Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5694 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Bernice Harrison, Irish Times
`Another treat for fans of this superb storyteller... a terrific read.'

Sunday Express
`Deft and wise prose ... [Tyler's] skill at turning everyday
occurrences into amazing storytelling gets better and better'

Sunday Times
Another of the author's unceasingly perceptive inquires into what
makes us tick'

Customer Reviews

Digging to America
Two very different families, unable to have their own babies, each adopt a Korean baby. The night "the girls" arrive at the airport the two families meet, eventually becoming friends. Each year on the anniversary of "arrival day" the two families get together to eat and remember, with the help of some video footage.
Ann Tyler doesn't shy away from asking difficult questions. This is a novel that examines what it is to belong. What does it mean for instance to be an American in this post 9/11 world. Anne Tyler always shows people as they really are - and the people in this lovely novel about love, death belonging and grief are as well written as ever.

Wonderful character observation
An airport lounge filled with two sets of people. There is an excitable bunch, jostling for position with a video camera. These are the All-Americans. And a quiet group of three, waiting patiently in the background. These are the Iranian-Americans. Two little baby girls arrive from Korea, for adoption with these two very different families, and a strange but beautiful friendship begins.

The characters in this book are so real you feel you know them. There is the woman who is so afraid to be politically incorrect that she ends up putting her foot in everything. There is the reserved elderly Iranian lady who is such a keen observer of life that she fails to really take part in it. There are the two little children, being brought up in very different ways and expected to get along because of their cultural background. There are so many wonderful characters, all of whom mean well, and their very well-meaning gets them into difficulty with each other.

It is a charming, well paced, beautifully told story of alienation and integration, of tactlessness and diplomacy, of needs and feelings. I loved it.

Insightful story...
My second Anne Tyler and whilst I enjoyed the story I did have slight reservations.

I liked the discussions about what it means to be American and what it means to be foreign in another country. They made me laugh and smile and I thought that makes Anne Tyler particularly insightful - she is an American herself but has clearly read situations and can see how Americans might be perceived abroad.

My reservations would be that in parts it seemed a bit implausible. Yes, ok, it's fiction but there were, for me, a few over-stretches of the imagination.