RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)It must be one of the great pleasures in life: to be, let’s say, a third of the way through a new book by Anne Tyler ... You do know that you are in the safest of hands, and you have a new world to inhabit, new people to watch and listen to, eat dinner with, and try to understand ... Tyler’s handling of different narrative viewpoints is subtle and powerful, shifting the balance of the story each time. Just as we feel clear in our assessment of a character, we are gradually, almost imperceptibly, given access to their thoughts and forced to reassess ... Modern life has been gradually filtering into Anne Tyler’s novels for decades, not least because a general widening of inclusivity fits with her sensibilities, but it turns out she can do current affairs, too, if she chooses. This is her twenty-fourth book, a multi-layered and masterly exercise in sympathy and understanding, and she is still extending her powers.
