by Anne Tyler
Macon Leary, the hero of Tyler's fine new novel, writes travel books for businessmen who hate traveling, seeking out hotels and restaurants that will make people feel as if they never left home. Leary and his wife, Sarah, have been married 20 years, but the death under particularly bizarre circumstances of their only child leaves them so disturbed that their marriage collapses. Leary winds up at the home where he grew up. His two brothers are there already—their marriages too have failed—and his sister looks after everyone, including all the old people in the neighborhood. To the estranged Sarah, the Learys are impossible: "They have to have their six glasses of water every day. Their precious baked potatoes every night. They don't believe in ballpoint pens or electric typewriters or automatic transmissions...." When Macon Leary has to leave his troublesome dog with a vet, he meets a young woman who works there named Muriel. She is one of the most maddening characters in current fiction. Like those in Tyler's beautiful Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, these people are convincingly real, with sticky, complex family ties that pull them in more than one direction. The hero believes "that people who had no children had never truly grown up. They weren't entirely...real." The locale is Baltimore; the people are middle class or less—the kind that one almost never meets in fiction these days. There are wonderfully funny moments. But the unforgettable impact of the novel comes from Tyler's ability to open up a story about common people so that we see reflected not only our own lives but also some of the genuine tragedies—from random violence to personal alienation—in today's world. (Knopf, $16.95)
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