Latest news with #AnneTyler
CBS News
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Anne Tyler on a writer's "selfish motive" to explore other lives
Novelist Anne Tyler was once described as a writer who likes to break America's heart. "Oh, dear! Well, don't you think life kind of breaks your heart?" she said. Stories about life breaking your heart, and how love can sometimes mend it, have made Tyler a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, and a best-selling author for six decades. In 1977, she told The New York Times, "It does matter to me that I be considered a serious writer. …. A serious book is one that removes me to another life as I am reading it. … It has to be an extremely believable lie." "I don't remember saying that, but I believe every word of it still!" she laughed. "The fact that it's a lie is a very important part of what makes it not real life, don't worry! And the fact that it's a believable lie makes you say, I am actually being another person right now." The people who live in Tyler's two dozen books have touched countless readers: "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant," "Breathing Lessons," "A Spool of Blue Thread," and "The Accidental Tourist," which became a critically-acclaimed film with William Hurt as a travel writer who hates to travel, and Geena Davis, who won an Oscar for playing the woman who shows him that love is possible for those willing to take a chance. Bestselling author Anne Tyler. Her latest novel is "Three Days in June." CBS News Tyler said, "What makes me keep going as a writer is a more selfish motive, which is, I'm just always wanting to know what it's like to be somebody else. … I feel almost deprived that I have just this one life; I have to be greedy and reach out and see, Well, that guy I just passed in the street, he said that strang thing, what is it like to be him? It's just self-indulgence to sit and write all day and pretend I'm somebody else." "I love listening to people" Tyler grew up in a quiet Quaker community in North Carolina. She would tell herself stories to fall asleep at night: "I would fold my knees up and that would be my desk, and I would be a doctor seeing patients, and I would whisper these conversations. And it always ended with my brother in the bed across the room shouting out, 'Mama, Anne's whispering again!'" Something her readers have long heard about, but never seen: her "blue box," full of hand-written notes to herself. I asked, "Is it fun for you to page through the blue box and go, 'Oh, I forgot I thought about that'?" "Yes," she said. "But we should never page through it too often, because then it won't be surprising." CBS News The box is filled with ideas and snippets of conversations overheard in grocery stores or coffee shops that she might slip into a book. "I love listening to people; I like to hear them nattering on," she said. "That's why the pandemic hit my writing career very hard! Because I love to just be walking down the street and you hear somebody say two words, as I go on, I think, I wonder what that was about? And that's where stories begin." No place is more associated with Tyler than Baltimore, Maryland. It's where she and her late husband, Iranian novelist and psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi, raised their two daughters. So, why does she keep returning to Baltimore as a setting for her stories? "Laziness," she mused. "You seem to have a love for the setting," I said. "But face the fact that if I wrote about somebody in New York, I'd have to find out a bunch of things about New York," Tyler said. "And here I am! But I don't know why it is that I feel there's sort of more there there in the average Baltimorean than there are in people in other places." "I'm going to be writing this [next] book forever" Knopf Tyler's latest book, "Three Days in June," details a long weekend in the life of a school administrator, bookended by the loss of her job and her daughter's wedding. At one point the book's main character, Gail, says, "I'm not the kind of woman who dreams of doing things." I asked Tyler, "If you could pretend to be anybody, why choose the assistant headmistress at a school in Baltimore, versus a movie star or a head of state?" "You think that's bad – the current thing I'm working on, the guy remodels kitchens for a living," Tyler replied. "I don't know! I've often asked myself, if I want to be somebody else, why not somebody heroic and crusading out in the world? But I don't get to choose. I always say novels are like olives in one of those tall, thin bottles. You just get out an olive that's on top. This is the one that comes next." But the lives of her characters, and the jobs they have, are anything but humdrum. "And there is a beauty in the acceptance that people have over their own lives," I said. "Sometimes people just end up in a place like Baltimore." "They make a life there!" she laughed. Now, at age 83, Anne Tyler says she'll keep doing what she has always done: listen, think, and write about people who might shatter your heart, or stitch it back together. Asked how many more books we might expect from her, Tyler replied, "Well, I'm going to be writing this [next] book forever, and when I finish it, if I do finish it before I die, I will rewrite it. And if I'm still not dead, I will rewrite it again, because I'm not going to bring out another book. I'm horrified that I have 25 books in a list in the front of this latest novel." "Isn't that a joy, Anne? Twenty-five books?" I asked. "No!" she said. "My next-door neighbor many years ago said, 'You do churn them out, don't you?'" "That comment clearly lingers in your mind." "It's engraved there, yes!" she laughed. READ AN EXCERPT: "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Anne Tyler For more info: Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Ed Givnish.
CBS News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Book excerpt: "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler
Knopf We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler's latest novel, the New York Times bestseller "Three Days in June" (Knopf), details a long weekend in the life of a divorced school administrator, bookended by the loss of her job and her daughter's wedding. Read an excerpt below, and don't miss Robert Costa's interview with Anne Tyler on "CBS Sunday Morning" May 25! "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now. The clock gathered itself together with a whirring of gears and struck a series of blurry notes. Nine o'clock, I was thinking; but no, it turned out to be ten. I'd been sitting there in a sort of stupor, evidently. I stood up and hung my purse in the closet, but then outside the window I saw some movement on the other side of the curtain, some dark and ponderous shape laboring up my front walk. I tweaked the curtain aside a half inch. Max, for God's sake. Max with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and a bulky square suitcase dangling from his left hand. I went to the front door and opened it and looked out at him through the screen. "What on earth?" I asked him. "You're home!" he said. "Yes ..." "Debbie is at something called a Day of Beauty." "Right," I said. "But she knew ahead I was coming. I told her I was coming. I get there and no one's home. I call her cell phone and she says she didn't expect me so early." "Why did you come so early?" I asked him. "I wanted to beat the rush. You know what Fridays are like on the Bay Bridge." All the more reason not to live on the other side of it, I could have pointed out. I opened the screen door for him and reached for his suitcase, but it wasn't a suitcase; it was some kind of animal carrier. Square patch of wire grid on the end and something watchful and alert staring out from behind it gleaming-eyed. Max moved the carrier away from me a bit and said, "I've got it." "What is it?" "It's a cat." "A cat!" "Could I come in, do you think?" I retreated and he lumbered in, out of breath, shaking the floorboards. Max was nowhere near fat, but he was weighty, broad shouldered; he always gave the impression of taking up more than his share of room, although he was not much taller than I was. In the years since we'd divorced he had grown the kind of beard that you're not quite sure is deliberate; maybe he'd merely forgotten to shave for a while. A short gray frizzle with a frizzle of gray hair to match, and he seemed to have given up on his clothes; generally he wore stretched-out knit tops and baggy khakis. I hoped he'd brought a suit for the wedding. You never could be sure. "Couldn't you have just left your cat at home with food and water?" I asked, following him through the living room. "I mean, it's already bad enough that you're staying with Debbie yourself. In the middle of her wedding preparations, for God's sake!" "She said it would be fine if I stayed," Max told me. "She said it wasn't a problem." "Okay, but then to add a cat to the mix ... Cats do very well on their own. They almost prefer it, in fact." "Not this one," he said. He set the carrier on my kitchen counter. "This one is too new." "It's a kitten?" "No, no, it's old." "You just said—" "It's an elderly female cat who belonged to a very old woman, and now the woman has up and died and the cat is in mourning," he told me. There was a lot I could have asked about this, but it didn't seem worth the effort. I leaned closer to peer at the cat. "Does Debbie know you're bringing it?" I asked him. "Now she does." I waited. "It's complicated," he said. He blotted his face on his shoulder. "I phoned her; I said, 'Where are you?' She says she's at a Day of Beauty. 'Did you leave a key out someplace?' I asked her, and she says no, but she'll be home in a few hours. 'A few hours!' I say. 'I can't wait a few hours! I've got a cat here!' She says, 'A what?' Then she hits the roof. Tells me I can in no way bring a cat to her house, because Kenneth is allergic." "He is?" I said. "Deathly allergic, is how she put it." "But ... Kenneth doesn't live there," I said. "Don't kid yourself," Max told me. "You know he stays over a lot, and besides, he does plan to live there after the wedding." "Well, sure, after the wedding." "'Deathly' allergic, Gail. As in, if he walks into a house where a cat has left a smidgen of dander behind, even if the cat is long gone he'll need a respirator." "A respirator!" "Or whatever you call those things that asthmatics have to carry around with them." "You mean an atomizer," I said. "No, not an atomizer; a what's- it. A vaporizer, maybe?" I thought it over. "At any rate, that's what Debbie claimed. She claimed that even if he's just standing next to her and she has cat dander on her sweater, he will start choking up and he'll need a ..." We both stood there, considering. The cat said, "Hmm?" We looked over at the carrier. "Anyhow," Max said, and he unfastened the two latches and lifted the lid. Instead of stepping out, the cat hunched lower and stared up at me. A gray-and-black tabby with a chunky face. "So I couldn't think where to go except here," Max said. "I knew where you hide your key. It didn't occur to me that you would be home on a weekday." "Yes, well ...," I said. And then I told the cat, "Hey there." She squared her eyes at me. "What's her name?" I asked Max. "I don't know." "What? How could you not know?" "I'm just the fosterer," he told me. "I volunteer at this shelter where they need people to foster animals until they can be adopted. Ordinarily it's kittens, batches of feral kittens that need domesticating first, but this one's a senior citizen. I'm thinking of naming her 'Pearl,' at least for as long as I have her around." "Pearl!" "On account of her color." "You can't name a cat 'Pearl.'" "Why not?" "Cats are so bad at language," I told him. "They're not the least bit like dogs. Cats just get your general tone, and 'Pearl' has a tone like a growl." "It does?" "So does 'Ruby.' So does 'Rhinestone.'" "Aha!" Max said. "See there? Everything turns out for the best." "It does?" I said. "What are you talking about?" "You can advise me on cat lore," he said. "Plus you might even decide to adopt her; who knows?" "Max," I said, "sometimes I wonder if you understand the least little thing about me." "But you love cats! You used to have that homely little calico cat. And this one's accustomed to older women." "Thanks," I said. "'Older,' I said. Not 'old.'" "I do not want a cat in any way, shape, or form," I told him. "What do you think of 'Mary?'" he asked. "Or 'Carol.' How about that?" "Forget it, Max," I said. Then I added, "And you want to steer away from the r sound. An r is a growl, straight out." "Oh, right. Yes. Thank you." He paused. "How about 'Lucy'?" he said. "Forget it, I told you." He sighed. "Maybe you could drop her off at a shelter here in Baltimore," I said. "I mean, surely they wouldn't refuse her." "We're not allowed to just dump our charges any-old-where," he told me. "No, I'd better keep her here at your house, and then take her back to Cornboro if you really don't want her." "I most emphatically do not want her," I said. Then, "Nor do I want a houseguest." "Yes, but, see, there's dander all over my clothes now. I can't possibly go back to Debbie's, even without the cat." "In fact, I wonder if you should come to the wedding, even," I said. "Just think if Kenneth starts choking during the vows." This was pure mischief, on my part. I seriously doubted that Kenneth would choke; he'd always struck me as a sturdy type of guy. But Max looked stricken. He said, "Not attend my own daughter's wedding?" "Well, you could maybe wear a raincoat," I said. "Or one of those hazmat suits." The kitchen phone rang. We both glanced over at it. It rang again, and then a third time. "Aren't you going to get that?" Max asked me. But I was thinking it might be Marilee, and sure enough, after my outgoing message Marilee came on and asked, "Gail? Are you there?" This was why I still had an actual, physical answering machine: there were too many people I might not feel like talking to. "Because we really need to discuss this," Marilee said. "Could you pick up, please?" Max wrinkled his forehead at me. "Ignore that," I told him. "What's going on?" "Nothing's going on." "Okay ..." The answering machine clicked off, and I turned back to the cat. I briefly closed my eyes at her. Cats take that as reassurance; to them it's like a smile. Then I looked off in another direction. I heard a rustle, and when I slid a glance sideways I saw her unfolding herself from the carrier by degrees and stepping gingerly onto the counter. "A little weight problem," I murmured. As if to demonstrate, she landed on the floor with a noticeable thud. "I think it's from stress," Max said. "Apparently she'd been alone for some time before anyone realized her owner had died." I made a sympathetic tsking sound. "What's up with Marilee?" Max asked. He'd never been very good at minding his own business. I said, "Nothing's up with Marilee." The cat was heading into the living room now, so I made a big show of following her. She paused to sniff at the fringe on the rug and then padded over to an armchair and sprang into it, more nimbly than you might expect. "What does she want to discuss?" Max asked, trailing after me. I gave up. I said, "She's retiring in the fall and she wants the board to hire this other person in her place, this Nashville person. And the Nashville person is asking to bring in her own assistant. So I'm thinking I should just quit before they fire me." "Excellent," Max said. I turned to look at him. "Your great talent is for teaching; you know that," Max said. "Dealing with all the kids who are scared to death of math." "You're forgetting that teachers make no money, though," I told him. "Why else did I put in all that hell time getting my master's degree?" "So? Now that Debbie's finished law school, you can go back to doing what you're good at." "It's not that simple," I told him. Still, it was nice of him to say that I was good at something. But then he changed the subject. "Guess I might as well bring in the cat supplies," he said. And he went on outside, leaving the front door open behind him even though the air conditioning was on. I turned back to the cat. She was a bread-loaf shape in the armchair now with her front paws folded beneath her, and when she saw me looking at her she shut her eyes lazily and then opened them again. Excerpted from "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler. Copyright © 2025 by Anne Tyler. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Get the book here: "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler Buy locally from For more info:
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This week on "Sunday Morning" (May 25)
The Emmy Award-winning "CBS News Sunday Morning" is broadcast on CBS Sundays beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. "Sunday Morning" also streams on the CBS News app beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET. (Download it here.) Hosted by Jane Pauley COVER STORY: Memorial DayElaine Quijano reports. ALMANAC: May 25"Sunday Morning" looks back at historical events on this date. ARTS: Food as art that's good enough to eatIn the latest issue of Bon Appétit, the venerable food and entertaining magazine is trying something new: recipes designed to imitate notable works of art. "Sunday Morning" host Jane Pauley samples a menu inspired by the works of such artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Judy Chicago, and Wayne Thiebaud. For more info: Bon Appétit WORLD: BBC journalist in RussiaElizabeth Palmer reports. For more info: Steve Rosenberg on Youtube BOOKS: Anne Tyler on a writer's "selfish motive" to explore other livesAnne Tyler's bestselling novels – tales of lives shattered and mended by love – have broken the hearts of countless readers. In her latest, "Three Days in June," Tyler details a weekend in the life of a divorced school administrator, bookended by the loss of her job and her daughter's wedding. "Sunday Morning" national correspondent Robert Costa talks with the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about finding inspiration in the lives of "humdrum" characters, and what it means to her to create "an extremely believable lie." For more info: "Three Days in June" by Anne Tyler (Random House), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and (Official site) THE BOOK REPORT: Ron Charles on new summer readsThe Washington Post book reviewer offers highlights from the season's fiction and non-fiction releases. For more info: Ron Charles, The Washington PostSubscribe to the free Washington Post Book World NewsletterRon Charles' Totally Hip Video Book (for ordering from independent booksellers) PASSAGE: In memoriam"Sunday Morning" remembers some of the notable figures who left us this week. ARTS: The trailblazing cartoon art of Barbara ShermundArtist Barbara Shermund (1899- 1978) was one of the first women cartoonists for The New Yorker and other major magazines, from the 1920s into the '60s. But she died with barely a trace – and her reputation lay dormant, until a distant relative and a cartoon historian teamed up to connect the dots of Shermund's life and work. Correspondent Faith Salie talks with investigator Amanda Gormley and curator Caitlin McGurk (author of "Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund") about resurrecting a trailblazing humorist and her scintillating takes on sex, marriage and society. For more info: Exhibition: "Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund," at the Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pa. (through June 1)"Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund" by Caitlin McGurk (Fantagraphics), in Hardcover and eBook formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University PREVIEW: Summer arts HARTMAN: TBD MUSIC: Music producer David Foster on "Boop!," Barbra, and balladsFor the past fifty years, David Foster produced some of music's most iconic artists, and won 16 Grammy Awards along the way. But the hit-maker's latest project is the Tony-nominated "Boop! The Musical," for which Foster wrote about fifty songs. He talks with correspondent Tracy Smith about discovering such unique talents as Celine Dion and Michael Bublé; working with such demanding artists as Barbra Streisand and the rock group Chicago; and what he really thinks about legacy. You can stream selections from the Broadway cast recording of "Boop! The Musical" by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full): For more info: "Boop! The Musical" at the Broadhurst Theatre, New York City | Ticket PREVIEW: Summer music PREVIEW: Summer movies BUSINESS: Delta Air Lines' 100th year takes flightIn 1925, what would become Delta Air Lines started as the world's first aerial crop-dusting operation in the Mississippi Delta region. Nearly a century after its first passenger flight, the airline has survived mergers, recessions and bankruptcy, growing from a single passenger route to an international carrier with more than 5,000 flights a day. Correspondent Kris Van Cleave talks with Delta's CEO Ed Bastian about the airline's future amid worries about the economy and aviation safety; visits the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta; and attends a "garage sale" where the airline's fans can buy pieces of aviation history. For more info: Delta Air LinesDelta Flight Museum, AtlantaDelta Flight Museum Surplus SalesHenry Harteveldt, Atmosphere Research Group COMMENTARY: Health expert calls Trump's medical research cuts "reckless destruction"Dr. Timothy Johnson, longtime network TV medical reporter and founding editor of the Harvard Medical School Health Letter, says that by cutting more than $1.8 billion in grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Trump administration risks destroying U.S. medical research infrastructure and prompting a "brain drain" of scientists to other countries. NATURE: TBD WEB EXCLUSIVES: WEB EXTRA: "Survivor" winner Kyle Fraser's pre-game interview (YouTube Video)Prior to the start of Season 48 of "Survivor," correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti spoke with contestant Kyle Fraser, an attorney from Brooklyn, about his road to Fiji; his strategy going into the popular reality TV competition; and how he presented himself to his fellow players. [In the end, Fraser was voted the million-dollar-winner of "Survivor."] MOVIES: The history of the blockbuster movie (YouTube Video) It's been assumed that the Hollywood summer blockbuster was born with the 1975 release of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," followed two years later by "Star Wars." But the film industry's desire for box office blockbusters existed long before a shark prowled the waters off Amity. Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz talks with actor Stephen Lang (star of the "Avatar" films), critic Dana Stevens, and Charles Acland, author of "American Blockbuster," about the origin of blockbuster movies – both big-budget spectacles of Biblical proportions, and low-budget films with heart that won a huge audience. FROM 2020: Now showing - The return of the drive-in (YouTube Video)Nancy Giles looks into the resurgence of drive-in movie theatres, and their offshoots – projections in parking lots, and screenings on the water. The Emmy Award-winning "CBS News Sunday Morning" is broadcast on CBS Sundays beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. Executive producer is Rand Morrison. DVR Alert! Find out when "Sunday Morning" airs in your city "Sunday Morning" also streams on the CBS News app beginning at 11:00 a.m. ET. (Download it here.) Full episodes of "Sunday Morning" are now available to watch on demand on and Paramount+, including via Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon FireTV/FireTV stick and Xbox. Follow us on Twitter/X; Facebook; Instagram; YouTube; TikTok; Bluesky; and at You can also download the free "Sunday Morning" audio podcast at iTunes and at Now you'll never miss the trumpet! Trump confronts South African president during White House meeting, repeats genocide claims Trump takes questions during meeting with South African president Rubio, Jayapal have fiery exchange about Afrikaner refugee's antisemitic tweet, student visas
Boston Globe
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Local bestsellers for the week ended March 23
3. Doubleday 4. Doubleday 5. Charlotte McConaghy Flatiron Books 6. Henry Holt and Co. 7. S&S/Saga Press 8. Anne Tyler Knopf 9. S&S/Summit Books 10. Clare Leslie Hall Simon & Schuster HARDCOVER NONFICTION 1. Crash Course Books 2. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster Advertisement 3. Mel Robbins Hay House LL C Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 4. Sarah Wynn-Williams Flatiron Books 5. Scribner 6. Michael Lewis (Ed.) Riverhead Books 7. Geraldine Brooks Viking 8. Amy Griffin The Dial Press 9. Knopf 10. Pantheon PAPERBACK FICTION 1. Vintage 2. Daniel Mason Random House Trade Paperbacks 3. Grove Press 4. Vintage 5. Harper Perennial 6. Scribner 7. Emily Henry Berkley 8. Catapult 9. Niall Williams Bloomsbury Publishing 10. Freida McFadden Grand Central PAPERBACK NONFICTION 1. Crown Advertisement 2. Vintage 3. Matt Kracht Chronicle Book 4. Vintage 5. Knopf 6. Milkweed Editions 7. Vintage 8. Patrick Radden Keefe Vintage 9. Patrick Bringley Simon & Schuster 10. Penguin The New England Indie Bestseller List, as brought to you by IndieBound and NEIBA, for the week ended Sunday, March 23, 2025. Based on reporting from the independent booksellers of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and IndieBound. For an independent bookstore near you, visit
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It seemed wrong to write about normal life after that horrendous election': US novelist Anne Tyler
'I'm ashamed,' Anne Tyler says of the publication of her new novel, Three Days in June, a typically Tyleresque off‑kilter romantic comedy about a long-divorced, mismatched couple. 'I didn't even realise I was up to 25. If you look at a writer's work and you see that many titles you think, 'Well, it can't be very serious work.' But that's what happened.' The seriousness of Tyler's fiction, which includes much-loved novels Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist and the Pulitzer prize-winning Breathing Lessons, has bothered critics for decades. How could a writer of such witty, warm, kind novels about middle-class families that contain very little historical context, no politics or sex, even, really be one of America's finest living novelists, as so many have claimed? Not to mention her prodigiousness. The author herself couldn't give two hoots. Unswayed by literary fashion or criticism, she has been writing the novels that interest her, and her devoted readership, for 60 years. 'How we handle day-to-day life as we go through it, with its disappointments and its pleasures, that's all I want to know,' she says. Now 83, Tyler is on a video call from her Quaker retirement community just outside Baltimore. It is where her parents retired, and by chance, she moved into the house next door a couple of years ago. (She grew up in a Quaker commune in the mountains of North Carolina but describes herself as 'a secular Quaker'.) She is framed by a large window that looks out on to trees, white walls and high eaves. 'I like to say there are more deer here than people,' she jokes of her rural surroundings. 'And I don't feel any older living here than I did before.' For many years she lived in the Roland Park neighbourhood of Baltimore, where, as Tyler fans will know, most of those 25 novels are set. It is 10am there, and she has just seen off her old college roommate, who stayed over the night before. Neat as a pin in a slim grey polo-neck, she looks the same as when we last met 13 years ago, except that her trademark silver fringe is now white. Then, it was a sunny afternoon in Kensington, west London, and her first face-to-face interview in 40 years. Her reluctance to do publicity meant she was often referred to as a JD Salinger-like recluse and on one occasion 'the Greta Garbo of the literary world'. Yet it is hard to imagine anyone less prickly than Tyler, who talks with the softest southern accent and smiles with her whole face. She isn't as 'allergic' to interviews as she used to be (and even agreed to Desert Island Discs a couple of years ago), but she still finds them a bit of a pain: 'If I talk about writing, I can't do any writing for some time afterward. I'm too self-conscious,' she explains. 'I think I'm shy, to be honest. I hate to admit it as a grownup, but there we are.' She is so unassuming, some of her friends don't even know she is a writer. When she downsized, she didn't keep a copy of any of her own books. 'What would I do with them?' She has them all on a Kindle, but only so she can check if she's repeating herself. Both her daughters are artists, and now she has so little wall space, it is reserved only for their work. She even got rid of most of her kitchen utensils. 'There's no clutter in my house!' she declares, proudly. One possession that was never in danger of being culled was Tyler's index card box of ideas: sometimes the outline for whole stories, but mostly just a few words, snatches of conversation. 'I'll write down a single word and use it 40 years later,' she explains. It started out as a royal-blue recipe tin, and when that became overstuffed she upgraded to a bigger, black‑and-white index box and wrote 'Blue Box' on the label (a detail that might have come from one of her novels). Before beginning a new book, she takes a dozen or so cards and sees if any of them spark something. It was to the Blue Box she turned for Three Days in June. At only 176 pages, the novel is set in Baltimore (naturally) over the three days of the wedding of Debbie Baines, but deftly expands to tell the story of her parents' failed marriage. Gail Baines is 61 years old and has recently been let go from her job as assistant headteacher because she 'lacks people skills'. She likes ironing, cuts her own hair and still has an answering machine because there are too many people she might not feel like talking to. Her ex-husband, Max, is scruffy, unpredictable, 'a good man', the author says affectionately, one of Tyler's endearingly hapless male characters. 'Boundaries; that was his problem. He lacked boundaries. I myself was all about boundaries,' Gail observes. (She might be friends with Elizabeth Strout's more outspoken Olive Kitteridge up in Maine, although they'd be sure to get on each other's nerves.) The day before their daughter's wedding, Max turns up on her doorstep with a stray cat. The idea on the index card was along the lines of the famous Sex and the City quote 'find someone to love the you you love', and it is one that she has used before, she admits unapologetically. 'There are certain people who bring out the best in us and the worst,' she says. 'And it's wise to marry somebody who brings out the best.' The general theme of her cards is ''What would it be like to be that person over there?'' she says. 'Everything I write is about trying to lead a life other than my own.' But when she looks back on all her work, she is puzzled that she stayed so close to home. 'Why didn't I write about somebody who went off to climb Everest?' she asks herself. 'I don't know, but that doesn't interest me so much.' As she says, all her novels are domestic, which has led to accusations of sentimentality and blandness. One review called her books 'milk and cookies' in contrast to 'the astonishing display of piss and vinegar' in Philip Roth. The comparison rings true, Tyler said back in 2012. But there's clearly some old-fashioned sexism at work: when Updike (one of Tyler's earliest champions) writes about married life he is 'giving the mundane its beautiful due', as he put it. Yet, arguably, Tyler's work has endured better than some of those Big American Males, whose novels now leave a slightly bitter taste. 'I used to just devour every word of Roth and Updike, and still think very highly of them,' she says. 'But as you mentioned their names, I had a slight sense of … Oh, those were the smart alec guys, you know.' At its best, Tyler's work is bittersweet rather than saccharine: when she writes about families, she is writing about how they stay together, 'how they grate along'. 'I wondered why it was that I had so many irritating people in my life,' Gail muses in the new novel. Tyler's true subject is endurance, 'the most moving quality of human beings', she says. She attributes her many sympathetic male characters to having been 'unusually lucky' in being surrounded by decent men growing up: an 'amazing father' and three younger brothers (later she would add a 'wonderful husband' to the list). Her mother, a social worker, was 'difficult', given to mood swings and unpredictable rages; one of her brothers would check round her bedroom door in the morning to see what sort of day it might be (Tyler now thinks she might have been bi-polar). But she was determined her children would love books. Tyler often credits her early years on the commune with giving her a novelist's outsider slant on the world. When she was 11, the family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and Tyler attended a proper school for the first time. She won a scholarship to Duke University at 16, where she majored in Russian (the most rebellious thing she could do at the time) and attended creative writing classes taught by the poet and writer Reynolds Price. He immediately recognised her talent and inadvertently influenced some of her most celebrated novels by proclaiming that men can write about women, but women can't write about men: 'I thought, well, I'll show you, Reynolds!' After a year at Columbia, New York, she returned to Duke to work as a Russian bibliographer in the library, where she met her husband Taghi Modarressi, an Iranian refugee and child psychiatrist, 10 years her senior. They were married for 34 years until, in 1997, Tyler suffered a year of personal losses and challenges that she would never inflict on any of her characters. Modarressi died of lymphoma aged 65, and months later Tyler was diagnosed with breast cancer. While she was waiting for surgery her eldest daughter was operated on for a brain tumour. And yet there was still no break in the novels. While death and grief have always been present in her fiction, they are most directly addressed in The Beginner's Goodbye, published in 2012. Usually, she says, she writes about 'life stages', rather than major life events. Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, came out in 1964, when she was 22. After the birth of her two daughters, Tezh and Mitra, she published a new novel every two or three years. If it were possible to round up and destroy her first four novels, she would: she used to believe editing destroyed a novel's spontaneity – she now revises 'endlessly'. It was a run of novels in the early 80s that really made her name, in particular Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, written when she was 40. The story of a dying matriarch and her three differently unhappy middle-aged offspring, the novel was written during 'the difficult teenage years' of bringing up her own daughters. 'I was escaping into a novel. I would sit there and then get lost in it,' she says now. 'I don't think it's my best, but it was the one that was ripped from my heart to be put on the page. And you can't say that about most books.' Her mother didn't speak to her for a year and a half after it was published. She thinks A Spool of Blue Thread is her best. Another family saga looking back at how the parents went wrong, it was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Women's prize in 2015. 'It maybe had fewer mistakes in it than Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. It was a more finished, well-constructed book,' she says. For all the acclaim of those earlier novels, she believes she is a better writer now, trusting both her characters and her readers more. Like many of her characters, Tyler is a creature of habit. Each day begins with a walk before she sits at her desk with her pen and paper: 'Sometimes it's plodding, sometimes it flows.' Then follows a meticulous process of typing up the manuscript in tiny sections, rewriting it again, reading it aloud and recording it, so she can listen to it while looking at it on screen to check for any false notes or mistakes. 'It's so complicated, but it keeps me busy,' she says. If she gets stuck, she copies out the last two pages she wrote the day before, 'and because it's so slow to write things by hand, I'll suddenly hit a word and say, 'There's where you went wrong. You just had that woman say something that she would never say.' So I rewrite it, and suddenly I'm on track again.' She is 'very pernickety' about her stationery and only ever used a Parker fountain pen, but had to wear plasters to stop her fingers getting covered in ink. One Christmas a Japanese reader sent her a beautifully wrapped box with every imaginable brand of pen in it, she says. 'And one of them was very, very fine, black, and didn't scrape on the paper at all.' She now orders them by the dozen online. Reader, it is a Uni-ball Signo. 'I think that's the only thing that's changed since we last spoke,' she says, drolly. She is already at work on her next novel, which begins in the summer of last year. Tyler is famed for her Austen-like aversion to including references to external events. The Iraq war and Hillary Clinton are namechecked in The Beginner's Goodbye, and the 2006 Digging to America gently addresses racial assimilation, but that's about it.'I don't approve of novels mentioning actual issues and going on and on about politics,' she says. 'I've never had any urge to put politics in a novel or to even mention that it exists.' But recent events have been too momentous to ignore. 'It seemed so wrong to have any character going about normal life after that horrendous election,' she says. 'I am worried and anxious and depressed and everything you can be. This is such an extreme, horrifying thing to happen. I always trusted our constitution.' Tyler always prefers a happy ending, and if anyone can put a consoling spin on the US crisis it's her. She would like never to finish this book, just to keep on revising and revising and not have to worry about the noise of publication, she says. But she has said that before and another five novels followed. She has 'absolutely no fear' of death, rather of living too long. But it does annoy her that there might be unused index cards in the Blue Box. Maybe it stems from her horror of clutter. In the tradition of the best realist fiction, her novels make you want to do better, to be kinder – if that doesn't sound too sugary. Does she feel a moral imperative as a novelist? 'No,' she replies, emphatically. 'It's just that over and over again I am really struck by how ordinary people get through their day. Sometimes it almost strikes me as a sort of miracle. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. People don't have a lot to hope for in average lives and yet they make do, and on the whole they behave, they behave very well. That is pretty amazing.' Three Days in June by Anne Tyler is published by Chatto & Windus (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
