Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

In high school, she planned to become a book illustrator. Tyler ultimately adjusted, sometimes doing field work on tobacco plantations and observing the quirks and dialects of her coworkers.

Adapting to this relatively cosmopolitan environment did not come easily, since up until that time, the young girl was unfamiliar with such conveniences as the telephone. When Anne was eleven, her family settled in Raleigh, North Carolina. The daughter of Quakers, hers was a somewhat nomadic childhood, living in such places as Chicago Duluth, Minnesota and Cleo, North Carolina (in which her family lived in an experimental collective community in the mountains). Author BiographyĪnne Tyler was born on October 25, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to chemist Lloyd Parry Tyler and social worker Phyllis Mahon Tyler. Like many of her other novels-including Earthly Possessions, Searching for Caleb, and The Accidental Tourist- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is about the burden of a person's past, be it personal, familial, or historical. Will her three grown children- Cody, Jenny, and Ezra-forgive her for sometimes being a physically and verbally abusive mother? Told from alternating points of view, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is ultimately about how growing up in an unconventional, turbulent family affected three children in very different ways.Īlthough many critics considered the novel less optimistic than her other work, it drew much praise for its psychological insight, rich characterization, well-developed plot structure, and impressive handling of multiple points of view.

Often compared to William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, the narrative begins with 85-year-old Pearl Tull, blind and on her deathbed, attempting to reconcile with her role as a deserted wife and single parent. Published in 1982, the medium-length fiction spans several decades in the history of the Tull family of Baltimore, Maryland. Also a commercial success, it has to date sold more than 60,000 copies in hardcover and more than 655,000 in paperback.

It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne TylerĬritics generally consider Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler's ninth novel, to be among her best work.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler