I have just read the first interview given by Anne Tyler in 35 years. Her new book is due to be released soon and has been on my pre order list on Amazon ever since I first heard about it. I cam across Anne Tyler many years ago when my husband bought Morgan's Crossing home and suggested that I might like it. Since then I have read all her works and bought the last half a dozen or so in hardback on the day of publication - that is devotion to an author for me. My impressions of Baltimore first came from Anne Tyler and have only been, slightly, amended by The Wire. I still want to visit and can still somehow see myself as a resident of one of the shabbier yet genteel neighbourhoods - but then I am a romantic at heart.
Today I have worried, a little, that my knitting passion is waning. From finishing the log cabin for E and M I have just finished some doll's clothes and done a couple more of the green log cabin squares. My heart has not been in it. I have been busy, however, sorting out the dining room and a couple of bedrooms and taking a dozen bin liners of clothes to the charity shop and piling up another dozen of pure rubbish and I have been reading. Since probably last September I have been trying to read my latest Richard Russo. I must have read the prologue six times - again my heart was not in it but this week I have picked it up again and now am two thirds of the way through and enjoying it immensely. Does this bout of spring cleaning and reading mean that I am losing the knitting passion or that I have just been otherwise occupied? I don't really know what is going on in my world at the moment. I sometimes have times when I feel unsettled and perhaps this is one of them. I try to make the most of the extra bursts of energy and the periods of feeling unsettled I know will pass. In the meantime the house is looking tidier and leaner and cleaner, the stash has been moved and sorted, the reading bug has been revitalised and there is a new Anne Tyler to look forward to - and there is not so much knitting littering the sitting room.
First time I heard of this author was last Monday (2nd April) when a couple of my friends said they'd been to a Sunday Times book event in Oxford where Anne Tyler was a guest. Then I see she's mentioned in your blog.
ReplyDeleteWhich book of hers would you recommend to someone who has never read any of her work, indeed some one who has been described as the worst read librarian regarding fiction?
Most libraries in which I have worked didn't have fiction collections, hence I have joined a reading group to 'catch up'.
Where to start? I often feel like crying when I know that I am coming to the end of one of her books as I just want them to go on and on. Not a lot happens but they are beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteThe Accidental Tourist won the Pulitzer Prize and would perhaps be a good starting point but I loved Breathing Lessons and think I would start there.
I started with Morgan's Passing but that is a little more quirky.
Saint Maybe is an appealling story.
I personally prefer her earlier works but A Patchwork Planet was delightful and Back When we were Grown ups too.
They are not long books and can usually be accomplished in one sitting. The Beginner's Goodbye was waiting here for me when I got back from Cardiff last night. I doubt if much else will be done today!
I do hope that you find something that you enjoy in her works. If you do then I would certainly move on to Carol Shields - The Stone Diaries and Unless are my favourties there, Margaret Atwood and The Blind Assassin is a must, E Annie Proulx and The Shipping News.............