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Anne Tyler: chronicler of life’s twists and author behind The Accidental Tourist and Noah’s Compass |
No Booker prize special effects, it’s just a great read
THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
By Anne Tyler, published by Vintage Books
ANNE Tyler is best known for her novel, The Accidental Tourist, later filmed with William Hurt as Macon.
He becomes even more timid after his eleven-year-old son is the victim of a meaningless supermarket killing. He cannot confront his fears of what he sees as life’s never-ending and brutal unpredictability to save himself.
Macon is seduced back into living a life he can call his own by a chaos-loving dog trainer, Muriel, with whom he leaves his snarled-up small dog, Edward, at the Meow Bow Animal Hospital. He is off to England to research a new edition of his travel books for those who would prefer to stay at home if this were remotely on the cards.
Muriel has legs like spindles, and is so scatty it is impossible to imagine the two have anything life-affirming going for them as an item. Geena Davis rightly got an Oscar for her performance in the film. I rate the novel the most enjoyable page-turning classic of all time for those with holidays still in the pipeline.
The Accidental Tourist is a love story. Noah’s Compass is about non-confrontational 61-year-old Liam Pennywell, who only feels safe not venturing more than a few yards from his home.
At the beginning he suddenly lands up in hospital without the smallest memory of how he got there. He does remember that he has been recently made redundant as a a schoolteacher. He has also been widowed, re-married and divorced, and has three daughters, dreary Xanthe, and fun-loving Kitty and born-again Christian Louise, whose son Jonah is crucial to understanding more his inner three-year-old boy.
Liam appears to have fallen in love at first sight for Eunice, and she with him. But she is so hell-bent on getting him to write his resumé that it leaves them precious time to relate to anything other than the fantasies they have for one another in any way.
One more time, more of life’s unpredictabilities continue to brutally intervene, and by the end non-confrontational Liam finds himself learning the lessons he still has to learn at the chaotic Texture Table at a nursery for under five-year-olds. His relationship with his grandson Jonah has helped him to pave the way there.
Liam’s epitaph occurs on page 241: “All along, it seemed, he had experienced only the most glancing relationship with his own life. He has dodged the tough issues, avoided the conflicts, gracefully skirted adventures.”
There are no Booker prize-winning special effects in Anne Tyler’s books.
JOHN HORDER
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