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Vox
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Book recs for March: 4 portraits of complicated women
is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. Sometimes it's hard to read Dream Count cleanly. It feels as though you have to scrub away the cultural silt that has accumulated over its author's image to meet the text in good faith. In places, it reads as though Adichie feels the same way. She keeps having her characters go on bitter tangents about the piety and hypocrisy of American liberals, or recite ex-tempore speeches on Feminism 101. ('Dear men, I understand that you don't like abortion, but the best way to reduce abortion is if you take responsibility for where your male bodily fluids go.') Next Page Book recommendations — both old and new — that are worth your time, from senior correspondent and critic Constance Grady. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. In other places, though, Dream Count reminds you of what made Adichie such a phenomenon in the first place: Those precise sentences; that biting satire; all those vivid, complicated women. Dream Count is built around four Nigerian-born women, all living in or having recently departed from America, in spring 2020 as lockdown descends. Each narrates a section of the novel, the two extroverts in first person and the introverts in third person, as one by one they consider the men in their lives who have loved them and betrayed them. They're thinking about their body counts, says one character toward the end of the novel. No, going back over one's love life is a dream count, returns another. One craves a deep connection, another a partnership, a third stability; one flourishes on her own but worries that she is missing the chance for something more. All were betrayed by men who at their worst behaved like animals and at their best were simply not enough to build a life around. Instead, as the novel goes on, they find they've built their lives around each other. Dream Count is not a perfect novel, but it offers you the kind of fully textured polyphonic female friendship that only Adichie can render so beautifully and precisely. As we make our way through the end of Women's History Month, here are three other recent books that offer us portraits of women in complicated, visceral detail. On the shelf Three Days in June by Anne Tyler Three Days in June is a slim novel of enormous warmth and sweetness, featuring one of the prickly, closed-off women Anne Tyler writes so well. Gail, a 61-year-old assistant headmistress at a private girl's school, finds herself getting pushed out of her job with the explanation that she lacks people skills. Gail is outraged: No one, she tells us, had ever said such a thing about her before, or at least 'Not in so many words.' But Gail's ex-boss has a point. Gail nitpicks grammar, clothes, the way other people chew their food. She cuts her own hair so she doesn't have to make small talk with the stylist. She doesn't particularly enjoy most people and isn't particularly good at dealing with them. Never mind: Gail doesn't have the time to spend too long mourning her lost job. Her daughter is getting married the next day, and Gail's ex-husband and his cat show up on her doorstep looking for lodging for the wedding. Before long, so does the bride, who suspects the groom of infidelity. Sour, crotchety Gail has to keep things together, which she does with mingled affection and annoyance for everyone around her. The results will melt your heart. No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley Mlotek Haley Mlotek began dating her future husband when she was 16 years old, she tells us in this tender, shivery, shadowy memoir-cum-cultural history. They stayed together, surprised as anyone else that things seemed to keep working out for them, for 12 years, and eventually got married for immigration purposes. A year after their wedding, they divorced. Mlotek never tells us directly what led to her divorce, or of what the end looked like. Instead, she circles around abstractions of events, while her descriptions of how it all felt land with shocking emotional intensity. 'I could tell you about our last night,' she writes of the end of the marriage, 'but mostly I think about how the night passed no matter what we did to hold still.' Mlotek seeds details of her own divorce through a larger cultural history of the divorce plot. Feverishly, she explores memoirs, novels, movies, looking at how the divorce plot mirrors and subverts three centuries of marriage plots. The bibliography Mlotek builds can feel generic in comparison to the specificity of her own experiences, but occasionally she hits gold — as with her long analysis of The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd, a 1970s documentary about a couple who filmed their wedding, wedding night, and subsequent divorce, and then watch and discuss the whole thing on public access television. 'I have looked for guidance everywhere but real life,' Mlotek tells us. 'I want you to ask if I've read Anna Karenina. I do not want you to ask what I would do for love.' She's nonetheless at her most compelling when she's implying the answer to the second question. Woodworking by Emily St. James If you've been reading Vox for a while, you might recognize Emily St. James's name. She's an institution here. She founded Vox's culture section (and hired yours truly) and, as our critic-at-large, wrote some of the most insightful cultural criticism you're likely to find anywhere. Now, she's written her first novel, Woodworking. I am obviously biased (all the more so because the book contains a character named Constance; Emily tells me there is no relation), but I think you'll love it. In the 1980s, 'woodworking' was trans slang for going deep, deep stealth: transitioning, getting bottom surgery, and cutting off contact with anyone who ever knew you pre-transition, so that no one could ever say you were anything but cis. You simply fade into the woodwork. In this snappy, propulsive novel, woodworking remains far, far out of reach for Erica, one of the book's two narrators. She's a 35-year-old English teacher in small-town South Dakota in 2016, and she has only recently allowed herself to realize that she is trans. Erica is also more than half convinced that it's too late for her to do anything about it. She has already gone through puberty, and already built a whole life as a man. If she transitions, Erica tells herself, she will lose her job and her life, and she will never even be able to pass, let alone woodwork, so what's the point? Woodworking remains an aspiration for teenage Abigail, our second narrator and the only other trans person Erica knows of in Mitchell, South Dakota. Having already fled her anti-trans parents, Abigail is biding her time until she can afford to pay for bottom surgery, cut off her beloved sister, move to a city, and woodwork. When Abigail realizes that her dorky English teacher is trans and closeted, she is disgusted to find that she's the only one in a position to guide said teacher through those early, fumbling days of transitioning. She buys Erica nail polish, shows her how to put it on, and convinces her to wear the polish to school. Erica wonders if she is a lesbian because she's still attracted to her ex-wife; Abigail assures her that she is the most lesbian. Emily writes with a breezy charm, especially in dialogue, but the playfulness of her voice belies the darkness running under this novel. Abigail tells her story in a defensive first person that occasionally lifts right out of her body; Erica, meanwhile, has dissociated into the third person as she tells her story, redacting her dead name with a hazy gray bar. These characters are living during the election of 2016, and they can tell that right-wing animus against them is mounting. They don't know just how dark things will get eight years later. Off the shelf A version of this story was also published in the Next Page newsletter. Sign up here so you don't miss the next one!
Los Angeles Times
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The week's bestselling books, March 9
1. James by Percival Everett (Doubleday: $28) An action-packed reimagining of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' 2. All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead Books: $29) A woman upends her domestic life in this irreverent novel. 3. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (Knopf: $27) A socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding. 4. The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Henry Holt & Co.: $29) An unexpected wedding guest gets surprise help. 5. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $29) Two grieving brothers come to terms with their history. 6. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Riverhead Books: $30) Worlds collide when a teenager vanishes from her Adirondacks summer camp. 7. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley (Crown: $28) A love story about two people pulled apart by the same force that draws them together: music. 8. Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House: $28) A story collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame and artistic ambition. 9. Isola by Allegra Goodman (The Dial Press: $29) A French noblewoman is marooned on an island in a tale inspired by a real-life 16th century heroine. 10. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Entangled: Red Tower Books: $30) The third installment of the bestselling dragon rider series. … 1. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House: $30) A guide on how to stop wasting energy on things you can't control. 2. Golden State by Michael Hiltzik (Mariner Books: $33) The Pulitzer winner and L.A. Times columnist writes a definitive new history of California. 3. How We Learn to Be Brave by Mariann Edgar Budde (Avery: $28) A guide to navigating pivotal moments in life with faith and strength by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. 4. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Knopf: $28) A powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. 5. I'll Have What She's Having by Chelsea Handler (The Dial Press: $32) A collection of essays that captures the joyful life the comedian has built for herself. 6. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Penguin: $32) The music producer on how to be a creative person. 7. Lorne by Susan Morrison (Random House: $36) An authoritative biography of Lorne Michaels, the man behind 'Saturday Night Live.' 8. On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves (Rick Steves: $30) The travel writer recalls his 1978 journey from Istanbul to Kathmandu. 9. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten (Crown: $34) The Barefoot Contessa shares the story of her rise in the food world. 10. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Burgoyne (illustrator) (Scribner: $20) The 'Braiding Sweetgrass' author on gratitude, reciprocity and community, and the lessons to take from the natural world. … 1. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Vintage: $18) 2. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (Grand Central: $20) 3. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (Vintage: $18) 4. Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Grove Press: $17) 5. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Entangled: Red Tower Books: $21) 6. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial: $22) 7. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (Transit Books: $17) 8. Funny Story by Emily Henry (Berkley: $19) 9. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Vintage: $19) 10. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (Anchor: $18) … 1. On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Crown: $12) 2. The Wager by David Grann (Vintage: $21) 3. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel (Vintage: $18) 4. All About Love by bell hooks (Morrow: $17) 5. The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan (Knopf: $35) 6. Eve by Cat Bohannon (Vintage: $20) 7. Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley (Picador: $18) 8. The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (Penguin: $19) 9. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Vintage: $18) 10. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (Vintage: $17)
Los Angeles Times
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The week's bestselling books, Feb. 23
1. James by Percival Everett (Doubleday: $28) An action-packed reimagining of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' 2. All Fours by Miranda July (Riverhead Books: $29) A woman upends her domestic life in this irreverent novel. 3. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (Knopf: $27) A socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding. 4. Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (Riverhead Books: $28) A burned-out woman takes refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. 5. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Grove Press: $20) During the 1985 Christmas season, a coal merchant in an Irish village makes a troubling discovery. 6. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Riverhead Books: $30) Two worlds collide when a teenager vanishes from her Adirondacks summer camp. 7. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (Berkley: $30) In a home for pregnant young women in 1970 Florida, a book on witchcraft upends lives. 8. The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Henry Holt & Co.: $29) An unexpected wedding guest gets surprise help. 9. We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris (Hogarth: $28) The story of a friendship between two women that reckons with a hidden chapter in Korean history. 10. Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey: $29) The third installment of a series about a curmudgeonly scholar of folklore and the fae prince she loves. … 1. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House: $30) A guide on how to stop wasting energy on things you can't control. 2. The Sirens' Call by Chris Hayes (Penguin Press: $32) An analysis of how trivial distractions have reordered our politics and the fabric of society. 3. How We Learn to Be Brave by Mariann Edgar Budde (Avery: $28) A guide to navigating pivotal moments in life with faith and strength by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. 4. Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks (Viking: $28) A memoir of sudden loss, grief and the mysteries of life. 5. The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case (Grand Central Publishing: $30) The singer-songwriter's vivid portrait of a turbulent life. 6. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Penguin: $32) The music producer's guidance on how to be a creative person. 7. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World: $30) The writer travels to three sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell, and the ones we don't, shape our realities. 8. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Beinart (Knopf: $26) The political commentator ponders what it means to be Jewish in the shadow of war. 9. Scrambled or Sunny-Side Up? by Loren Ridinger (Post Hill Press: $29) The entrepreneur recounts how she turned heartbreaking loss into a powerful force for growth. 10. Culture Matters by Jenni Catron (Maxwell Leadership: $26) Real stories of businesses and leaders who created a strong, healthy culture. … 1. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Vintage: $18) 2. Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Grove Press: $17) 3. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (Entangled: Red Tower Books: $21) 4. Deep End by Ali Hazelwood (Berkley: $20) 5. Good Material by Dolly Alderton (Vintage: $18) 6. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (Grand Central: $20) 7. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Perennial: $22) 8. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (Vintage: $18) 9. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (Vintage: $19) 10. North Woods by Daniel Mason (Random House Trade Paperbacks: $18) … 1. On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder (Crown: $12) 2. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (TarcherPerigee: $20) 3. All About Love by bell hooks (Morrow: $17) 4. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel (Vintage: $18) 5. The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan (Knopf: $35) 6. Everything Now by Rosecrans Baldwin (Picador: $19) 7. Room to Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna (Random House Trade Paperbacks: $22) 8. The Eater Guide to Los Angeles by Eater (Abrams Image: $20) 9. Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco: $19) 10. Making It So by Patrick Stewart (Gallery Books: $21)
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.
New York Times
10-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At 83, Anne Tyler Has a New Novel. She'd Rather Talk About Anything Else.
Anne Tyler and I sat facing one another on a couch overlooking a man-made pond at her retirement community outside of Baltimore. She moved there in 2022 and likes the place well enough, with its woodsy walking trails, salt water pool and art studio. But when I asked Tyler, who is 83, what clubs or activities she's joined at the sprawling facility, her answer was an apologetic 'Nothing?' Tyler is too busy writing books. Her 25th novel, 'Three Days in June,' comes out on Feb. 11, and she's already percolating another. 'I absolutely have to pick up a pen every weekday morning,' she said, opening a drawer to show her collection of Uni-Ball Signos in black ink. 'They're non-friction. I used to wear a Band-Aid on my finger, and now I don't need one.' This is what passes for a revelation from Tyler, who rarely gives interviews and gracefully dodges questions about work. It's not that she's secretive or superstitious about her 'craft' (a word she'd never use in this context). She just doesn't understand what the hoopla is about: She established a writing routine and stuck with it, simple as that. Tyler has now been a fixture of the literary world for more than 60 years. When her first book, 'If Morning Ever Comes' was published in 1964, the Times's critic described it as 'an exceedingly good novel, so mature, so gently wise and so brightly amusing that, if it weren't printed right there on the jacket, few readers would suspect that Mrs. Tyler was only 22.' Since then, Tyler has produced a book every few years. She won a Pulitzer Prize for 'Breathing Lessons' in 1989, and is a three-time finalist for the National Book Award. Her novels have sold 13 million copies worldwide, and a few have been made into movies, including 'Earthly Possessions' (1977) and 'The Accidental Tourist' (1985). Her stories tend to feature cranky but decent eccentrics who bump up against obstacles with varying degrees of discomfort. Most take place in Baltimore and revolve around families on a spectrum from quirky to dysfunctional. They're staples of book clubs, carry-on bags and best-seller lists, but you won't find copies of Tyler's novels in her single story, two-bedroom home. She didn't keep any when she downsized. 'Why would I bother?' Tyler said. 'I ordered Kindle copies so I can check something if I need to.' Her schedule is the same every morning: First, she takes a walk. Then she sits at a white desk beneath two Hopperesque paintings by her older daughter, Tezh Modarressi. She drinks coffee with cream, and writes in longhand, in unlined paper, until lunchtime. When she has a decent chunk — several pages or a scene — she types it into her laptop. There's no magical word count, no specific daily goal. 'I write page one, chapter one, first event, and keep going,' Tyler said. She doesn't agonize or attempt to resurrect ideas that flopped. 'You must resist the urge to keep scraps and work them up into something else. Kiss of death.' She raved about the retirement community's heavy-duty shredder: 'You put clumps of paper in and it just vanishes!' Occasionally Tyler consults a collection of observations and conversational snippets she's jotted on notecards and stowed in a speckled container labeled 'Blue Box.' (Its predecessor was blue; the name stuck.) Some cards have languished for 30 years or more, but she keeps adding to her supply. 'I should be able to empty it and quit work, right?' Tyler said. 'The trouble is, new things always come.' In six decades, Tyler has only visited the offices of her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, a handful of times. She's worked with three editors — Judith Jones and Sonny Mehta, both legends in their own right, and now Diana Tejerina Miller, who said in an interview that she was, at first, intimidated by Tyler. 'I remember taking her paperbacks off my mom's bookshelf,' Miller said. 'She delivers work that is finished. Some writers want to talk to their editors at various stages in a brainstorming, rough draft sort of way. Anne takes a novel as far as she can.' Once a book is out in the world, Tyler lets it go. She spoke of characters from 'Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant' (1982) and 'French Braid' (2022) with fond detachment, as if recalling a distant cousin with whom she no longer exchanges holiday cards. 'It's like a mother cat who doesn't recognize her grown kitten when she meets him on the street,' Tyler said. 'A book is done and then I put it away and have to remember, what exactly is it about?' Tyler doesn't teach, attend conferences, participate in social media or belong to a writing group or a book club. 'I don't do well discussing books,' she said. 'I read it, toss it, read a new one.' She quit writing reviews years ago. 'That was my one foray into nonfiction,' Tyler said. 'If I'm writing fiction and I get deep enough into it, all of a sudden it feels like I'm telling the truth. If I'm writing nonfiction, I write down something I absolutely believe, and it'll look like a lie.' In 1991, Tyler weighed in on 'Object Lessons,' Anna Quindlen's debut novel, for the Times. 'It was a mixed review but I learned something from it about how to blend back story into plot,' Quindlen wrote in an email. 'More important, I learned that it was possible to be a literary household name and yet be open and generous with someone new to the game.' Liane Moriarty, the author of 'Here One Moment' and 'Big Little Lies,' among other best-sellers, wrote in an email that 'The Accidental Tourist' was her first Tyler novel: 'It was a revelation to me that you could write such a funny, wonderful book about ordinary people leading ordinary domestic lives. It was all those tiny perfect details that enthralled me.' Moriarty continued, 'Sometimes when I sit down to write I will pick up an Anne Tyler book, read a page, and then tell myself, 'OK, Liane, just do that.' Tyler doesn't include acknowledgments pages in her books, nor does she use epigraphs. Only one of her books, 'A Patchwork Planet' (1998), contains a dedication: 'In loving memory of my husband, Taghi Modarressi.' Modarressi, a psychiatrist and novelist, died in 1997, but it's his last name that appears in small print beneath the bell on Tyler's door. This might explain why some of her neighbors have no idea that she's a best-selling author. 'Why would they know?' Tyler asked, genuinely baffled. 'Writers are not like movie stars. You don't see their faces all around.' Plus, she said, 'How many people read books?' Tyler admires authors like Claire Keegan, who's only written a couple of novels; she fears she's written too many and wouldn't mind lopping off the first few on her list. She recommended 'Behind You is the Sea' by Susan Muaddi Duraj, whom she met through her novelist friend Madison Smartt Bell. Tyler and Bell have been friends for 40 years. In that time, they've discussed Tyler's work 'practically never,' Bell wrote in an email. 'She might mention whether she's had a good or bad writing day but not more. We can have extensive conversations about other people's work (Anne has always kept abreast of contemporary fiction) but not our own.' Here's a partial list of topics Tyler was happy to chat about: Motherhood, marriage, hair, hotels, sisters, grandchildren, grocery shopping, cats, Covid, cooking (she's determined to perfect air fried brussels sprouts) and the local elementary school where she volunteers. She had a lot to say on this last subject. 'I kept hearing about how kids fell so far behind during Covid times,' Tyler said. 'God forbid I ever have to teach math to anybody, but I am very good at sitting with a kid who's learning to read. I just love that process.' After passing a basic aptitude test, Tyler was assigned to work with third graders. The reality of classroom instruction wasn't quite what she'd hoped for: Her first task involved rolling a trio of dice printed with letters and helping a pair of eight year-olds to record what they saw. 'You had to write it down: T-O-T. Is it a word, isn't it a word? It is a word. J-A-J. Not a word,' Tyler said. 'These kids were so bored. One was off to the bathroom. Of course he had to go to the bathroom; I would have to go to the bathroom too!' The next activity was equally joyless. Students wrote letters to their future selves, describing in painstaking detail how they planned to achieve their goals. For instance, if they wanted to work in construction, they listed the tools they'd need to learn how to use. 'I found it the most discouraging and demoralizing thing,' Tyler said. Now Tyler spends occasional afternoons sorting clothing donations for the school. She enjoys chatting with fellow volunteers and imagining the student who will be lucky enough to land, say, a sequined dress 'with ruffles like wings.' But for the most part, while her neighbors are gardening, beekeeping and painting ceramics, Tyler is writing. She's also gearing up for the publication of 'Three Days in June.' Clocking in at a trim 176 pages, the book follows a socially awkward divorced couple through the wedding of their only child. Of course it takes place in Baltimore. Tyler has lived there for most of her adult life, though she admitted that she doesn't know the city as well as she used to. Indeed Tyler's recent books seem to be set in a time outside of time. They're not old-fashioned, exactly, but young people are more formal than they should be, like they're wearing collared shirts when might be more comfortable in sweats. Still, parents and children hew to timeless patterns: Adoration, exasperation, connection, repeat. Tyler lights up the space between people, and shows how it feels to be on the outside looking in. This is her superpower (a word she'd reserve for Marvel characters), and it's grown even stronger with age. At the end of our visit, Tyler paused en route to her front door. She wanted to show me a framed drawing by Mitra Modarressi, her younger daughter, who has written and illustrated several books for children. The picture was from 'Tumble Tower,' one they worked on together, and Tyler lingered over the details — a ball of yarn, a cat, the chaotic jumble of a kid's room. Then she disappeared into one of her own tidy bedrooms to grab my coat from a closet. 'I've thoroughly enjoyed talking with you,' Tyler said, holding the coat at precisely the right height while I slipped my arms inside. 'I'm just sorry we had to talk about my writing.'
