopes that Ezra will become an educator, but he spends most of his time at Scarlatti's Restaurant, where Jenny learns her brother's ultimate desire is to manage the place, providing old-fashioned meals for customers who miss the comforts of home. Jenny goes to college to study medicine, meeting the first of three husbands there.
Ezra takes over Scarlatti's and announces his engagement to Ruth, a hick from Pennsylvania who works as a cook. Cody becomes obsessed with seducing her away from his brother and manages to do so, marrying her and bearing a son named Luke. Ezra, who remains cordial with his brother and sister-in-law, never shows interest in a woman again. Jenny has a daughter by her second husband but as a single mom, is as abusive toward the child as Pearl was to her. She marries a man with six kids of his own, while Ezra tries over and over to plan a nice family dinner which the Tulls can finish without someone getting their feelings hurt and leaving the table.
Pearl believes now that her family has failed. Neither of her sons is happy, and her daughter can't seem to stay married. There is no one to accept the blame for this but Pearl herself, who raised three children single-handed and did make mistakes, oh, a bushel of mistakes. Still, she sometimes has the feeling that it's simply fate, and not a matter of blame at all. She feels that everything has been assigned, has been preordained; everyone must play his role. Certainly she never intended to foster one of those good son/ bad son arrangements, but what can you do when one son is consistently good and the other is consistently bad? What can the son do, even? "Don't you see?" Cody had cried, and she had imagined, for an instant, that he was inviting her to look at his whole existence--his years of hurt and bafflement.
Often, like a child peering over the fence at somebody else's party, she gazes wistfully at other families and wonders what their secret is. They seem so close. Is it that they're more religious? Or stricter, or more lenient? Could it be the fact that they participate in sports? Read books together? Have some common hobby? Recently, she overheard a neighbor woman discussing her plans for Independence Day: her family was having a picnic. Every member--child or grownup--was cooking his or her specialty. Those who were too little to cook were in charge of paper plates.
Pearl felt such a wave of longing that her knees went weak.
I've read nearly 270 novels since joining Goodreads, including two others by Anne Tyler: The Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Years, which are both wonderful and make the concerns of fussy WASPs in Baltimore not only compelling, but relatable. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of the very best novels I've read. Outside of a spirited Yankee wit and simmering passion that I respond to, what makes Tyler unique is her authenticity. Her book plucked my emotions but there isn't a single note in it that's artificial. There's no more "plot" than life has a plot, and instead of moments of high drama, what Tyler does so well is fill in the spaces between the drama, the compulsion we have to understand and often end up hurting ourselves as a result.
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.
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.
She frowned at Baltic Avenue.
"Didn't you hear what he said? He said it just like Ezra."
"Really?"
"Ezra would do that," Cody told Luke. "Your Uncle Ezra. It was no fun beating him at all. He'd never take a loan and he wouldn't mortgage the least little thing, not even a railroad or the waterworks. He'd just cave right in and give up."
"Well, it's only that ... you can see that I've lost," Luke said. "It's only a matter of time."
"Sometimes you're more like Ezra's child, not mine."
"Cody Tull! What a thought," said Ruth.
But it was too late. The words hung in the air. Luke felt miserable; he had all he could do to finish the game. (He knew his father never thought much of Ezra.) And Cody though he dropped the subject, remained dissatisfied in some way. "Sit up straighter," he kept telling Luke. "Don't hunch. Sit straight. God. You look like a rabbit."
As soon as he could, Luke said good night and went to bed.
I wanted to blubber by the final page of this book out of joy for how much I related to it. It would be easy to chalk this up to being at a junction in my life where I feel I've failed more than I've succeeded, where family has passed away and holidays seem emptier than full. And yet my reaction to the book was consistent whether Tyler's characters were examining themselves at fourteen, forty or eighty, or male or female. Her fiction reveals something essential about being human, with passion, humor, disappointments and redemption stumbling everyone. Watching them recover themselves filled me with hope.
January 17, 2019
2019 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."
I never read a book with a bad attitude - I fully expected to feel the same way about this book as... everyone else. But here I am, once again, and this time much grinchier than last time.
This is a family saga featuring the Baltimore Tulls, whose lives are forever changed when Beck Tull picks up and abandons his wife and three children. We don't know why he has left, but it has an indelible affect on the people he leaves behind. So we hear about them and their lives. The children grow up into middle age, their mother Pearl becomes an old lady.
I kept wondering, why isn't this doing anything for me? I decided, finally, Anne Tyler's style just doesn't work for me. I tired of being told everything. She tells what every character thinks and feels, at any (and every) given moment. She does this using an omniscient narrator, and also through monologues. These inauthentic, long monologues, sometimes internal, sometimes not, were almost the death of me! People just don't talk like that (unless they are Hamlet). People aren't that self aware, don't self analyse that often. It’s this distinct lack of subtlety that left a bad taste in my mouth. I expected... more.
I didn't feel for the characters. I know! Can you believe it? I'm the only one who can't say they adored the slow talking Ezra Tull. I felt bashed over the head to love him, and so I didn't. He was a one-dimensional, cooking saint. His brother Cody felt similarly flat. His schtick was being angry and mean to the saint. Meh.
If asked, I would say this book is beige. The characters seem to talk in the same voice. I didn't see colours or images, I didn't smell smells or feel feelings.
This book was nominated for the 1983 Pulitzer prize (The Color Purple won that year), which surprises me. This strikes me as 'lite' literary fiction. But, she was nominated for a swath of other awards for this book. And her readers are exuberant and consistently positive. So I'm definitely an outlier here.
I'm sorry, Anne Tyler lovers!! What can I say.
I never read a book with a bad attitude - I fully expected to feel the same way about this book as... everyone else. But here I am, once again, and this time much grinchier than last time.
This is a family saga featuring the Baltimore Tulls, whose lives are forever changed when Beck Tull picks up and abandons his wife and three children. We don't know why he has left, but it has an indelible affect on the people he leaves behind. So we hear about them and their lives. The children grow up into middle age, their mother Pearl becomes an old lady.
I kept wondering, why isn't this doing anything for me? I decided, finally, Anne Tyler's style just doesn't work for me. I tired of being told everything. She tells what every character thinks and feels, at any (and every) given moment. She does this using an omniscient narrator, and also through monologues. These inauthentic, long monologues, sometimes internal, sometimes not, were almost the death of me! People just don't talk like that (unless they are Hamlet). People aren't that self aware, don't self analyse that often. It’s this distinct lack of subtlety that left a bad taste in my mouth. I expected... more.
I didn't feel for the characters. I know! Can you believe it? I'm the only one who can't say they adored the slow talking Ezra Tull. I felt bashed over the head to love him, and so I didn't. He was a one-dimensional, cooking saint. His brother Cody felt similarly flat. His schtick was being angry and mean to the saint. Meh.
If asked, I would say this book is beige. The characters seem to talk in the same voice. I didn't see colours or images, I didn't smell smells or feel feelings.
This book was nominated for the 1983 Pulitzer prize (The Color Purple won that year), which surprises me. This strikes me as 'lite' literary fiction. But, she was nominated for a swath of other awards for this book. And her readers are exuberant and consistently positive. So I'm definitely an outlier here.
I'm sorry, Anne Tyler lovers!! What can I say.
January 23, 2018
Last month I introduced myself to Anne Tyler when I FINALLY picked up my dusty copy of her '89 Pulitzer winner, Breathing Lessons. It was a slow beginning for me, but I eventually came to love her writing style and her quirky observations on life.
So, I put it out there to the ladies of book club. . . does anyone have a copy of that other book she wrote, you know, The Accidental Tourist? One of the ladies not only brought it straight to my doorstep, but also handed me Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and said it was her "favorite Anne Tyler."
Me: Oh, but I'm right in the middle of another book. What? You really loved it? Well, okay, maybe I'll just read the first page and see if it captures my attention
The voice from The Exorcist: NO DINNER TONIGHT!! NO BREAKFAST, EITHER!! GET OUT OF MY ROOM, ALL OF YOU!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M READING????"
One day later, the book is finished, and my family is starving, but it's actually symbolic. After all, this book is about our hunger. As in, we're hungry for what we had, hungry for what we didn't have, hungry for what we think we want. Most of us are just plain starving. I was ready to eat the book.
I don't know how Anne Tyler does it. She lulls you into her stories, somehow convinces you that you're just out for a Sunday drive, then, BAM, you're crouched in a corner, sucking your thumb.
Go read this book!
So, I put it out there to the ladies of book club. . . does anyone have a copy of that other book she wrote, you know, The Accidental Tourist? One of the ladies not only brought it straight to my doorstep, but also handed me Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and said it was her "favorite Anne Tyler."
Me: Oh, but I'm right in the middle of another book. What? You really loved it? Well, okay, maybe I'll just read the first page and see if it captures my attention
The voice from The Exorcist: NO DINNER TONIGHT!! NO BREAKFAST, EITHER!! GET OUT OF MY ROOM, ALL OF YOU!! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M READING????"
One day later, the book is finished, and my family is starving, but it's actually symbolic. After all, this book is about our hunger. As in, we're hungry for what we had, hungry for what we didn't have, hungry for what we think we want. Most of us are just plain starving. I was ready to eat the book.
I don't know how Anne Tyler does it. She lulls you into her stories, somehow convinces you that you're just out for a Sunday drive, then, BAM, you're crouched in a corner, sucking your thumb.
Go read this book!
October 31, 2021
Anne Tyler es otra escritora que, pienso yo, no tiene por mi país el reconocimiento que se merece. Debería tener infinidad de lectores. Compruébenlo leyendo este dura y conmovedora novela.
March 16, 2020
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a character-driven story about the Tulls, a Baltimore family consisting of Pearl, the mother, and her three children: Cody, Jenny, and Ezra.
Pearl, now older and in poor health, is reflecting on past memories of her life and her family. Cody, Jenny, and Ezra are fairly dissimilar and have all taken different paths in life. It’s safe to say Pearl and her children have never had a warm, open relationship. There’s tension and strain, in addition to jealousy among the siblings, which all impacts their relationships with each other.
The book includes current day third person POVs from each of the siblings and Pearl, as well as many flashbacks to their earlier years. It is again a character-driven novel with a slower pace, and the characters weren’t all likable, however, this did not deter me from enjoying of the story.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is the second Anne Tyler book I have read and I plan to read more. She has the human dynamic down well — 3.5 stars (rounded up) for this one.
Pearl, now older and in poor health, is reflecting on past memories of her life and her family. Cody, Jenny, and Ezra are fairly dissimilar and have all taken different paths in life. It’s safe to say Pearl and her children have never had a warm, open relationship. There’s tension and strain, in addition to jealousy among the siblings, which all impacts their relationships with each other.
The book includes current day third person POVs from each of the siblings and Pearl, as well as many flashbacks to their earlier years. It is again a character-driven novel with a slower pace, and the characters weren’t all likable, however, this did not deter me from enjoying of the story.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is the second Anne Tyler book I have read and I plan to read more. She has the human dynamic down well — 3.5 stars (rounded up) for this one.
July 7, 2024
مراجعة القراءة الثامنة او التاسعة...لا أتذكر
قصة حب طويلة تتعمق بعد كل قراءة. ومشاعر بالانتماء الدافئ إلى حروف وكلمات مطبوعة أصبحت ملاذاً حميماً لي.
في كل قراءة، يُرحب بي أعضاء عائلة "بيرل تل" ترحيباً يليق بصديقة مخلصة لهم صادقتهم لأكثر من إثنى عشر عاماً. أتقبل الترحيب الجاف من الأم "بيرل" والتحية العابرة للإبنة "جيني"، والتجاهل المتعالي للإبن الضال "كودي". أتقبل استقبالهم الفاتر وأدخل إلى بيتهم الذي أصبح بيتي، وأُعزي نفسي بتحية أكثر دفئاً من "عزرا" الكريم الطيب.
أجلس وسط تلك العائلة العزيزة الخيالية بالإسم والحقيقية فعلاً بالنسبة لي. أردد الجُمل الحوارية بينهم قبل أن ينطقوها. أستمع لهم وهم يكررونها أمامي، وأنتبه لتفسير جديد وراء هذه الجملة او هذه اللفتة او حتى الهمهمة الآتية من نافذة جيرانهم.
وأنا اتجول معهم عبر رحلة حياتهم التي امتدت لستين عام، أجد نفسي احاول الخروج مؤقتاً لكي أبحث عن المؤلفة "آن تايلر" وأعاتبها في خيالي على ثغرات وجدتها في كتابة الرواية، مثل اهتمامها بشخصيتي الأم والإبن الحقير "كودي" على حساب ش��صيتي الإبن عزرا، والإبنة جيني التي أشعر أن شخصيتها رُسمت بشكل عشوائي وغير متناسق او مفهوم.
أو لامنطقية أن يظل "كودي" المتهور المتقلب-اللي مالوش عزيز-مخلصاً لزوجته التي لم يكن يحمل لها أدنى درجة من الحب.
أرى بالرواية نقاط ضعف في بناء الشخصيات أو الحوار. ولكن أبقى على حلمي القديم بأن أقابل المؤلفة "آن تايلر" واشكرها على تلك العمل الذي ترك أثراً لا ينمحي بداخلي.
هل هناك من سبب لهذا الحب الذي استحوذ علىّ تجاه تلك الرواية دون كل الروايات الأخرى؟
ربما كانت الصدفة التي وضعته منذ زمن في يدي بتوقيت صعب وكانت هى نعم العزاء لي. وربما كان السبب كان الإحس��س المشترك بالحزن على الحب الأخوي الذي يضيع بعد الطفولة، ونظل باقي حياتنا نتساءل في مرارة لماذا أضعناه، أو على الأقل لماذا تغيرت براءة إخلاصه وسط مرارات الحياة التي جففت منبع تلك الحب؟
أكان "كودي" قاسي القلب يتمنى سراً بعد أن تخطي الأربعين وأصبح أباً أن يعود الزمن فقط لكي يُنقي المياه التي عكرّها بينه وبين أخيه عزرا:
"لو أنك كنت تستطيع فقط أن تعيد الزمن إلى الوراء مرة أخر...أن تُبطل ما فعلته، لو انك كنت تستطيع فقط أن تدير الدقائق في الاتجاه العكسي ولو مرة واحدة".
ولكن للأسف ما مضى من الزمن لا يعود، واللي انكسر مابيتصلحش
١٨ يونيو ٢٠٢٣
.........................................................
14/11/2014
قرأت تلك الرواية خمس مرات، منهم ثلاث متتالية.
هل يمكننى هنا انا اصف تلك الرواية بانها مجرد رواية من رواياتى "المفضلة"؟
وها انا فى قراءتى الخامسة-او السادسة؟ لا اتذكر- لها. ويتأكد شعورى بأنها ليست مجرد روايتى المفضلة. ولكنها "صديقتى". صديقتى العزيزة التى تؤكد لى بأنه لا عيب بأن يكون للمرء عائلة مجنونة أو غير تقليدية او متخبطة. لم تكن الرواية لتؤكد لى ذلك المفهوم فقط، ولكنها طمأنتنى بأن تلك هى طبيعة الحياة! فلا توجد عائلة تستطيع الإدعاء بأنها عائلة مثالية.
فى اول مرة قرأت فيها تلك القصة، لمست لهجة المرارة التى تروى بها "بيرل تل" الشخصية المحورية ذكريات شبابها المبكر وتعرفها على زوجها. لمست تلك المرارة التي انتظرت بها لسنوات طوال العثور على هذا الزوج شيئا بداخلى. وهذا ما جعلنى اتعاطف معها ومع كل الخطأ الذى اقترفته تجاه ابنائها الثلاثة، خاصة بعد ما خذلها ذلك الزوج.
بعد أن وصلت لمنتصف الثلاثينيات، وجدت "بيرل تل" أخيرا رجلا وافق على الارتباط بها. رجلا كانت تعرف جيدا وفى قرارة نفسها انه بعيدا كل البعد عن شخصيتها المنطقية المنظمة شديدة الاعتداد بنفسها، او هل يمكننا أن نقول بأنها مملة؟؟؟
كان هو على نقيض تام منها، لم يكن النوع الذى قد تشعر شخصية مثلها معه بالرضا الكامل تجاهه. عاشا حياة متخبطة انجبا خلالها ثلاثة اطفال. ولم يكن من المفاجىء لمن يعرف حقيقة الحياة ان يجد ان حياتهم تلونت بالتعاسة. من يكن من المفاجىء ان يأتى الزوج ذات ليلة فجأة ودون اى مقدمات ليخبرها انه راحل ولن يعود اليها والى اطفاله ثانية.
لم يكن من المفاجىء ان تتحول "بيرل تل" الام المتحفظة تجاه مشاعرها لابنائها الى "امنا الغولة" بعد ما رحل زوجها وتركها فجأة لمسئولية ثقيلة وكاملة تجاه ثلاث اطفال بدون دعم مادى يستحق الذكر، وبأقل قدر من الاتصال خلال سنوات رحيله، لم يكن من المفاجىء ان تتحول الى تلك القسوة المجنونة فى معاملتها لابنائها.
اجد "بيرل تل" فى كثير من الامهات المصريات. اللاتى تسمع اصواتهن على بعد شوارع خمس، وهن يصرخن فى اطفالهن ويسبهن باقذع الشتائم لاسباب تافهة. تلك الامهات اللاتى هجرن من قبل ازواجهن، او اللاتى يملكن زوجا غائبا حاضرا، او الاتى يكتشفن فى نهاية الامر انهم قد انتهوا الى حياة لم تكن فى نطاق حساباتهم الحقيقية.
هل يمكننى ان احاسب اى ام منهن على ما فعلته فى ابنائها؟
لا اجد هذا منطقيا على الاطلاق، ولم اجد انه من العدل ان تحاسب "بيرل تل" بالكراهية الشديدة من قبل اكبر ابنائها "كودى" والذى ظل على احساسه بالمرارة الشديدة نحوها حتى بعدما تجاوز الخمسين و اسس عائلة وانجب طفلا.
اتوقف ايضا كثيرا امام شخصية "كودى". الأبن الغيور الحقود مثير المشاكل. والذى تصل قمة تعجبك من شره المجنون، عن��ما يصر على "سرقة" خطيبة اخيه "عزرا". الفتاة الوحيدة التى احبها فى حياته المنعزلة البسيطة. الفتاة التى كما وصفتها امه قائلة "اقل من مستوياتك العادية بكثير". ف "كودى" الشاب الناجح مهنيا الوسيم الذى لم يرافق سوى ملكات الجمال طوال حياته، يسعى بجنون وراء خطيبة اخيه القصيرة شديدة النحافة عادية الملامح، وبمقاييس "كودى" الشكلية المتكبرة هى فتاة قبيحة!!!!
نجده يسعى وراء تلك الفتاة القبيحة بجنون لمجرد "تصفية حساباته القديمة" مع اخيه المسالم "عزرا". انتقاما لتفضيل امه خلال سنوات طفولتهم لعزرا على حسابه. انتقاما لعدم حصوله على "سحر" شخصية اخيه عزرا البسيطة المسالمة والتى كانت تجذب نحوه دون عناء اى فتاة. حتى الفتيات "ملكات الجمال" اللاتى كان يرافقهن "كودى"!!!!!!
ايضا هنا لم استطع كراهية "كودى". فآن تايلر مؤلفة الرواية تصف "اشخاصا حقيقيين" خلقهم الله بخيرهم كما خلقهم بشرهم. فإنك تكتشف ان فى حقيقة الامر ان "كودى" لم يكره اخيه "عزرا" كما ظاهرا على سطح الاحداث. ولكنه احبه- وان لم يعترف حتى لنفسه مطلقا بهذا الحب- وكان يشعر تماما بتلك "الجوهرة" الموجودة فى قلب عزرا الطيب. ويفخر-ايضا بينه وبين نفسه- بأن لعزرا "معدن" نادر غير موجود فى كتير من الناس.
الشخصية الوحيدة التى حيرتنى كثيرا هى شخصية "جينى". لم افهمها جيدا الا بعد عناء!!!! واظن اننى احتاج الى خمس قراءات مستقبلية لكى استطع فهمها بشكل افضل :)
ولا ادرى هل عدم فهمى هذا يعود عدم تحديد ملامح تلك الشخصية بشكل معتنى به من قبل مؤلفة الرواية كما فعلت مع باقى الشخصيا؟؟؟؟ ام اننى توحدت لدرجة كبيرة مع شخصية "بيرل تل" الام لدرجة افقدتنى تركيزى مع باقى الشخصيات؟؟
قصة حب طويلة تتعمق بعد كل قراءة. ومشاعر بالانتماء الدافئ إلى حروف وكلمات مطبوعة أصبحت ملاذاً حميماً لي.
في كل قراءة، يُرحب بي أعضاء عائلة "بيرل تل" ترحيباً يليق بصديقة مخلصة لهم صادقتهم لأكثر من إثنى عشر عاماً. أتقبل الترحيب الجاف من الأم "بيرل" والتحية العابرة للإبنة "جيني"، والتجاهل المتعالي للإبن الضال "كودي". أتقبل استقبالهم الفاتر وأدخل إلى بيتهم الذي أصبح بيتي، وأُعزي نفسي بتحية أكثر دفئاً من "عزرا" الكريم الطيب.
أجلس وسط تلك العائلة العزيزة الخيالية بالإسم والحقيقية فعلاً بالنسبة لي. أردد الجُمل الحوارية بينهم قبل أن ينطقوها. أستمع لهم وهم يكررونها أمامي، وأنتبه لتفسير جديد وراء هذه الجملة او هذه اللفتة او حتى الهمهمة الآتية من نافذة جيرانهم.
وأنا اتجول معهم عبر رحلة حياتهم التي امتدت لستين عام، أجد نفسي احاول الخروج مؤقتاً لكي أبحث عن المؤلفة "آن تايلر" وأعاتبها في خيالي على ثغرات وجدتها في كتابة الرواية، مثل اهتمامها بشخصيتي الأم والإبن الحقير "كودي" على حساب ش��صيتي الإبن عزرا، والإبنة جيني التي أشعر أن شخصيتها رُسمت بشكل عشوائي وغير متناسق او مفهوم.
أو لامنطقية أن يظل "كودي" المتهور المتقلب-اللي مالوش عزيز-مخلصاً لزوجته التي لم يكن يحمل لها أدنى درجة من الحب.
أرى بالرواية نقاط ضعف في بناء الشخصيات أو الحوار. ولكن أبقى على حلمي القديم بأن أقابل المؤلفة "آن تايلر" واشكرها على تلك العمل الذي ترك أثراً لا ينمحي بداخلي.
هل هناك من سبب لهذا الحب الذي استحوذ علىّ تجاه تلك الرواية دون كل الروايات الأخرى؟
ربما كانت الصدفة التي وضعته منذ زمن في يدي بتوقيت صعب وكانت هى نعم العزاء لي. وربما كان السبب كان الإحس��س المشترك بالحزن على الحب الأخوي الذي يضيع بعد الطفولة، ونظل باقي حياتنا نتساءل في مرارة لماذا أضعناه، أو على الأقل لماذا تغيرت براءة إخلاصه وسط مرارات الحياة التي جففت منبع تلك الحب؟
أكان "كودي" قاسي القلب يتمنى سراً بعد أن تخطي الأربعين وأصبح أباً أن يعود الزمن فقط لكي يُنقي المياه التي عكرّها بينه وبين أخيه عزرا:
"لو أنك كنت تستطيع فقط أن تعيد الزمن إلى الوراء مرة أخر...أن تُبطل ما فعلته، لو انك كنت تستطيع فقط أن تدير الدقائق في الاتجاه العكسي ولو مرة واحدة".
ولكن للأسف ما مضى من الزمن لا يعود، واللي انكسر مابيتصلحش
١٨ يونيو ٢٠٢٣
.........................................................
14/11/2014
قرأت تلك الرواية خمس مرات، منهم ثلاث متتالية.
هل يمكننى هنا انا اصف تلك الرواية بانها مجرد رواية من رواياتى "المفضلة"؟
وها انا فى قراءتى الخامسة-او السادسة؟ لا اتذكر- لها. ويتأكد شعورى بأنها ليست مجرد روايتى المفضلة. ولكنها "صديقتى". صديقتى العزيزة التى تؤكد لى بأنه لا عيب بأن يكون للمرء عائلة مجنونة أو غير تقليدية او متخبطة. لم تكن الرواية لتؤكد لى ذلك المفهوم فقط، ولكنها طمأنتنى بأن تلك هى طبيعة الحياة! فلا توجد عائلة تستطيع الإدعاء بأنها عائلة مثالية.
فى اول مرة قرأت فيها تلك القصة، لمست لهجة المرارة التى تروى بها "بيرل تل" الشخصية المحورية ذكريات شبابها المبكر وتعرفها على زوجها. لمست تلك المرارة التي انتظرت بها لسنوات طوال العثور على هذا الزوج شيئا بداخلى. وهذا ما جعلنى اتعاطف معها ومع كل الخطأ الذى اقترفته تجاه ابنائها الثلاثة، خاصة بعد ما خذلها ذلك الزوج.
بعد أن وصلت لمنتصف الثلاثينيات، وجدت "بيرل تل" أخيرا رجلا وافق على الارتباط بها. رجلا كانت تعرف جيدا وفى قرارة نفسها انه بعيدا كل البعد عن شخصيتها المنطقية المنظمة شديدة الاعتداد بنفسها، او هل يمكننا أن نقول بأنها مملة؟؟؟
كان هو على نقيض تام منها، لم يكن النوع الذى قد تشعر شخصية مثلها معه بالرضا الكامل تجاهه. عاشا حياة متخبطة انجبا خلالها ثلاثة اطفال. ولم يكن من المفاجىء لمن يعرف حقيقة الحياة ان يجد ان حياتهم تلونت بالتعاسة. من يكن من المفاجىء ان يأتى الزوج ذات ليلة فجأة ودون اى مقدمات ليخبرها انه راحل ولن يعود اليها والى اطفاله ثانية.
لم يكن من المفاجىء ان تتحول "بيرل تل" الام المتحفظة تجاه مشاعرها لابنائها الى "امنا الغولة" بعد ما رحل زوجها وتركها فجأة لمسئولية ثقيلة وكاملة تجاه ثلاث اطفال بدون دعم مادى يستحق الذكر، وبأقل قدر من الاتصال خلال سنوات رحيله، لم يكن من المفاجىء ان تتحول الى تلك القسوة المجنونة فى معاملتها لابنائها.
اجد "بيرل تل" فى كثير من الامهات المصريات. اللاتى تسمع اصواتهن على بعد شوارع خمس، وهن يصرخن فى اطفالهن ويسبهن باقذع الشتائم لاسباب تافهة. تلك الامهات اللاتى هجرن من قبل ازواجهن، او اللاتى يملكن زوجا غائبا حاضرا، او الاتى يكتشفن فى نهاية الامر انهم قد انتهوا الى حياة لم تكن فى نطاق حساباتهم الحقيقية.
هل يمكننى ان احاسب اى ام منهن على ما فعلته فى ابنائها؟
لا اجد هذا منطقيا على الاطلاق، ولم اجد انه من العدل ان تحاسب "بيرل تل" بالكراهية الشديدة من قبل اكبر ابنائها "كودى" والذى ظل على احساسه بالمرارة الشديدة نحوها حتى بعدما تجاوز الخمسين و اسس عائلة وانجب طفلا.
اتوقف ايضا كثيرا امام شخصية "كودى". الأبن الغيور الحقود مثير المشاكل. والذى تصل قمة تعجبك من شره المجنون، عن��ما يصر على "سرقة" خطيبة اخيه "عزرا". الفتاة الوحيدة التى احبها فى حياته المنعزلة البسيطة. الفتاة التى كما وصفتها امه قائلة "اقل من مستوياتك العادية بكثير". ف "كودى" الشاب الناجح مهنيا الوسيم الذى لم يرافق سوى ملكات الجمال طوال حياته، يسعى بجنون وراء خطيبة اخيه القصيرة شديدة النحافة عادية الملامح، وبمقاييس "كودى" الشكلية المتكبرة هى فتاة قبيحة!!!!
نجده يسعى وراء تلك الفتاة القبيحة بجنون لمجرد "تصفية حساباته القديمة" مع اخيه المسالم "عزرا". انتقاما لتفضيل امه خلال سنوات طفولتهم لعزرا على حسابه. انتقاما لعدم حصوله على "سحر" شخصية اخيه عزرا البسيطة المسالمة والتى كانت تجذب نحوه دون عناء اى فتاة. حتى الفتيات "ملكات الجمال" اللاتى كان يرافقهن "كودى"!!!!!!
ايضا هنا لم استطع كراهية "كودى". فآن تايلر مؤلفة الرواية تصف "اشخاصا حقيقيين" خلقهم الله بخيرهم كما خلقهم بشرهم. فإنك تكتشف ان فى حقيقة الامر ان "كودى" لم يكره اخيه "عزرا" كما ظاهرا على سطح الاحداث. ولكنه احبه- وان لم يعترف حتى لنفسه مطلقا بهذا الحب- وكان يشعر تماما بتلك "الجوهرة" الموجودة فى قلب عزرا الطيب. ويفخر-ايضا بينه وبين نفسه- بأن لعزرا "معدن" نادر غير موجود فى كتير من الناس.
الشخصية الوحيدة التى حيرتنى كثيرا هى شخصية "جينى". لم افهمها جيدا الا بعد عناء!!!! واظن اننى احتاج الى خمس قراءات مستقبلية لكى استطع فهمها بشكل افضل :)
ولا ادرى هل عدم فهمى هذا يعود عدم تحديد ملامح تلك الشخصية بشكل معتنى به من قبل مؤلفة الرواية كما فعلت مع باقى الشخصيا؟؟؟؟ ام اننى توحدت لدرجة كبيرة مع شخصية "بيرل تل" الام لدرجة افقدتنى تركيزى مع باقى الشخصيات؟؟
December 8, 2022
Anne Tyler's masterpiece
It's odd when you read a prolific author's best book first. I first read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant a couple of decades ago. I remember being so impressed with it that I underlined memorable passages (that's how young I was – I was marking up books!).
I then picked up Tyler's The Accidental Tourist (arguably her most famous novel, since it was made into an Oscar-winning film), and was equally impressed, even though I thought the book felt a bit... slighter.
And then I forgot all about her until years later, when I read The Amateur Marriage and was captivated. Since then I've read another 9 novels, which range from good (Saint Maybe, The Beginner's Goodbye, A Slipping-Down Life, Earthly Possessions) to very good (Clock Dance, A Spool of Blue Thread, Redhead by the Side of the Road) to excellent (Breathing Lessons).
But I've always wondered: was my memory of Homesick out of proportion? Did it deserve those 5 shining stars?
Now that I've read it again, with a much greater appreciation for her range and craft, I can say that yes, this is indeed her masterpiece. She deals with her common theme – family life – but it's done with a deftness, psychological depth and understanding of human behaviour that is artful, mature and beautifully done. And on a sentence-by-sentence level, her prose is simply gorgeous.
I had forgot how negligible the plot really is. One night salesman Beck Tull walks out on his Baltimore family, leaving his wife Pearl to raise their three children alone. Pearl, who goes to work at a shop to earn money, doesn't say anything about Beck's departure, thinking that the kids won't notice, but of course they do; his absence, and the secrecy around it, affects all their lives – and their subsequent relationships – irrevocably.
Tyler shifts perspectives with enviable ease. The book consists of 10 chapters, and we see things from Pearl's perspective – both as a dying 80-something woman and as a young woman, wife and mother – then we see things from the vantage point of eldest son Cody, who's handsome and clever but with a cruel streak; daughter Jenny, who marries three times and becomes a pediatrician who's more comfortable dealing with her patients than those closest to her; and Ezra, a calm, placid, clear-eyed kid who wants nothing more than for everyone to get along. Late in the novel, we even get a chapter from the point of view of one of the Tull siblings' children, and it's a fantastic chapter, full of cautionary stories about other dysfunctional families.
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.
The only element that didn't work for me on this reading was the adult Ezra's desire to gather all his family together for a meal at the restaurant he owns and runs, called the Homesick Restaurant. They never make it through a single meal without someone storming off. There are a few too many such scenes, and by the third or fourth they become predictable.
But the central metaphor – that we all yearn for something that can never be attained or satisfied – is so powerful and universal that I forgive Tyler. I'm very glad I sat down to this Dinner again; it was delicious.
It's odd when you read a prolific author's best book first. I first read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant a couple of decades ago. I remember being so impressed with it that I underlined memorable passages (that's how young I was – I was marking up books!).
I then picked up Tyler's The Accidental Tourist (arguably her most famous novel, since it was made into an Oscar-winning film), and was equally impressed, even though I thought the book felt a bit... slighter.
And then I forgot all about her until years later, when I read The Amateur Marriage and was captivated. Since then I've read another 9 novels, which range from good (Saint Maybe, The Beginner's Goodbye, A Slipping-Down Life, Earthly Possessions) to very good (Clock Dance, A Spool of Blue Thread, Redhead by the Side of the Road) to excellent (Breathing Lessons).
But I've always wondered: was my memory of Homesick out of proportion? Did it deserve those 5 shining stars?
Now that I've read it again, with a much greater appreciation for her range and craft, I can say that yes, this is indeed her masterpiece. She deals with her common theme – family life – but it's done with a deftness, psychological depth and understanding of human behaviour that is artful, mature and beautifully done. And on a sentence-by-sentence level, her prose is simply gorgeous.
I had forgot how negligible the plot really is. One night salesman Beck Tull walks out on his Baltimore family, leaving his wife Pearl to raise their three children alone. Pearl, who goes to work at a shop to earn money, doesn't say anything about Beck's departure, thinking that the kids won't notice, but of course they do; his absence, and the secrecy around it, affects all their lives – and their subsequent relationships – irrevocably.
Tyler shifts perspectives with enviable ease. The book consists of 10 chapters, and we see things from Pearl's perspective – both as a dying 80-something woman and as a young woman, wife and mother – then we see things from the vantage point of eldest son Cody, who's handsome and clever but with a cruel streak; daughter Jenny, who marries three times and becomes a pediatrician who's more comfortable dealing with her patients than those closest to her; and Ezra, a calm, placid, clear-eyed kid who wants nothing more than for everyone to get along. Late in the novel, we even get a chapter from the point of view of one of the Tull siblings' children, and it's a fantastic chapter, full of cautionary stories about other dysfunctional families.
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.
The only element that didn't work for me on this reading was the adult Ezra's desire to gather all his family together for a meal at the restaurant he owns and runs, called the Homesick Restaurant. They never make it through a single meal without someone storming off. There are a few too many such scenes, and by the third or fourth they become predictable.
But the central metaphor – that we all yearn for something that can never be attained or satisfied – is so powerful and universal that I forgive Tyler. I'm very glad I sat down to this Dinner again; it was delicious.
February 24, 2020
Anne Tyler is quite gifted in describing dysfunction, and few families are as dysfunctional as that of Pearl, Cody, Ezra and Jenny. They live, as most characters in Tyler books, in Baltimore and variously deal with (or repress) their pain when the man of the family, Beck, up and leaves suddenly and never returns. Pearl takes her anger and rage out on the three kids. Cody is sort of a bully, and although he is the oldest child, is bitterly jealous of his brother Ezra. Ezra is not too bright and rather awkward and is destined to own the eponymous Homesick Restaurant. The youngest child Jenny becomes a pediatrician, but drifts from marriage to marriage collecting children and avoiding, for the most part, her family. Each chapter of the book deals with one of the characters and fills in the background until the climactic last family dinner at the restaurant. The question being, will they actually finish eating for the first time?
Tyler's writing tends to be rather spare, prefering odd observations to detailed descriptions, but she is able to achieve nice moments of psychological insight such as when she talks about Cody: He'd had a long immobile day - standing outside other people's lives mostly... (p. 143). This is a nice summary of Cody: he is always standing outside looking in without ever truly looking in a mirror.
Ezra is not without an occasional psychological insight himself: ...he was struck by the fact that even Josiah - lanky, buck-toothed, stammering Josiah - had a human being all his own that he was linked to, whether or not he knew that person's name, and lived in a nest of gifts and secrets and special care that Ezra was excluded from. (p. 267) This quote is quite interesting because we know who is writing him these letters and we also know that, despite his denials, Ezra always got this attention from his mother.
His mother was a bitter, difficult woman, but who was not immune to happiness, however fleeting. Ezra reads to his elderly, blind mother (blind spiritually and physically) from her childhood diary: The Bedloe's girl's piano scales were floating out her window," he read, "and a bottle fly was buzzing in the grass, and I saw that I was kneeling on such a beautiful green little planet. I don't care what else might come about, I have had this moment. It belongs to me.
That was the end of the entry. He fell silent.
"Thank you, Ezra," his mother said. "There's no need to read anymore." (p. 277)
I think what I took away from this novel and that last quote in particular, was that the tragedy of the mother stems from her inability to hold on to "that moment" allowing herself to fall into an impossible relationship, lying to her children about the desertion of their father, and then using passive-aggressivity and outright violence to take out her frustration on her children who are themselves not capable of introspection either and the legacy of emotional wounds perpetuates itself.
This novel was a runnerup for the Pulitzer Prize the year that Alice Walker's superb The Color Purple won the prize. I think I agree with the committee here, but that doesn't take away from the beauty of this book.
Tyler's writing tends to be rather spare, prefering odd observations to detailed descriptions, but she is able to achieve nice moments of psychological insight such as when she talks about Cody: He'd had a long immobile day - standing outside other people's lives mostly... (p. 143). This is a nice summary of Cody: he is always standing outside looking in without ever truly looking in a mirror.
Ezra is not without an occasional psychological insight himself: ...he was struck by the fact that even Josiah - lanky, buck-toothed, stammering Josiah - had a human being all his own that he was linked to, whether or not he knew that person's name, and lived in a nest of gifts and secrets and special care that Ezra was excluded from. (p. 267) This quote is quite interesting because we know who is writing him these letters and we also know that, despite his denials, Ezra always got this attention from his mother.
His mother was a bitter, difficult woman, but who was not immune to happiness, however fleeting. Ezra reads to his elderly, blind mother (blind spiritually and physically) from her childhood diary: The Bedloe's girl's piano scales were floating out her window," he read, "and a bottle fly was buzzing in the grass, and I saw that I was kneeling on such a beautiful green little planet. I don't care what else might come about, I have had this moment. It belongs to me.
That was the end of the entry. He fell silent.
"Thank you, Ezra," his mother said. "There's no need to read anymore." (p. 277)
I think what I took away from this novel and that last quote in particular, was that the tragedy of the mother stems from her inability to hold on to "that moment" allowing herself to fall into an impossible relationship, lying to her children about the desertion of their father, and then using passive-aggressivity and outright violence to take out her frustration on her children who are themselves not capable of introspection either and the legacy of emotional wounds perpetuates itself.
This novel was a runnerup for the Pulitzer Prize the year that Alice Walker's superb The Color Purple won the prize. I think I agree with the committee here, but that doesn't take away from the beauty of this book.
March 10, 2016
This was my second read by Anne Tyler, and I instantly knew that I loved it as much as the first one. However, it wasn't until the very last pages until I realized what it is exactly that I love so much about her stories: They speak the truth!
From the two books I've read by her so far (this one and "A Spool of Blue Thread"), I can gather that Anne Tyler writes about family life and the dynamics between family members. She's a master at creating a clever plot that hides things and leaves you wanting more. Some might say that her books are boring because they focus more on the characters than they do on action, but I disagree: Anne Tyler's books are amazing exactly because they focus on the characters. Her depiction of ordinary life is so spot-on that it's kind of scary. She doesn't leave out anything - she tells you the truth as it is, and that combined with her wonderful prose makes for beautiful stories.
From the two books I've read by her so far (this one and "A Spool of Blue Thread"), I can gather that Anne Tyler writes about family life and the dynamics between family members. She's a master at creating a clever plot that hides things and leaves you wanting more. Some might say that her books are boring because they focus more on the characters than they do on action, but I disagree: Anne Tyler's books are amazing exactly because they focus on the characters. Her depiction of ordinary life is so spot-on that it's kind of scary. She doesn't leave out anything - she tells you the truth as it is, and that combined with her wonderful prose makes for beautiful stories.
March 10, 2016
I liked this book and really felt like I knew these characters.,, loved one of the sons, Ezra, he had my heart.
January 16, 2018
This was only my 2nd Anne Tyler novel but I can already tell she is going to become one of my favorite authors. Her characters are SOOO real, and her observations of everyday life are spot on. It's the kind of story where nothing happens but you can't stop reading. She brings everything to life and puts you right in the center of the story. This one took a couple chapters to get into, but once I got situated I was hooked. I loved the changing perspectives and how she was able to show you the same memories from different family members and how they viewed the same moment differently. Can't wait to read more from her! I'd highly recommend this to people looking to get into literary fiction.
August 28, 2019
A story about the most vital, yet most mis-understood and least appreciated enterprise in human affairs: parenting. Amazingly, every adult can look back and say, “How did I survive?” Or, equally, “How did I turn out as well as I did?” Are we grateful for the care provided or do we still hold ancient grudges? Does it make a difference what we remember? And what do we do if we have children of our own. Well written. Realistic. Sincere.
September 29, 2018
5 +++ Stars.
I can't believe this is the first book that I've read by Anne Tyler. I really don't know what took me so long, but I am now totally in awe and humbled by her mastery!
This book destroyed me in the best possible way. Anne Tyler has created a family that I will never forget- the Tull family. This book is about Mom Pearl and her three children- Cody, Ezra and Jenny. Were they a perfect family? Gosh, no- but somehow they stuck together.
" In fact, they probably saw more of each other than happy families did. It was almost
as if what they couldn't get right, they had to keep returning to."
All of the characters in this book are so well drawn out. Anne Tyler has portrayed each one, with their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately made me care about all of them, including Cody, who was so easy to hate.
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?
Many important moments take place at the Homesick Restaurant, Ezra's restaurant. The scenes that take place there are either hilarious or heartbreaking!
This book has catapulted to the top of my best reads ever. I loved, loved, loved it!!
"She'd been preoccupied with death for several years now; but one aspect
had never crossed her mind: dying, you don't get to see how it all turns out."
I wish the author had written a sequel- I really want to know where their lives went after this book.
The book was perfect, but I was not ready to say goodbye to these characters:)
Thanks to my friends Julie Grippo and Kara, who strongly recommended I read this author and to start with this book!
I can't believe this is the first book that I've read by Anne Tyler. I really don't know what took me so long, but I am now totally in awe and humbled by her mastery!
This book destroyed me in the best possible way. Anne Tyler has created a family that I will never forget- the Tull family. This book is about Mom Pearl and her three children- Cody, Ezra and Jenny. Were they a perfect family? Gosh, no- but somehow they stuck together.
" In fact, they probably saw more of each other than happy families did. It was almost
as if what they couldn't get right, they had to keep returning to."
All of the characters in this book are so well drawn out. Anne Tyler has portrayed each one, with their strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately made me care about all of them, including Cody, who was so easy to hate.
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?
Many important moments take place at the Homesick Restaurant, Ezra's restaurant. The scenes that take place there are either hilarious or heartbreaking!
This book has catapulted to the top of my best reads ever. I loved, loved, loved it!!
"She'd been preoccupied with death for several years now; but one aspect
had never crossed her mind: dying, you don't get to see how it all turns out."
I wish the author had written a sequel- I really want to know where their lives went after this book.
The book was perfect, but I was not ready to say goodbye to these characters:)
Thanks to my friends Julie Grippo and Kara, who strongly recommended I read this author and to start with this book!
December 27, 2017
My overall most memorable fiction read of the year. I’ve been lukewarm on Anne Tyler’s novels before – this is my sixth from her – but this instantly leapt onto my list of absolute favorite books. Its chapters are like perfectly crafted short stories focusing on different members of the Tull family. These vignettes masterfully convey the common joys and tragedies of a fractured family’s life. After Beck Tull leaves with little warning, Pearl must raise Cody, Ezra and Jenny on her own and struggle to keep her anger in check. Cody is a vicious prankster who always has to get the better of good-natured Ezra; Jenny longs for love but keeps making bad choices. Despite their flaws, I adored these characters and yearned for them to sit down, even just the once, to an uninterrupted family dinner of comfort food.
October 27, 2023
3.5
Not a bad read but not my favourite Anne Tyler book.
I wasn't a fan of the changing perspectives all the time. It felt like there were too many characters for that.
Not a bad read but not my favourite Anne Tyler book.
I wasn't a fan of the changing perspectives all the time. It felt like there were too many characters for that.
July 20, 2012
Now this is great literature! It follows the lives of three siblings: Cody is bitter & envious, Ezra kind but excessively passive and Jenn is overly impulsive with a penchant for marrying the wrong men. After their father deserts the family they’re left to be raised by their mother Pearl Tull, a rigid perfectionist with a definite mean streak. What struck a chord for me was how all three children growing up in the same household could all remember their childhood so differently. I thought it hilarious that they couldn’t make it through a meal together without one of them storming off in a huff. It’s a raw sort of story, not a lot of kissy / huggy going on, but it’s real. Finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1983. According to Wiki Anne Tyler considers it her best work.
Favorite: “Cody, in particular referred continually to Pearl’s short temper, displaying it against a background of stunned, childish faces so sad & bewildered that Pearl herself hardly recognized them. Honestly, she thought, wasn’t there some statute of limitations here? When was he going to absolve her? He was middle-aged. He had no business holding her responsible anymore.”
Memorable: “you make your own luck” on aging "I'm falling into disrepair”
Favorite: “Cody, in particular referred continually to Pearl’s short temper, displaying it against a background of stunned, childish faces so sad & bewildered that Pearl herself hardly recognized them. Honestly, she thought, wasn’t there some statute of limitations here? When was he going to absolve her? He was middle-aged. He had no business holding her responsible anymore.”
Memorable: “you make your own luck” on aging "I'm falling into disrepair”
February 1, 2021
a cosy tale of generational trauma.
January 6, 2016
I think any aspiring writer (myself included) should read this book by Anne Tyler. It doesn't have the best "storyline" if there is one really here, it's not always engaging plot wise because her playing with different points of view left me quite disconnected from the characters when they don't appear after a while or suddenly a big chronological time jump happens. But it kept me reading because of the amazing, mind-blowing writing! Seriously, this are some real messed up characters and family, and there's an emphasis on REAL too. Anne Tyler adds very distinct voices and personalities to her characters, I could guess how one of them would feel in reaction to something. And I truly got either very empathetic or very annoyed by the characters, so in other words I had a significant response to each one of them. From interviews, Anne Tyler said she loves Ezra most and loves him to bits, and I can feel it in how she writes his voice. But I actually felt most distant from Ezra, funnily enough, because I could tell he was meant to be the very lovable guy but I couldn't figure out why, there was no clear and convincing example. Although Cody was way too insecure and arrogant most of the time, I felt very interested in him. I wanted to know more about Jenny too, sadly Anne Tyler didn't seem to devote a lot of time to her story. Some character at the end (spoilers!!!) really annoyed me then made me think again. I can see how the craziness of the family drama may put people off, it kinda made me take a break at times too, but then I'll jump back in real quick once I get started on it again!
All in all, I wouldn't think this is a book I love lots or one I'd reread from start to finish again, but I give it 4 stars because I would flip through it again to learn from some of its excellent writing - AMAZING dialogue and narrative voice, I can't stress this enough!!! So in awe!
All in all, I wouldn't think this is a book I love lots or one I'd reread from start to finish again, but I give it 4 stars because I would flip through it again to learn from some of its excellent writing - AMAZING dialogue and narrative voice, I can't stress this enough!!! So in awe!
July 3, 2015
This is my second encounter with Anne Tyler's books and this time is as good as the first one.
Pearl Tull raises her three kids after her husband just pack up and go. It's in the 1940 somewhere and there's not much a fuzz when it happens. Pearl stays loyal to the scroundel but also turns out to be an often miss-understood, mean and abusive mother. Most of the time it is verbal, but the effect on her children is as damaging as their father's abandonment.
How they approached life is evident in the end when all the characters in this nuclear family comes together to take leave of the very old Pearl Tull at her funeral service. Despite everything she did, she left good people behind. How did it happen?
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.
So yes, the elements in the book worked well together. A good experience.
Pearl Tull raises her three kids after her husband just pack up and go. It's in the 1940 somewhere and there's not much a fuzz when it happens. Pearl stays loyal to the scroundel but also turns out to be an often miss-understood, mean and abusive mother. Most of the time it is verbal, but the effect on her children is as damaging as their father's abandonment.
How they approached life is evident in the end when all the characters in this nuclear family comes together to take leave of the very old Pearl Tull at her funeral service. Despite everything she did, she left good people behind. How did it happen?
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.
So yes, the elements in the book worked well together. A good experience.
December 11, 2022
What an engrossing - and often very odd! - story.
Once again, Anne Tyler gives us several unforgettable characters: Pearl (with her failed marriage, her long-suffering children, and her determination to keep her family together), Cody, Jenny and Ezra, and then the grandchildren who round out this zany, unforgettable family.
Ezra was such a loving character. Cody, his total opposite, was such a bad boy!
Cody complains that his mother damaged them, but he himself inflicted a fair amount of damage of his own! Cody never won me over, not even toward the end when he became more approachable.
I get why so many people love this book. Such very odd, very dysfunctional people, and yet you can't stop reading about them! One of Anne Tyler's quirkiest novels, and highly recommended, because Anne Tyler is just that good!
Once again, Anne Tyler gives us several unforgettable characters: Pearl (with her failed marriage, her long-suffering children, and her determination to keep her family together), Cody, Jenny and Ezra, and then the grandchildren who round out this zany, unforgettable family.
Ezra was such a loving character. Cody, his total opposite, was such a bad boy!
Cody complains that his mother damaged them, but he himself inflicted a fair amount of damage of his own! Cody never won me over, not even toward the end when he became more approachable.
I get why so many people love this book. Such very odd, very dysfunctional people, and yet you can't stop reading about them! One of Anne Tyler's quirkiest novels, and highly recommended, because Anne Tyler is just that good!
May 25, 2016
#2016-usa-geography-challenge: MARYLAND
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?
What experiences we give emphasis to seem to shape who we become as adults. How amusing, yet a bit sad, that they never could finish a meal together at the Homesick Restaurant!
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?
What experiences we give emphasis to seem to shape who we become as adults. How amusing, yet a bit sad, that they never could finish a meal together at the Homesick Restaurant!
July 18, 2010
Since I finished DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT yesterday, I have started at least five very different reviews of the novel. I've got a bad case of Prufrockitis. I'm stuck on the "overwhelming question": What am I really willing to pay attention to? As Tyler's work reminds us, what we pay attention to, not only reveals who we are, but also --to a great extent -- shapes who we become. And yet, despite its importance, this point is not what I want to focus on. That I keep discarding drafts of reviews is appropriate: discarding is what many of the major figures in Tyler's novel do, and we get to see the long-lasting effects on the discarded. But as important as the themes of this work are, the book's greatness -- and it IS great literature -- comes from the various carefully drawn and evolving characters that Tyler keeps us caring about -- even when their behavior is despicable. Give me characters that I care about; and unless your book is a trailer after a tornado tossed it, I'll give your work five stars.
Pearl Tull, the cloud-wearing sun around whom the other characters orbit -- as close as Mercury, as far away as Neptune, or somewhere between the two -- has a "favorite expression": "'I wouldn't know you if I saw you on the street'" (274). But I know her and just about everyone whose life she has affected.
I came to this novel with memories of a mother whose dreams for her children were not her children's dreams; a father who kept trying and traveling and failing until he died, leaving one sometimes out-of-control parent to do the job of two; three children whose mother's eyes saw one paper, one rock, and one gold crown; a child who was lied to about the departure of his father; a sweet adult son who worked and still devoted himself to serving his sick mother; a family that could not get through a special occasion without someone's selfishness creating a "crisis" and an abrupt end to the celebration. Would I have been interested in the characters in DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT if I hadn't wondered whether they were withdrawals from my memory bank? Absolutely. Tyler has created beautiful stained-glass windows, artfully pieced-together incidents that reveal complex characters; and if we pay attention, even on a cloudy day, "We'll Understand It All By and By"(286).
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT feeds the heart, the mind, and the soul. The author of this masterpiece has prepared a satisfying multi-course supper at the Sickhome Restaurant; and unlike the members of the Tull family, her readers want to stay for the whole meal, even "the dessert wine"(303).
Pearl Tull, the cloud-wearing sun around whom the other characters orbit -- as close as Mercury, as far away as Neptune, or somewhere between the two -- has a "favorite expression": "'I wouldn't know you if I saw you on the street'" (274). But I know her and just about everyone whose life she has affected.
I came to this novel with memories of a mother whose dreams for her children were not her children's dreams; a father who kept trying and traveling and failing until he died, leaving one sometimes out-of-control parent to do the job of two; three children whose mother's eyes saw one paper, one rock, and one gold crown; a child who was lied to about the departure of his father; a sweet adult son who worked and still devoted himself to serving his sick mother; a family that could not get through a special occasion without someone's selfishness creating a "crisis" and an abrupt end to the celebration. Would I have been interested in the characters in DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT if I hadn't wondered whether they were withdrawals from my memory bank? Absolutely. Tyler has created beautiful stained-glass windows, artfully pieced-together incidents that reveal complex characters; and if we pay attention, even on a cloudy day, "We'll Understand It All By and By"(286).
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT feeds the heart, the mind, and the soul. The author of this masterpiece has prepared a satisfying multi-course supper at the Sickhome Restaurant; and unlike the members of the Tull family, her readers want to stay for the whole meal, even "the dessert wine"(303).
May 3, 2014
Usually I really enjoy Anne Tyler's books but I was not able to really engage with this one. It is a story of a dysfunctional family viewed in separate chapters by different members of the family. The book starts well with the mother on her death bed recalling her life and I had great hopes for it at that point. However as we progress through all the very unlikable members of her family I lost sympathy and then interest. At the end I cannot even remember the names of all the main characters. Not a winner for me.
September 14, 2017
This was a feel-good book - and in that respect it truly did it's job. I was coming off a book that was very dark and I needed to read something that offered lighter fare.
Revolving around a family, the story shows how different perspectives can be from person to person, even in the same family unit. Interesting and likable characters (although you will have your favorites and those you root for) along with a storyline but isn't too predictable this is a great book for summer read, or even a book club due to its character study.
Revolving around a family, the story shows how different perspectives can be from person to person, even in the same family unit. Interesting and likable characters (although you will have your favorites and those you root for) along with a storyline but isn't too predictable this is a great book for summer read, or even a book club due to its character study.
August 14, 2007
At first, I didn't care about any of the children in this book, and by the end, I mostly hated them. This book was dull and disappointing, with an ending that made me furious. But this was also one of those books that, after glaring at it for a few day and letting it soak in, I realized it accomplished it's goal. It evoked something in me, at least, in the end. Though the cover and synopsis might lead you to believe otherwise, this is no beach read. But the fact that I read it over a year ago and still can't stop talking about it should tell you something.
June 30, 2020
Anne Tyler is a character creator, the ones you may not like, but you know they exist, they breathe, they live, they die.
Reading this book was like visiting a museum. I paid for the ticket, entered and went straight to the main and biggest hall, where the paintings are from floor to ceiling. I sat in front of one. But instead of 19th century battle scene I saw the animated story. And all the characters just sat next to me, because they lived their lives, but they were outsiders. They were an audience of their lives, watching it from outside the frame, like me. They were sitting next to me. But maybe they were part of me, and I was alone.
Reading this book was like visiting a museum. I paid for the ticket, entered and went straight to the main and biggest hall, where the paintings are from floor to ceiling. I sat in front of one. But instead of 19th century battle scene I saw the animated story. And all the characters just sat next to me, because they lived their lives, but they were outsiders. They were an audience of their lives, watching it from outside the frame, like me. They were sitting next to me. But maybe they were part of me, and I was alone.
July 28, 2021
A deeply moving story of a mess of a family, where everyone is unhappy in their own way but manage to find a silver lining and turn it into a torch of hope. Every memory is a bliss, every scar is made to treasure, every life must come to an end, and there will be a feast for those who remain to cherish your existence.
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