At the beginning of the novel, Delia sees herself as "a tiny gnat, whirring around her family's edges"?

Ladder of Years - Penguin Books UK

While her family reprimand her for bothering them with phone messages that Delia realizes are at least a week old, her thoughts turn to Adrian, to something new.Q: Is her friendship with Nat the most important new relationship Delia has formed and the most important for her to sustain? Delia non va molto lontano, si trasferisce in una piccola città vicino alla Baltimora che si è lasciata alle spalle, dove vive la sua famiglia, dove sempre Tyler ambienta le sue storie. But I felt cheated because I thought Delia had left her family because her husband never really engaged with her, yet in the end she goes back to him even though that hasn't changed. So once I finish writing that last page, I no longer wonder about them or even (after a little goodbye pang) give them another thought. Her marriage comes to a head when Sam insists on lathering her in sunblock, continues his annoying habit of deliberately mispronouncing names ("Adrian Fried Rice") and walking away from Delia after riling her up in anger.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler | Book Club Discussion Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler | Book Club Discussion

In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. It pissed me off and I can't wait to start reading another book so as to clear out its twisted logic and supposed meanings.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. I did not relate well to the main character, a woman who married directly out of high school who lived in the same house her entire life and regretted never having set out on her own at any point in her life. Delia was able to observe other relationships in the new town that had adopted her: everyone had their own set of burdens to carry. I appreciate that you can imagine all of her characters living in the same world, since they all do live in Baltimore (at least in the novels of hers I've read thus far). Along the way we develop an understanding of our characters and start to sympathise with them and even worry about them.