** A 2 022 Book to Look Forward To in The Times , Daily Mail , Financial Times , i , Irish Times , Scotsman , Good Hou sekeeping ** The major new novel from the beloved prize-winning author -- a brilliantly perceptive, painfully true and funny journey deep into one family''s foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of today When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won''t allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that form s the Garretts'' family life over the decades, whether that''s a painstaking Easter lunch or giving a child a ride, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It''s the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations. ''Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life'' RACHEL JOYCE ''A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed'' VICTORIA HISLOP ''If Anne Tyler isn''t the best writer in the world, who is?'' BBC RADIO 4, WOMAN''S HOUR
When Dorothy came back from the dead, Aaron noticed that some people simply ignored the fact; some seemed to have forgotten she'd died in the first place; and, others just walked straight on by. The accident that killed Dorothy - involving an oak tree, a sun porch and some elusive biscuits - leaves Aaron bereft and the house a wreck.
Michael and Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, Michael was smitten. And in the fervour of World War II, they were hastily wed. But their marriage should never have taken place.
Packed with hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, this novel is about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, and about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds.
