I thought I was up to books in my Anne Tyler 2021 project that I actually remembered, but this one really drew a blank again, even though I read it a full five years after “Digging to America” (I was wondering why there was such a big gap, then I realised that that was my last QPD edition, paperbacks that used to come out at the same time as the hardback release, whereas this is a standard paperback, so I’d have had to wait for the paperback of “Digging” then the hardback of this one to come out before I could get my hands on the paperback. That probably interests only me, but there we go!). My review on this blog was … short and not particularly sweet. Here you go. I haven’t unfortunately really changed my mind in the intervening decade!

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 – “Noah’s Compass”

(12 January 2011)

He was familiar with these flashes of hatred. (He’d been married two times, after all.) He knew enough not to act on them. (p. 188)

Having really enjoyed “Digging to America”, I’m afraid this one was a bit of a disappointment. 61-year-old Liam downsized from work, downsizes himself into a small flat and mulls over his disappointing career, two marriages and three daughters. The first night in the flat, he experiences an act of violence which he can’t remember, he obsesses about trying to remember it and then, having seen an elderly man’s aide helping him to remember basic facts and ways to live, obsesses about her, tracks her down and basically stalks her (shades of “Morgan’s Passing” but this was published in 2010) until she befriends him and he hopes to develop a romance (she’s 38. Hm.).

There’s interest in the classic Tyler tropes of the second wife taking on the first marriage’s child, the overly petty man fussing about grammar (a less-central character I can’t discuss without spoiling the plot), a frizzy haired woman with drooping bra straps and a weedy small child. The religion theme is ridiculous but not mocked as such, and the youngest daughter Kitty is portrayed well, with her standard-issue dodgy boyfriend who reaches back to the earlier books. There are some funny points, and Liam at some stages does appear to be one of Tyler’s “men with a system”:

“I’m not living miserably.”

She turned and skinned him with a glance. “And don’t think I can’t see what you’re up to,” she said. “You’re trying to come out even with your clothes.”

“Come out …?”

“You suppose if you play your cards right, you won’t have to buy more clothes before you die.” (p. 74)

But it’s just not very interesting, really, and ends up tailing off.

In another Book Serendipity moment (Bookish Beck collects hers regularly), in one flashback, Liam gets his driving licence and is off immediately to where he chooses to go, free at last; the same scene is repeated in Anita Rani’s “The Right Sort of Girl” which I’d finished a few days before reading this (but I’m reviewing for Shiny New Books).

Have you read this one? What did you think?