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Sep 18, 2011

Laura rated it:

This is Anne Tyler's best work. There are no lovable characters but there is no need for someone to love. The story is enough. It's a fantastic labyrinth of bitterness. Eventually, you end up loving to hate all of them.

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2008

Amy rated it:

This book started out slow, but was pretty engaging once you got into it. Homesick is the story of a family. A very dysfunctional family. Of course, who's family isn't dysfunctional, right? This is sort of the point it seems to me.

Each chapter is some part of the family story and each one is told from a different point of view. The mother, the father and the three children are all so very different from one another, but are held together somewhat tenuously by their family ties More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jenny rated it:

At first, I didn't care about any of the children in this book, and by the end, I mostly hated them. This book was dull and disappointing, with an ending that made me furious. But this was also one of those books that, after glaring at it for a few day and letting it soak in, I realized it accomplished it's goal. It evoked something in me, at least, in the end. Though the cover and synopsis might lead you to believe otherwise, this is no beach read. But the fact that I read it over a year a More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2012

Nidhi rated it:

Cant I love a book just because reading it was something like the warmth of a summer breeze? The characters maybe flawed, the on start might not be so engaging but once you settle down in the story, the interest deepens and you are not even halfway through and you decide that this the sort of stuff you have got to like. It would take a lot not to love the story of a mother, her three difficult children, a home that is left fatherless not because of death but a sudden caprice. Or something that h More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2011

Rose rated it:

Tyler's humor, her sense of place, her eccentric characters, her use of language, and her lyrical descriptions are magnificent. Anne Tyler says that Eudora Welty has been the most influential on her writing and the admiration is mutual, as shown by Welty's comment about this novel: "If I could have written the last sentence in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant I'd have been happy for the rest of my life" (Welty in Salwak, p. 11)

Tolstoy famously wrote that "Happy fami More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2010

Reese rated it:

Since I finished DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT yesterday, I have started at least five very different reviews of the novel. I've got a bad case of Prufrockitis. I'm stuck on the "overwhelming question": What am I really willing to pay attention to? As Tyler's work reminds us, what we pay attention to, not only reveals who we are, but also --to a great extent -- shapes who we become. And yet, despite its importance, this point is not what I want to focus on. That I keep discarding More...

9 comments like (9 people liked it)

May 18, 2008

Duncan rated it:

This was my first Anne Tyler and I really liked it. Her characters are so real. They are capable of being so flawed and yet so good at the same time. Her style is also so down to earth, which renders her stories more believable.
A family reunites in the last days of its matriarch's life. The point of view shifts between the four main characters, giving a very complete picture of the history of the family. What I love about the book is that, as with its characters, it weaves easily bet More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 07, 2007

Meredith rated it:

I read this book for a class my last year at BYU, and I loved it. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It's told from the alternating points of view of these 3 kids and their mom, and it spans from when they are young until they are grown and have kids of their own. It's often sad and depressing, and you won't always like all of the characters, but you will probably love them, like you would your own family. I honestly think that anyone who doesn't love Ezra, you might not be human. A More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2009

Heather rated it:

If you have not ever read this book, stop reading this review right now, go pick it up, and don't do anything else until you're done. If you're still reading this then you're either disobedient or you know how truly fabulous this novel is. Anne Tyler is an absolutely genius writer. She takes a series of events that are seemingly nothing--seriously, nothing of "consequence" really happens in this book--but you're captivated from the first chapter.

As I was reading I found mys More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2012

Joy rated it:

Anne Tyler is super at writing about families and their struggles. This was a hard book to read because there was so much family sadness, but it was very sensitive, with extremely sympathetic characters. Pearl Tuill is nearing the end of her life and recalling her life raising her three children in Baltimore after her husband left. She managed but without much joy. "Often, like a child peering over the fence at somebody else's party, she gazes wistfully at other families and wonders what th More...

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Dec 22, 2011

Rachel rated it:

"While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occured to her."

I was just going to read this first sentence and then put the book down, but how do you stop reading with a first sentence like that? First, I wondered what the thought was, and secondly, it occured to me that I wouldn't expect funny, random things to come to mind while dying. Wouldn't it trivialize the whole all-encompassing fact that your life is ending?

It captured my interest, and really, the whole More...

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Dec 05, 2011

Peter rated it:

Tolstoy's famous first line from Anna Karenina was made for the Tulls: ""Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The unique form of unhappiness that is the Tulls is expressed in their ironic inability to finishing a meal at the Homesick Restaurant. Each time they gather at the restaurant to celebrate or mourn, come together as a family, they find a way to quibble, harass and fight. They alienate, dispute, belittle, and generally irritate each More...

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Sep 13, 2011

Louise rated it:

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore’s Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined, nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra, Pearl’s favourite, who never stops yearning for the perfect family t More...

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May 31, 2011

Sarah rated it:

This is the story of the Tull family. Pearl, a single mother, is now at the end of her life. She is blind, tough, and unable to accept anything less than that her life is acceptable. But now, she sifts through the memories she has in search of something that affirms her life has meaning. We are able to read the story of how she got here through the eyes of her children and grandchildren. Cody, her eldest, is the most like his absent father. What matters to him is power, money, respect, and More...

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Nov 04, 2011

Aimee rated it:

Good book, good author. It didn't wow me but it was a good train read and nice to read a book set in Baltimore. Tyler did a great job with details of time, I loved the way Pearl's old diary entries described the early years of the 20th century, and Tyler often weaved in the different fashions of the passing decades. She also writes compelling characters. I really disliked Cody, who turned from a mischievous kid into an adult consumed by jealousy and obsessed with certain event in the past to th More...

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Dec 30, 2011

Alli rated it:

It's hard for me to say how I felt about this book. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. It was sad. I felt sad reading it which strangely is the part I liked about it. But I also expected throughout the entire book that something good would happen that would heal this family of the wounds an abusive mother and abandoning father inflict on their small children. I kept looking for the one member that would get it all together and find that space in life where they were or can be ha More...

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Mar 04, 2011

Margot rated it:

Being unfamiliar with Anne Tyler's works, I was a little worried that Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (a book group pick) would be another subpar contemporary work with no laudable literary qualities. Though not a home run for me (it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner award in 1983), Homesick Restaurant vastly exceeded my low expectations and turned out to be an enjoyable and interesting read.

This well-written novel follows the Tull family through life, begi More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 07, 2011

Sandy rated it:

This was the first Ann Tyler book I've read, and I really wanted to like her writing. After all, her strengths are characterization and relationships, and I love well-drawn characters. (For good characters, I can even forgive lack of plot.)

The book started out well enough, and the emotions and thoughts of the characters really rang true. However, the longer the book went on, each family member's story began to seem more pointless to me. But by then, I was already fairly invested in More...

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Nov 29, 2009

Marcy rated it:

I read this book in my AP English class my senior year of HS and am doing some re-reading.

I love how this book in written from several characters p-o-v, I guess that's why I liked it so much in high school, and why I still enjoyed it (and why I loved The Color of Water by James McBride).

It's interesting to see how each family member perceives certain memories, how each one develops from the same moment into such different people. How someone can be so resentful, sort of More...

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Jul 29, 2011

Valerie rated it:

This quotation characterizes the entire novel: "You think we're a family," Cody said, turning back. "You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch... A raving, shrieking, unpredictable witch. She slammed us against the wall and called us scum and vipers, and she wished us dead, shook us till our teeth rattled, screamed in our faces. We never knew from one day to the next, was she all More...

4 comments like

Aug 28, 2010

Lora Leigh rated it:

This book made me realize that I don't think I truly love books that are too real. How sad is that? While Anne Tyler is a talented writer who creates characters that are complex and believable, something about her writing depresses me a bit. And I think that it is because her characters and events have have no gloss to them; most problems are not solved by the end of the book, and not everyone (or sometimes ANYONE, it seems) gets a happy ending. I don't necessarily feel any better after I read h More...

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Jan 03, 2012

Lindsey rated it:

This reminded me a lot of The Corrections. I can see how some people may not like this book since it is definitely not uplifting. It is the story of one dysfunctional family through several generations. It begins with Pearl, the almost old maid saved by a marriage to a traveling salesman. Eventually, the marriage dissolves, or rather the salesman just leaves her with three children. Pearl is unhappy with her life and takes it out on her children, who both fear her and find themselves being drawn More...

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Jun 29, 2011

Aimee rated it:

This was the first book I read by Anne Tyler. I'm not running out to read another but I did enjoy it well enough. This story makes me wonder what readers thought about it when it first came out in the early 80's. The broken family represented in this book isn't a very foreign concept in the year 2011. Pearl Tull is the mother of 3 children. Her husband leaves the family when her oldest child is about 13. Pearl is sometimes physical with her children but is mostly a verbally abusive mother. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Traci rated it:

This novel is set in Baltimore in the 50s and 60s and is the story of a family and their relationships to other and each other. The story is told through the eyes of each character...they each have their perspective and it is interesting to see how they each perceive the same event.This story opens with the mother on her death bed,and ends with her death. The story is told in flashback all throughout. It is about the circle of life, and how the characters are given their "lemons" and More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 25, 2010

Pam rated it:

I did NOT like this book at all when I had to read it in high school. I couldn't stand the author's style of writing or way of pigeonholing characters into specific roles for their entire lives. Ironically, as I've grown up, I've realized how people really do stay the same in many ways from the time they were kids, and I often find myself assessing the roles that have been consistent within my own family (with flashbacks to this book). That being said, I still don't think I'd like the book if I More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Chantal rated it:

This is such a sweet book. As one woman enters the final stages of her life she reflects on what was most important....her children. It is extremely complex as her three children remeber her with a mixture of fear, loathing and love. It follows the premise that although children may be raised in the same household....they may not have the same parental experiences. Cody the most difficult child can't understand how his father could abandon them to her clutches and gentle Ezra feels her blow More...

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Oct 13, 2009

Gwen rated it:

I'm almost hesitant to call this book a "favorite" simply because I am not sure I ever want to read it again. What it is though is a book that probably (next to The Doomsday Book) had the strongest emotional impact on me ever -- and I wouldn't want to 1) experience that again or, worse, 2) find that it didn't affect me as much. All I know is that I remember the exact moment when, right after I finished it, I was taking a shower in our Falls Church townhouse and crying my eyes out at More...

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Jan 29, 2010

Jhoanna rated it:

Jane Smiley totally nails this one - it's a real pleasure to read something so well-crafted and well-observed, about something as ordinary as one family's history, of love and isolation, how the hurts of the past never really leave us and how our families are our families, much as we may try to deny them.

Here's Jenny Tull reflecting on the surprise marriage proposal letter she's received from a college classmate and crush.

"What appealed to her more was the angularity More...

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Sep 27, 2011

Jen rated it:

This is an odd book, it's sad and touching and inspiring... in retrospect, but while I was reading it I found it rather depressing. It's the story of a family told in different ways through the thoughts of the different family members, their views are all skewed in a different way but none of them seem to have a very nice life for it, hence the depressing feel. I guess it does make you stop and try to think about your life in a different way which is positive, but I couldn't help but come away w More...

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Mar 06, 2009

Vanessa rated it:

The characters and their motivations are described so vividly, I almost felt as though I knew them when I had finished reading. Some of the characters were not exactly likable, but the author helps you see into the mind of each one, so I couldn't help but sympathize with them to some degree, even when I disagreed with the choices they made. This book was a sometimes dark reminder that we humans are complicated creatures, not just "good" or "bad," not to mention that we all More...

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