It’s time for my first August Anne Tyler 2021 project and I finished it yesterday – oops! Interesting fact, though: this must have been the book that I had just acquired when I claimed to my then friend, soon to be boyfriend, now husband Matthew that Tyler was, well I’m going to say ONE OF my favourite authorS, given the date inside the front cover. So I’m pleased that, while as usual remembering nothing of it, I absolutely loved this one. Oh and this is the first of my QPD Tylers, visible in the pile combining the frailty of a paperback with the size of a hardback …
If you’re reading along with the project or just this one or whatever, please do share your thoughts in the comments at the bottom or add a link to your review on your blog or Goodreads, etc.. I’m adding links to these reviews plus all the reviews I am alerted to to the project page, so do pop there to see what other people have thought, too.
Anne Tyler – “Back when we were Grownups”
(05 July 2001, Quality Paperbacks Direct)
She loved these children, every last one of them. They had added more to her life than she could have imagined. But sometimes it was very tiring to have to speak in her grandma voice. (p. 49)
We open with Rebecca at a picnic, wondering how she came to be who she is. Who she is now: a 53 year old larger woman, a mother, stepmother and grandmother, widow, carer and party-giving company owner with a penchant for flowery and embroidered clothes and a good relationship with her many tradesmen. But her life sort of split off when she met a man at the very party venue she now hosts, the bottom floor of one of those run-down terraced houses in Baltimore that most Tyler books are set in, chucked her high-school boyfriend, flunked out of university and joined his huge and ramshackle family.
The complicated Tyler family is in full flood in this one (three stepdaughters and a daughter, each with a partner of some sort and children, plus her late father-in-law’s 99 year old brother and her late husband’s younger brother and a family retainer who ends up being invited to as many parties as she helps clean up after). Because Rebecca, Beck to her family, has got into the habit of hosting parties for every family occasion, coming out with a rhyme for each, the backbone of a family who, as is often the case, take her for granted. Could she walk out of this life, she wonders, as the phone rings again? (No). Could she move back to her home town and her bickering mother and aunt? (But she knows no one there now). Can she find her way back to where her life path split? (Sort of, but does she want to?).
There’s no sloppy one here, just the organised one who keeps everything going. We get glimpses of the routines that held other Tyler characters together, from the man who dresses his son in tomorrow’s clothes for bed to the man who makes a batch of the same dinner every Sunday to feed himself through the week. But things are more nuanced now, and those are only glimpses (maybe she’s saying women don’t go like this as it does tend to be the men). Other Tyler standards are a weedy child of a new partner, a family house that’s subsumed an incomer.
In “Patchwork Planet” we noticed the book was dedicated to Tyler’s late husband and this novel is in part a meditation on grieving, with old uncle Poppy constantly reciting the verse he wrote for his wife’s funeral and Rebecca musing on her loss of Joe, only six years into their marriage. This is made more poignant by knowing the background, even though I don’t usually need to know the background.
Will Rebecca find herself and indeed reclaim her name (one family member does use it, we note)? Will Poppy make it to his 100th birthday? Will Rebecca trace that old boyfriend? But most importantly again, will she reclaim herself? A lovely novel, full of characters and colour, little moments of observation, and also very funny.
Have you read this one? What did you think?
Aug 10, 2021 @ 08:58:23
This is another one of Anne Tyler’s books that I think must be very worth re-reading with a bit more life experience behind us
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 17:05:23
Yes, I can see I’m not the person I imagined I’d be at 19 either, although I have no children, never mind grandchildren and I fear I have the same hair!
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 17:08:07
Ha ha I’m with you on the hair, I look at old photos and mine has been more or less the same since I was 4 years old 🧓
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 17:09:30
Yup, i have two basic hairstyles with brief incursions into short and one disastrous fringe! I even moved seamlessly between the two during lockdown!
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 11:08:12
You do such a good analysis of these books! I think this was the last of Tyler’s books that I read because as you pointed out, they do have a certain formula to them. I think I tired of it, lol.
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 17:06:16
I’m not sure there’s a formula rather than certain themes she refers to – I’m not finding them too samey anyway! But then I love going through Iris Murdoch with all her echoes so maybe it’s something I am more tolerant of!
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 13:44:46
Love this: ” combining the frailty of a paperback with the size of a hardback” – I remember those QPD editions so well and probably still have some!! Interesting that you don’t remember the book – I’m much the same with a lot of older reads! But glad that it was good!
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 17:06:51
I’ve got a few and they’re so annoying! I do remember the next few at least but we’re getting nearer to when I read them now. I still check what I read around them and usually have some memory of those, it’s v odd!
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 18:54:43
I do remember liking this one very much, I particularly loved Uncle Poppy. Those large chaotic families are always portrayed so well as I know I have said before.
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Aug 13, 2021 @ 08:08:25
Well it’s one of the main things to say about Tyler, isn’t it – that and her portraits of marriages. I loved Uncle Poppy, too.
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Aug 10, 2021 @ 23:06:28
I have this one but haven’t read it yet. My first Tyler was An Amateur Marriage, which I loved unreservedly. I’ve since found out that many of her fans think this is mid-ranking. But having read some of her more popular works it remains my favourite so far.
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Aug 13, 2021 @ 07:24:41
I hope you enjoy it when you get to it! I remembered not loving An Amateur Marriage but I’ve started my re-read and I’m enjoying it so far …
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Aug 11, 2021 @ 15:22:49
I’m so bad… I’ve had this one on my shelf for years now and never got around to reading it. I must fix that soon!
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Aug 13, 2021 @ 07:25:17
Oh no – it is a good one!
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Aug 13, 2021 @ 08:01:03
When I moved house and got rid of books I read that I didn’t adore, as well as books I DNF, I also found a bunch of books I’d forgotten I had on the shelf that I’d never read! This is one of them… (I also seem to have lost a whole bunch of books that I know I didn’t want to get rid of – including some special favorites.)
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Aug 11, 2021 @ 19:36:30
I think this is the one that started me softening towards Tyler once again, after the intensity of my love for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist and the disappointment when the novels that came after those two weren’t as good.
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Aug 11, 2021 @ 19:56:04
Oh, that’s interesting. I feel like I’ve had a good run of them, but I remember not being hugely keen on “The Amateur Marriage” which of course is up next!
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Aug 16, 2021 @ 08:06:02
Great review. I really enjoyed this one particularly as Rebecca was so likeable to me, perhaps because of her strength.
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Aug 16, 2021 @ 08:26:44
Thank you. Yes, she was a great character, wasn’t she.
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Book review – Anne Tyler – “The Amateur Marriage” | Adventures in reading, running and working from home
Aug 20, 2021 @ 08:00:14
Sep 10, 2021 @ 23:35:21
I did read this one, but it was pre-blog. No doubt around the time it first came out, as I well and truly a Tyler fan by the beginning on this century! It may have even been a book club book?
However, I remember absolutely nothing about this story, even reading your review didn’t prompt any memories! It was also a book that I gave away before my big move to Sydney.
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Sep 12, 2021 @ 09:25:40
It’s funny how we can have loved her and hoovered up her books as they came out then not remember them, isn’t it!
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