Anne Tyler, página 3 de 8

When eighteen-year-old Ian Bedloe pricks the bubble of his family's optimistic self-deception, his brother Danny drives into a wall, his sister-in-law falls apart, and his parents age before his eyes. Consumed by guilt, Ian finds the hope of forgiveness at the Church of the Second Chance, and leaves college to cope with the three children he has inherited and his own embarrassing religion. Twenty years on, Ian's prospects of a second chance are receding fast when, out of the heart of the domesticity that has engulfed him, strides a new figure who will bring him new life.

Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mothers grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in the heat of

Her brilliance in capturing the ripples on the surface of family life gives her a claim to be the Jane Austen of our age Daily Mail Having sacked her handyman, newly-widowed Mrs Emerson finds a replacement in Elizabeth, a lanky, awkward girl.

Liam Pennywell has spent most of his life dodging issues and skirting adventure when suddenly, in his sixty-first year, something happens that jolts him out of his certainty and leaves him with a fri

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel, spanning three generations, about a mismatched marriage - and its consequences. Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayers of later years, Anne Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life with telling precision and sly humour.

Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple- young, good- looking, made for each other. The moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in the Polish neighbourhood of Baltimore, he was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervour, they were hastily wed. But they never should have married. Pauline, impulsive and impractical, tumbles hit- or- miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, and judgemental, proceeds deliberately. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. A 17- year- old daughter disappears, and some years later this fractious pair is forced to rescue her little boy, named Pagan, from drug-infested San Francisco, to take him home and raise him. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more deeply into the complex entanglements of family life in this marvellous, multifaceted novel- one of Anne Tyler's finest.

Evie Decker is a shy, slightly plump teenager with a distant father and hours and hours of silence to fill. Then one night she hears local rock singer Drumstrings Casey on the radio—and becomes instantly attracted to his cool, motionless voice. Evie learns that Drumstrings frequently plays at a dingy roadhouse called The Unicorn. So she goes there and, with an uncharacteristically bold gesture, bursts out of her lonely shell—and into the attentive gaze of an intangible man who becomes all too real. . . .

Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airportthe Donaldsons, a very American couple, and the Yazdans, Maryams fully assimilated son and his attractive Iranian American wife. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate with an arrival party, an event that is repeated every year as the two families become more deeply intertwined.Even independent-minded Maryam is drawn in. But only up to a point. When she finds herself being courted by one of the Donaldson clan, a good-hearted man of her vintage, recently widowed and still recovering from his wifes death, suddenly all the values she cherishesher traditions, her privacy, her othernessare threatened. Somehow this big American takes up so much space that the orderly boundaries of her life feel invaded.A luminous novel brimming with subtle, funny, and tender observations that cast a penetrating light on the American way as seen from two perspectives, those who are born here and those who are still struggling to fit in.

When Joe Davitch first saw Rebecca, it was at a party at the Davitch home - a crumbling nineteenth-century house in Baltimore where giving parties was the family business. Young Rebecca looked to Joe like the girl having more fun than anyone in the room and he wanted some of that happiness to spill over onto him, a 33-year-old divorc- with three little girls. Swept away, Rebecca soon found herself mistress of 'The Open Arms', embracing not only this large spirited man and his extended family but expertly hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms where people pay to have family celebrations in style. But now, years after she has lost her husband in a car accident, Beck (as she is known to the Davitch clan) asks herself whether she is an impostor in her own life. Is she really this natural-born celebrator, joyous and outgoing? Can she always be there for Poppy, her almost 100-year-old uncle-in-law who lives on the top floor, for stepdaughters - Biddy and NoNo and Patch and the husbands and fianc-s, as they come and go, and their children - and for her own daughter Min Foo, pregnant again? What would have happened if she'd married her blond college sweetheart, Will, back then when they were so young and so serious and so sure about everything? Can one ever recover the person one has left behind - and would one ever like them? With perfect pitch Anne Tyler explores these unsettling questions of love and loss, of identity and family, moving with breathtaking assurance between heartbreak and hilarity, between tenderness and razor-sharp observation in a novel that we wish would never end.

Michael i Pauline semblen la parella perfecta: joves, bells, fets l’un per l’altre... Es coneixen en una trobada curiosa a la botiga de comestibles de la mare de Pauline i, atrapats al mig del fervor de la incipient segona guerra mundial, es casen precipitadament i es passen els següents trenta anys qüestionant-se si ho havien d’haver fet.Del soroll de la caixa registradora de la vella botiga de comestibles a l’argot contracultural dels seixanta, de les minifaldilles a la roba superposada dels darrers anys, Anne Tyler captura els matisos evocadors de la vida diària d’aquelles dècades amb una precisió narrativa enlluernadora.

At 53, Rebecca Davitch - mistress of 'The Open Arms', a crumbling, 19th-century row house in Baltimore where giving parties is the family business - suddenly asks herself whether she has turned into the wrong person. How she answers, and how she tries to recover her girlhood self, is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. As always with Anne Tyler's novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave.

When Joe Davitch first saw Rebecca, it was at a party at the Davitch home - a crumbling nineteenth-century house in Baltimore where giving parties was the family business. Young Rebecca looked to Joe like the girl having more fun than anyone in the room and he wanted some of that happiness to spill over onto him, a 33-year-old divorc- with three little girls. Swept away, Rebecca soon found herself mistress of 'The Open Arms', embracing not only this large spirited man and his extended family but expertly hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms where people pay to have family celebrations in style. But now, years after she has lost her husband in a car accident, Beck (as she is known to the Davitch clan) asks herself whether she is an impostor in her own life. Is she really this natural-born celebrator, joyous and outgoing? Can she always be there for Poppy, her almost 100-year-old uncle-in-law who lives on the top floor, for stepdaughters - Biddy and NoNo and Patch and the husbands and fianc-s, as they come and go, and their children - and for her own daughter Min Foo, pregnant again? What would have happened if she'd married her blond college sweetheart, Will, back then when they were so young and so serious and so sure about everything? Can one ever recover the person one has left behind - and would one ever like them? With perfect pitch Anne Tyler explores these unsettling questions of love and loss, of identity and family, moving with breathtaking assurance between heartbreak and hilarity, between tenderness and razor-sharp observation in a novel that we wish would never end.

Aunque las patas de gallo ya crezcan junto a sus hermosos ojos, aunque decenas de familiares -hijas, hijastras, nietos y tíos- aseguren que ya no queda tiempo para emprender un nuevo camino, Rebecca se resiste a convertirse para siempre en una persona que no es ella. Ya no le basta con reinventar la cocina tradicional en su salón de banquetes o cuidar de niños que nunca la llamarán abuela.Rebecca necesita adueñarse de su futuro. Y retoma los estudios que abandonó el día de su matrimonio, se apunta a un gimnasio, compra ropa interior de seda, se atreve a descolgar el teléfono y a marcar un número que creía olvidado.Anne Tyler, ganadora del Premio Pulitzer y legítima heredera de la gran tradición de narradores sureños norteamericanos, nos habla en esta novela sobre el valor de los recuerdos y el inmenso coraje que se precisa para volver a escribir toda una vida.