these. Cody Tull suffers from obscure guilt (was it something I said, something I did that made my father go away?). Ezra Tull suffers from want of desire. Jenny Tull suffers from fear of connection. And the behavior and feelings of

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Penguin Books Australia Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Penguin Books Australia

Ezra would do that," Cody told Luke. "Your Uncle Ezra. It was no fun beating him at all. He'd never take a loan and he wouldn't mortgage the least little thing, not even a railroad or the waterworks. He'd just cave right in and give up." Cody's feelings of abandonment lead him play juvenile pranks on his brother, which Ezra shrugs off like a puppy. Cody catalogs every oversight and begins feeding into a jealous narrative that Ezra is loved and he is not. He ultimately finds lucrative work as an efficiency expert, spending as much time on the road as his father. Pearl has high hopes that Ezra will become an educator, but he spends most of his time at Scarlatti's Restaurant, where Jenny learns her brother's ultimate desire is to manage the place, providing old-fashioned meals for customers who miss the comforts of home. Jenny goes to college to study medicine, meeting the first of three husbands there.This novel won't change your life, but it will enrich your appreciation of it. Our motives, and our actions are complicated, and Anne Tyler has captured that essence of human existence in this excellent novel. That is no easy feat, and this book deserves your attention.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler | Goodreads

in Ezra, a hint of the unposturing selflessness whose effect on people denied faith in the possibility of human purity is invariably to intensify cynicism. ''Cody hated the radiant, grave expression that Ezra wore sometimes; Seriousness does insist, in the end, that explicit note be taken of the facts of this career. Anne Tyler turned 40 just last year. She's worked with a variety of materials, established her mastery of grave as well as comic tones. Her command of herJenny is the third child and the most scholarly of the Tulls, but in college, she marries on an impulse with unhappy results. Only in her third marriage to a man with six children whose wife has abandoned him does she find stability in family life and in her successful, if harried, career as a pediatrician. A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well Newsweek The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT | Kirkus Reviews

The novel examines how siblings may share the same events yet experience them differently; e.g. Cody remembers his childhood as a harsh time. He blames himself for his father abandoning him and considers himself left to the mercy of an angry mother who favors Ezra. Meanwhile, Ezra remembers his childhood fondly and creates a nostalgic family-themed restaurant. Anne Tyler is different. She writes with so much clarity and her characters are so interesting you could almost see, feel, smell and taste them. Her settings are all in heartland USA (Baltimore, mostly) and so, reading her books feels like you are watching afternoon drama series of American families, regardless of how dysfunctional or typical they are. is maintain balance, keep things intact for a stretch, stay under the spell as long as feasible. The before and after are immaterial; nothing counts except the knowledge, solid and serene, that's all at once breathing in the room.That was the evening that Cody first got his strange notion. It came about so suddenly: they were playing Monopoly on Cody's bed, the three of them, and Cody was winning as usual and offering Luke a loan to keep going. "Oh, well, no. I guess I've lost," said Luke. E questo per me qualcosa vuol dire: ci vedo riflesso bene il mio entusiasmo iniziale che col tempo si è andato stemperando, smorzando davanti a una certa reiterazione di temi e situazioni, fino a portarmi al completo allontanamento, che ormai dura da una quindicina d’anni.