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Title: The Accidental Tourist : A Novel by ANNE TYLER ISBN: 0-345-45200-3 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 09 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (59 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Anne Tyler is amazing!
Comment: Having just finished reading it for the fourth time this week, I feel privileged to share my thoughts about the writing and the characters. In the film version of The Accidental Tourist, Tyler's descriptions and characteristics of the Leary family members and most of the other main characters seem custom created to be played by the actors featured. In both book and film, don't expect a thriller with complex plots and twists, but do expect a read you won't forget, some laughing with yourself, and possibly, a further understanding of human nature.
Fresh, crisp prose races through the pages of Anne Tyler's novels. Appreciating any writer and their work on an individual and unbiased merit is tough, when natural instinct makes comparisions with the authors you love. In most instances, this habit is blatantly unfair to the work at hand, but Anne Tyler's style is equal to that of Pat Conroy, and higher praise is not possible in my opinion. While her characters may vary from charming and bright to lethargic and eccentric, they share several memorable traits.
Tyler not only introduces and bonds you to her characters, she exposes their strengths and weaknesses with indelible humor. Macon Leary, fresh from the tragedy of losing his son finds his wife, Sarah, leaving him, citing that he doesn't care or allow himself to feel anything. While accusing and condemning Macon, she reveals her lack of understanding and withdrawal from the world. With Sarah essentially out of his life, except for occasional thoughts of her, Macon returns home to the house he grew up in with his siblings, and to older versions of his two brothers, Porter and Charles, and sister Rose. All three are amusing to know. Even while they are minor characters, their personalities and lives are open and easy to find kinship with, in one way or other, for most.
Tyler further represses the Leary's with the family bottle cap manufacturing business. Droll and lifeless, the company and its product mirrors the entire family. Macon escapes the factory by chance when the editor of a small business publishing firm happens across an article he's written in a small paper. Becoming the Accidental Tourist, Macon loathes travelling, and reduces his necessary trips into as compact and detached publications as he can manage. Macon's listless and introspective existence is about to change though, and therein lies the tale.
Anne Tyler's writing sparkles, and your mind will too, if you try The Accidental Tourist.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Tyler Gem
Comment: I had seen the movie "The Accidental Tourist" so many times that I never realized that I had not read the book! What a treat to find a Tyler book that I had not read.
As usual, Tyler pulls us into the world of her characters and makes us part of their lives. How she does this, time after time, astounds me. The characters who populate her books are eccentric but nevertheless are endearing--and are always original.
Here we have Macon Leary (which could have been spelled leery) a travel writer who really hates to leave home. He writes books for people who are just like him, who really just want all the comforts of their familiar home no matter where they are. They have no interest in exploring or seeing the sights of a new place.
Macon is a man who is uncomfortable with his life, his surroundings, his work, his associates, and even his dog, Edward. Social interaction is not his forte, nor his family's, most of whom are as socially inept as he is. He dislikes any kind of change, is compulsive, and is stodgily set in his ways. The systems he devises to make life easier are hilarious, such as agitating his clothes underfoot while he takes a shower!
But his usually sedate life takes many twists and turns in the course of this novel, during the year or two after his son's brutal murder. He is forced to examine his marriage and his relationship with the eccentric Muriel, the likes of whom he has never encountered--she is impulsive, messy, pushy, and talks his ear off.
Muriel presents Macon with a very different way of living and he needs to decide if he can handle this. Tyler presents his struggle in the most charming way and makes these characters so real to the reader.
Another Tyler gem!
Rating: 4
Summary: Routine freaks
Comment: After the tragic and senseless shooting of their teenaged son, Macon and Sarah drift further and further apart as Macon, a travel writer, retreats into himself, barely acknowledging that his son was ever part of his life.Sarah leaves after two years to set up her own apartment, leaving Macon alone for the first time. He devises quirky routines to simplify his life, becoming more and more weird in his efforts to block out the past. Eventually a broken leg forces him to move back in with his sister and two brothers, where they live according to strict routines, not realising what a stultifying effect this life style is having on them all.A chance meeting with an eccentric dog trainer, Muriel, shocks Macon at first, but under her influence, he gradually opens up his mind to possibilities of looking at things in a more relaxed way.This is an unusual story but most enjoyable and you'll very likelt recognise people that you know who can't cope with anything different in their lives.
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Title: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler ISBN: 0449911594 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler ISBN: 042511774X Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler ISBN: 0804108749 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Back When We Were Grownups (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Anne Tyler ISBN: 0345446860 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: If Morning Ever Comes by Anne Tyler ISBN: 0449911780 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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