Books mentioned in this post:

Anne Tyler: Ladder of Years

Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

[2013: This is a short post, low on content. Am only including it because I still cannot appreciate Anne Tyler, seven years later. And that still makes me feel inadequate.]

[2015: Nine years later, still don’t like Anne Tyler.

In fact, I’ve ranted about her here  and here and here and here]

“Reading Eudora Welty when I was growing up showed me that very small things are often really larger than the large things”.

– Anne Tyler

I’ve had a very difficult time appreciating Anne Tyler, and I’m not exactly sure why. It’s driven me nearly mad. I *want* to like her so badly. Her literary reputation is stellar. She has a huge, huge following amongst serious readers, yet I can’t get past my annoyance at her quirky characters. The thing is, I like quirky but her creations just don’t grab me.

I’ve tried several of her books, and the one I’ve had most luck with so far is Ladder of Years but even with that one I didn’t like the ending, to the extent it entirely spoiled the reading experience for me.

This time around I’m trying Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. I just started it today, sitting in a really comfy chair at the Barnes & Noble in the mall.  And, so far so good. I’m surprised, actually, how much I liked the first few pages. We’ll see how this goes, but it bodes well.

Add Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant to the teetering piles of books I’m reading right now, and let’s home this invitation to dinner makes for a good experience. Just please, please, please don’t let the characters get TOO quirky…