Ladder of Years

Product Information

As per usual, Anne Tyler writes strikingly about family life and everyday problems. I grew very attached to Delia, but I also felt like some of her decisions and thoughts were straight on silly. That's why this book of Tyler's didn't fascinate me as much as some of her other novels. The idea of this book - a woman who just walks away from her family during at beach vacation - was very intriguing. Who hasn't thought about getting in a car and driving away at some point? But the direction of the story meanders and I despised the ending. It seemed like Tyler just got tired of writing it and didn't know how to resolve the plot. There was no feeling of some essential insight gained by the main character. This critical flash of insight, a culmination of all that's gone before, is a hallmark of Tyler's novels. I kept waiting for it in this novel, but Tyler stood me up. Delia goes for a walk while on holiday with her family and walks right out of their life. Where she ends up, she begins to create another life, another version of herself, someone she has perhaps long wished to discover, the free woman, whom she never was before. Q: What is a reader to make of the parallels between Delia’s handling of and socializing of teenagers and cats? Along the way people she meets share their thoughts, circumstances, invitations and opinions, and they are often a reflection of Delia's own thoughts or what we perceive she may think about that which she has left. She doesn't have a lot to say about her motives, it is as if she acted without understanding the deep need inside her to move.

Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler - Google Books

Q: Which do you find easier to write: a character like Belle who is verbose and forthright or a character like Joel who is taciturn and emotionally unavailable? Ms. Tyler's style of small, perfect observation mirrors Delia's attentiveness to detail, which only very gradually allows her to see what's really around her. But for Delia, and for us, the discreet observations are almost physically satisfying.In perhaps her most mainstream, accessible novel so far, Tyler spins a tale of marriage and middle-class lives, in an age when social standards and life expectations have gone askew. While she Continue reading » little town of Bay Borough, and it is she who tests the love of her family, she who waits for a declaration.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler - Publishers Weekly Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler - Publishers Weekly

Cordelia, da tutti chiamata più brevemente Delia, ha quarant’anni, un marito di quindici più grande di lei malato di cuore, e tre figli diventati tre persone sgraziate, maleducate e sprezzanti. In this story there’s something delicious about the human doormat striking a blow for emancipation, and pulling it off. How many of us relish the thought of starting over? What it is to re-invent yourself, and to break free from just doing what is expected. Delia (short for Cordelia) is the youngest of three sisters. At 40, she has long been married to a kindly doctor who still makes house calls. They live in the large old Baltimore house in which she grew up. Delia's father was also a doctor. When In "Ladder of Years," Ms. Tyler's 13th novel, the story that appears to unfold of its own accord is a fairy tale of sorts, a fairy tale with echoes of both the tragedy of "King Lear" and the absurdity of the modern romance novel.

Recommended to me as I was reading her latest A Spool of Blue Thread, a line that reappears in Ladder of Years even though it was written many years before.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler | Waterstones

AT: It really didn’t. I had chosen the name Delia before it occurred to me that it must be "Cordelia," and while Adrian does refer to the King Lear connection I wouldn’t make too much of it. Anne Tyler's dissociated characters have always been in danger of becoming annoying and a little boring, just like real unresponsive people. One sometimes has an urge to poke them -- hard. In "Ladder of Years," Ms. Tyler herself gives a Each life is a kind of assignment, I believe," Eliza told her. "You're given this one assigned slot each time you come to earth, this little square of experience to work through. So even if your life has been troubled, I believe, it's what you're meant to deal with on this particular go-round.” Anne Tyler has been around a long time and when her books first came out I read them religiously, but I finally lost interest after "Accidental Tourist." "Ladder of Years" reminded me of why.Delia has to learn how to dine out alone. What other kinds of public activities are awkward to do solo? Does it differ for men and for women? Q: Delia’s deceased father is a central figure in this novel, but he is obscured by Delia’s worshipful memories. How would her sisters and husband describe him? Delia finds support in unexpected places and from unexpected people. Did Eleanor's support surprise you? I was also bothered by the way in which the folksy narrator’s voice leaked into everyone else’s, so that you have adolescent boys saying improbable things such as, “You’re going through those hankies like a spigot.” He’s 13 but he sounds like a little old lady!