Product Description

Barnaby Gaitlin is a loser - just short of thirty, he's the black sheep of a philanthropic Baltimore family. Once upon a time, he had a home, a loving wife, a little family of his own; now he has an ex-wife, a 9-year old daughter with attitude, a Corvette Sting Ray that's a collector's item but unreliable, and he works as hired muscle for Rent-a-Back, doing heavy chores for old folks. He has an almost pathological curiosity about other people's lives, which has got him into serious trouble in the past, and a hopeless charm which attracts the kind of angelic woman who wants to save him from himself. Tyler's observation is more acute, more delicious than ever; her humour slyer and more irresistible; her characters so vividly realised that you feel you've known this quirky collection for ever. With perfect pitch and poise, humour and humanity, Anne Tyler chronicles, better than any writer today, the sublime and the ridiculous of everyday living, the foibles and frailties of the ordinary human heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24707 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Barnaby Gaitlin is one of Anne Tyler's most promising unpromising characters. At 30, he has yet to graduate from college, is already divorced and is used to defeat. His mother thrives on reminding him of his adolescent delinquency and debt to his family, and even his daughter is fed up with his fecklessness. Still, attuned as he is to "the normal quota for misfortune," Barney is one of the star employees of Baltimore's Rent-a-Back, Inc., which pays him an hourly wage to help old people (and one young agoraphobe) run errands and sort out their basements and attics. Anne Tyler makes you admire most of these mothball eccentrics (though they're far from idealised) and hope that they can stave off nursing homes and death. There is, for example, "the unstoppable little black grandma whose children phoned us on an emergency basis whenever she threatened to overdo." And then there's Barnaby's new girlfriend's aunt, who will eventually accuse him of theft--"Over her forearm she carried a Yorkshire terrier, neatly folded like a waiter's napkin. "This is my doorbell," she said, thrusting him toward me. "I'd never have known you were out here if not for Tatters." These people are wonderful creations, but their lives are more brittle than cuddly; Barnaby knows better than to think of them as friends, because they'll only die on him. Yet his job offers at least glimpses of roots and affection. Helping an old lady set up her Christmas tree (on New Year's Eve!) gives him the chance to hang a singular ornament--a snowflake "pancake-sized, slightly crumpled, snipped from giftwrap so old that the Santas were smoking cigarettes." And Barnaby himself is sharp and impatient at painful--and painfully funny--family dinners, apparently unable to keep his finger off the auto-self-destruct button every time his life improves. As much as his superb creator, he is a poet of disappointment, resignation, and minute transformation. --Kerry Fried

From the Publisher
One of five Anne Tyler novels reissued in stunning new jackets

About the Author
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964 whilst her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1994, Tyler was nominated 'the greatest living novelist writing in English' by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Uplifting and an excellent read.
This is a gentle, thought-provoking novel which stays with you after you have finished, in a dream-like way. Like many of the other reviewers here this was my first Anne Tyler novel, and I rushed and bought another one as soon as I had finished. It drew me in, and cut to the heart of the matter. To be able to lift the mundane into the remarkable is a talent which breathes life into everything. It was so realistic and although at times sad and even tragic, it made me look again at this amazing thing called ordinary life.

Easy to read but not her best
Yet again Anne Tyler delivers a great book. The characters she paints appear to be so strange that at first you think that no-one on earth like this could exist. But She gives them so much description that we start seeing bits of ourselves in them. The book I would recommend first time readers to start with is The Clock Winder - the stubborn old woman, the girl who never turns down an invitation and the two brothers who fall in love with her.

It needs a sequel
It is not often that I can read on an airplane but this dense novel kept me fully absorbed as we crossed Greenland. I found Barnaby a bit too good and managed to forgive his youthful wickedness too easily. But Sophia and Martine, what a choice and what tension I found in the choosing. The unpleasant characters are interesting and you can find sympathy even with the social climbing mother and lazy co worker. Anne Tyler is an author whose characters are so well drawn that every move they make, even when unexpected, are consistent with their creation. I loved the novel and rated it with Tyler's best.