The Clock Winder

by Anne Tyler

Mrs. Pamela Emerson lives a lonely new widowhood outside of Baltimore, with only a house full of ticking clocks for company. Then she hires eccentric Elizabeth Abbott as a handyman and both discover that parts don't have to be a perfect match to work.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Family, Audiobook, Womens, Novels

323 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being If Morning Ever Comes in (1964). Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Reviews

[Phrynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read most of Anne Tyler's books and enjoyed all of them except Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant which I could not get on with for some reason. I will have to try it again some day.

I had no such problems with The Clock Winder. This was Anne Tyler at her best. Lots of random information about a fairly ordinary family doing mostly ordinary things - well there were a few odd things. And despite this I was as gripped as I am by a good mystery novel. I kept having to turn the next page and the next page just to find out what happens!

There were a few oddities. The title was strange. There were clocks and they did get wound but ..... ah, was Elizabeth the "clock winder'? She was the person in charge, the person who fixed everything. Perhaps. I also struggled with the sudden introduction of Peter and his wife at the end. They came, they left and the book ended. Very suddenly.

Nevertheless a totally engrossing book, beautifully written as usual and well worth reading.

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Noting the relationship between my goodreads friends and acquaintances, and Anne Tyler makes me wonder. Is Jane Austen some sort of token? We have to like somebody who writes about domesticity, so...

Is that it? Tyler does indeed write about domesticity. Ordinary people living ordinary lives, mostly in their very ordinary houses. She does this fantastically well and I can't really imagine a more important job a writer could have.

But maybe it is despised precisely for being the things I think are so important. I am astonished by how many people I think should know better who have never read anything by Tyler. She describes ordinary cares and heart break, ordinary despair and ordinary hope with a light touch that makes you realise that she loves all that she brings to the page. She is all-knowing and all-understanding with a modesty that makes her slip by unnoticed by those that need literature to be brash, experimental, obscure or difficult. I am tempted to define the thing people call literature, whilst scorning that which they see as not falling into the genre, as something that IS putdownable. If that is so, then Tyler most dismally fails to make the grade. What a relief.

---------------------


I've given up trying to understand why it is that the amount that this author moves me is inversely proportioned to what I have to say about her. I have no idea how to do justice to her way of making ordinary failed people quicken one's heart.

Let me quote a little instead.

Matthew, whose mother is a dreadful piece of work, asked if Elizabeth finds her hard to put up with.

'No, I like her,' she said. 'Think what a small life she has, but she still dresses up every day and holds her stomach in. Isn't that something?'

And there I sat, as I read this, in my quite small life, and resolved to dress better. Though I rather think I draw the line at holding my tummy in.

Matthew recalls his brother, Tim, who shot himself as Elizabeth attempted to take away the gun - well, I think it was all his own work.

Then a new picture slid in, clicking up from the back of his head: Timothy quarreling with Elizabeth. Only what was it about? Had she broken a date? Refused one? Shown up late for something? All he remembered was the it had happened on the sunporch, over the noise of a TV western. 'If you persist,' Timothy said, 'in seeing life as some kind of gimmicky guided tour where everyone signs up for a surprise destination -' and Elizabeth said, 'What?' Seeing what?' 'Life,' said Timothy, and Elizabeth said, 'Oh, life,' and smiled as fondly and happily as if he had mentioned her favourite acquaintance. Timothy stopped speaking, and his face took on a puzzled look. Wispy lines crossed his forehead. And Matthew, listening from across the room, had thought: It isn't Timothy she loves, then. He hadn't bothered wondering how he reached that conclusion. He sat before the television watching Marshall Dillion, holding his happiness close to his chest and forgetting, for once, all the qualities in Timothy that were hard to take....He forgot them again now, and with them the picture of Timothy triumphantly cocking his pistol and laughing in his family's face. All he saw was that puckered, defeated forehead. He cleared his throat. He felt burdened by new sorrows that he regretted having invited.

I am appalled to report that I once had to defend Anne Tyler against the charge that she was like Jane Austen. P-leeassse. It isn't just that Austen is a vastly inferior writer technically, and a less careful observer of life, but Austen is a social critic, a judge. She has an opinion which is the whole point of what she does. Tyler couldn't be more the opposite, I don't think I've ever read anything as moving as Tyler, which never gives you the least teensiest inkling into what the author thinks. She strikes me as God-like in this sense and more so than any writer I've read. Isn't that something?

[Emily B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another classic Anne Tyler novel with a complex and quirky family dynamic that makes a good audiobook.

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1972, The Clock Winder follows the Emersons, with the matriarch, Pamela Emerson, as the catalyst for the novel. One day, while moving furniture by herself, she's helped by Elizabeth who was walking by. Elizabeth ends up taking residence in her huge house, in exchange for doing odd jobs around the house and yard and company.
Mrs Emerson is feeling lonely, especially since all her seven kids have left home and she's had recently lost her husband.
Elizabeth is an unusual young woman - she doesn't care for appearances and doesn't conform to society's expectations. It's 1959, the expectations to conform are many.
Slowly, Elizabeth gets to meet most of the Emerson children. A couple of the Emerson young men take a liking to Elizabeth, who's ambivalent about relationships.
All Tyler's novels are about ordinary people and their ordinary lives and petty grievances. This one was no exception.
I didn't think this was very well put together, a bit jumpy at times. Most annoyingly, I found Elizabeth elusive, I never quite understood what made her tick.
There weren't many memorable moments, I probably will forget what it was about pretty soon.

[Susan's Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think I was going to love this one as much as I did.

We start off with the matriarch of the Emerson family: Pamela - still pretty, even at her advanced aged. Her children are grown and rarely come home to visit. Is she too demanding, she wonders? What did she do that was so wrong?



When she hires the eccentric Elizabeth Abbot to be her new handyman, life will never be the same. I loved all the twists and turns in this long, involved story. Elizabeth was unflappable - until a gun, two high-maintenance twins, and a show-down in Timothy Emerson's apartment teaches Elizabeth that she can't live on the surface of life forever. Even inaction has it's consequences!



I adore Anne Tyler: this one was as quirky as it gets, and Elizabeth evolves before our eyes - loved and adored by all, but surrendering to none. One of my favourites, to be sure!

[P. Lundburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, I have to play the "read long ago but has stuck with me" card. So my apologies for this not being a proper review. What I will say (prior to a re-read and review, which is sure to happen in the future) is that #1: I wrote my Master's thesis on Anne Tyler's work, and that #2: this is my all-time favorite of Tyler's work. This was her fourth novel written and the first accepted for publication. And with good reason.

The story is of a young woman (Elizabeth) who is determined to have zero impact on anybody's life . . . she doesn't want that kind of responsibility. She takes a job as an assistant (handy-person, doer of all things that need to be done) for an older woman (Mrs. Emerson). She signs on as more of a general take-care-of-all-things person, but builds relationships despite her insistence on not have an impact. In the end, readers realize that nobody can choose not to have an impact. We all do. But back to the novel, this is one of the greatest of Tyler's novels of characterization (which is to say all of them), even though she has said she is embarrassed by this book; don't be fooled, it's an extremely well written novel worthy of a read.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Following the Emerson family over the course of a decade or so, this 4th novel from Anne Tyler, published in 1972, definitely feels like she is still finding her footing. Mrs. Emerson, the matriarch, has lost her husband and fired her handyman, when Elizabeth stumbles into their lives. Unconventionally, Mrs. Emerson hires Elizabeth to be their live-in handywoman and over the years Elizabeth weaves in and out of the Emerson's lives, becoming their resident problem solver, whether she likes it or not.

There's some interesting things in this book about family and loyalty, whether or not we owe it to help those we are related to, and how sometimes we can find solace and comfort from people we share very little in common with. It does all feel a bit underdeveloped, or perhaps just scatterbrained. The flow of the novel is linear, but it jumps from character to character without any clear intention. Unlike other Anne Tyler novels that seem to have a clear reason for which POV we are reading from, this one flits around and never quite finds its footing.

However, as with any Anne Tyler novel, there are some beautiful moments of simplicity, the little moments in life that could so easily slip by unnoticed but that she captures so wonderfully on the page. Her keen observation about humanity in all its complexity is still her greatest strength, and when she gets it right, it sings. While this one was a bit messy in its form, the characters were as vivid as ever, feeling like they could step right off the page and into the streets of Baltimore.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5) The Clock Winder was Tyler’s fourth novel and the first to take place in Baltimore, her trademark setting. It’s the earliest of her works that I’ve read. When I reviewed Clock Dance back in 2018, I wondered if there could be a connection between the two novels beyond their titles. A clock, of course, symbolizes the passage of time, so invites us to think about how the characters change and what stays the same over the years. But there is, in fact, another literal link: in both books, there is a fairly early mention of a gun – and, if you know your Chekhov quotes, that means it’s going to go off. Whereas in Clock Dance the gunshot has no major consequences, here it’s a method of suicide. So the major thing to surprise me about The Clock Winder is that it goes to a dark place that Tyler’s fiction rarely visits, though an additional later threat comes to nothing.

As the novel opens in 1960, Pamela Emerson fires the Black handyman who has worked for her for 25 years. “The house had outlived its usefulness,” what with Mr. Emerson dead these three months and all seven children grown up and moved out. Mrs. Emerson likes to keep up appearances – her own hair and makeup, and the house’s porch furniture, which a passerby helps her move. This helpful stranger is Elizabeth Abbott, a Baptist preacher’s daughter from North Carolina who is taking on odd jobs to pay for her senior year of college. Mrs. Emerson hires Elizabeth as her new ‘handyman’ for $40 a week. One of her tasks is to wind all the clocks in the house. Though she’s a tall tomboy, Elizabeth attracts a lot of suitors – including two of the Emerson sons, Timothy and Matthew.

We meet the rest of the Emerson clan at the funeral for the aforementioned suicide. There’s a very good post-funeral meal scene reminiscent of Carol Shields’s party sequences: disparate conversations reveal a lot about the characters. “We’re event-prone,” Matthew writes in a letter to Elizabeth. “But sane, I’m sure of that. Even Andrew [in a “rest home” for the mentally ill] is, underneath. Probably most families are event-prone, it’s just that we make more of it.” In the years to come, Elizabeth tries to build a life in North Carolina but keeps being drawn back into the Emersons’ orbit: “Life seemed to be a constant collision … everything recurred. She would keep running into Emersons until the day she died”.

The main action continues through 1965 and there is a short finale set in 1970. While I enjoyed aspects of the characters’ personalities and interactions, the decade span felt too long and the second half is very rambly. A more condensed timeline might have allowed for more of the punchy family scenes Tyler is so good at, even this early in her career. (There is a great left-at-the-altar scene in which the bride utters “I don’t” and flees!) Still, Elizabeth is an appealing antihero and the setup is out of the ordinary. I liked comparing Baltimore then and now: in 1960 you get a turkey being slaughtered in the backyard for Thanksgiving, and pipe smoking in the grocery store. It truly was a different time. One nice detail that persists is the 17-year cicadas.

You can see the seeds of some future Tyler elements here: large families, sibling romantic rivalries, secrets, ageing and loss. The later book I was reminded of most was Back When We Were Grown-ups, in which a stranger is accepted into a big, bizarre family and has to work out what role she is to play. A Tyler novel is never less than readable, but this ended up being my least favorite of the 12 I’ve read so far, so I doubt I’ll read the three that preceded it.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Lea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what it is about this one. It could have been me/the timing, but the novel just never really came together for me. Half way in my partner asked me whether I liked it and I gave him a shrug and said I didn't even know what it was about yet. It's Anne Tyler, so of course it's about a family, and most of the characters are eccentric in one way or another. It's not that there's nothing happening in this story - there's death and plenty of love - but the narrative is so opaque you're relying entirely on the characters. And they are all so flimsy and unlikable. At one poin the more or less main character Elizabeth says that she had to get away from the Emerson family because they drive her crazy, and that is how I felt about them too. But also about Elizabeth.

It's not necessarily a bad book. I actually found it entertaining enough and more or less engrossing but it left me with a "huh? that's it?" feeling. Anne Tyler herself apparently said she's a little ashamed of the novel. It's where she started writing family sagas set in Baltimore, and some of her trademark great elements are burried in there, but it's still quite muddled. I'd only recommend it to Tyler completetists.


The Tin Can Tree (1965) - 4/5
A Slipping-Down Life (1970) 3/5
The Clock Winder (1972) - 2/5
Celestial Navigation (1974) - 4/5
Earthly Possessions (1977) - 4/5
Morgan's Passing (1980) - 4/5
The Accidental Tourist (1985) - 3/5
Breathing Lessons (1988) - 4/5
Saint Maybe (1991) - 4/5
Ladder of Years (1995) - 4/5
A Patchwork Planet (1998) - 4/5
Back When We Were Grownups (2001) - 3/5
The Amateur Marriage (2004) - 3/5
Digging to America (2006) - 4/5
The Beginner’s Goodbye (2012) - 3/5
A Spool of Blue Thread (2015) - 5/5
Vinegar Girl (2016) - 2/5
Clock Dance (2018) 3/5
Redhead by the Side of the Road (2020) - 3/5

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a late comer to Anne Tyler, my love for her writing starting with her latest release, Red Head by the Side of the Road, earlier this year. I was so taken with the beauty, wit, and insight of her writing, that I’ve made a personal commitment to read as much of her backlist as possible – which will hopefully be all. So, from her most recent release, I’ve now stretched right back to one from 1972, The Clock Winder. From the very first page of this novel I felt this wrap of comfort slipping around me and this never left me for the duration. I just feel like Anne Tyler might be the very best author l have ever had the pleasure of reading, making me all the more satisfied that I have already begun purchasing her backlist and have several ready to go whenever the whim or need for a bit of Anne comes upon me.

The Clock Winder spans a decade with the large and rather hectic Emerson family. It begins with Mrs Emerson, recently widowed, rattling around her big house, sacking her outdoors handyman for peeing on the roses. By some twist of fate, Elizabeth happens by the house whilst headed on her way to enquire about a job as a housekeeper within the neighbourhood, and sees Mrs Emerson struggling to put her outdoor furniture from the veranda to the garage, offers assistance, and ends up staying on as the new handyman. And from this point on, the lives of Elizabeth, Mrs Emerson, and all seven of her adult children, are changed, in both good ways and bad.

Heartbreak and humour is delivered in equal measure, sometimes even in the same breathtaking passage. Everyone is a little bit crazy, a little bit out of the ordinary, a little bit too much or too little – kind of like real people, existing in a real family where the patterns and codes are really only understood by the inner circle. The conversations are sublime, absolutely priceless, and I am beginning to see that this is where Anne’s magic stems from, the intimacy that she is able to inject into any conversation or scene, bringing it to life as though you are right there with the characters, living alongside them. It’s incomparable. This novel, in a nutshell, is about a family. But it’s also about being in, and fitting into, a family, finding your place within that dynamic and the way in which this shapes who we are within the context of our other family members. We can all relate to being one person within our family and a whole other person in a different setting with other people, and this novel shows this with blistering clarity. It’s also about unconditional love, and the way in which we accept the quirks and faults of those we are related to, for better or worse, and often work around it. This is the type of fiction I crave, the very definition of a ‘comfort read’ for me.

Utterly brilliant. Just pass me the next Anne Tyler please.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been awhile since I read any Anne Tyler, so I can't compare this to any of her others. However, this seems very typical of what I remember of at least several: there is a large, noisy, mostly dysfunctional family. I can't imagine my wanting to read any of hers back to back, but, with few exceptions, I like her and will keep returning to her.

The novel opens in 1960. The recently widowed Pauline Emerson, seeing her handyman peeing on the roses, decides she's had enough of such behavior (after 25 years) and fires him. She then decides the furniture on the veranda doesn't need to sit there year round. Dressed in matching skirt and sweater and spikey heels, she begins moving it to the garage. Elizabeth Abbot is walking by and asks if she needs help. As simply as that, Elizabeth is hired as the new handyman, and a novel is written.

The characterizations are good enough. I'm not sure the individual characters matter so much as the characterization of the family. Mrs. Emerson has done her level best in raising her seven children, but they are selfish and peevish and mostly don't want much to do with her. It doesn't take long for the reader to realize that is all on the surface and, despite all, they do care about each other and about their mother. This might not be a "typical" American family, but it's not all that uncommon either.

The prose is very comfortable, if not exemplary - I discovered I didn't highlight a single sentence. This is not literature, but it was just the right book for me at this moment in time. I enjoyed it enough for 4-stars, but I'm afraid that might be an exaggeration, so a very very high 3-stars it is.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oramai conosco bene Anne Tyler. Conosco il suo stile pacato e tranquillo, volto a cogliere attimi di vita di tutti i giorni, con un’attenzione particolare alle vicende familiari. Ed è così anche in questo libro. Protagonista è una grande famiglia di Baltimora, composta da sette fratelli e dalla loro madre, rimasta improvvisamente vedova; come in ogni famiglia, ci sono sentimenti contrastanti che legano i figli: gelosie ed invidie che sfociano in eventi tragici, ma il tutto viene esposto con levità e leggerezza, quasi a invitare il lettore a non drammatizzare per le tempeste che la vita ci riserva. Il messaggio che la scrittrice trasmette è positivo, di speranza: sembra che la famiglia si sgretoli sotto i colpi inferti dal destino, ma non è così, alla fine l’affetto riesce ad emergere e a vincere, grazie all’intervento di un’estranea, una ragazza tuttofare che entra in punta di piedi nella famiglia per divenirne poi il perno, il collante che unisce i protagonisti della storia.
La lettura di questo libro mi ha fatto riflettere su un tema che sto vivendo in prima persona, quale quello degli anziani e delle loro esigenze. Capita che un genitore anziano preferisca essere accudito piuttosto che dal proprio figlio da un estraneo, e allora il figlio si interroga su come mai il suo affetto indiscusso sembri non essere riconosciuto dal genitore. Senza pensare che noi figli a volte non sappiamo far altro che esprimerci con rimostranze, borbottii, o infliggendo involontariamente piccole umiliazioni, quando invece la persona anziana chiede solo di essere capita, non chiede gesti impegnativi o eroici, chiede disponibilità, comprensione, pazienza e tanto amore.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 1 out of 5]

The blurb of this book quotes several reviews calling the authoress "a magical writer", "funny" etc. Perhaps some of her other books may be all that and more, but I found this book unfinishable, if that's a word. (And if it wasn't, it is now.)True, she evokes dysfunctional families very well, and if stultifying family dynamics are your thing, you'll enjoy it. Having been raised in one myself, they're not mine; I had enough of that thirty years ago.

I've waded through more than half of this book without feeling that anything really happens, in spite of several large happenings. Even a shooting ends up being treated as a non-event (and very unbelievably so). The first page is dated 1960, but there is absolutely nothing in the story itself that evokes the years of change and ferment in which I personally grew up. It could have taken place in the forties, or the eighties, or yesterday; placing that date so prominently at the head of the text seemed like yet another pointless gesture on the part of the authoress. The narration clanks and clatters along like an overloaded frieght train, deadening everything, and I was left with the sensation of sitting and waiting...for something, anything. Godot, perhaps?
I do not wait patiently at the best of times, and neither the story nor the writing was enough to engage me. By the time Elizabeth runs away home again, I simply didn't care about her or anyone else in this deadly dull tome.

If this is "magical writing," it must be very grey magic indeed.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice, quick and easy read to follow Wild Swans. I always enjoy Anne Tyler, and this was no exception. Favorite passage:

"Isn't it amazing how hard people work to raise their children? Human beings are born so helpless, and stay helpless so long. For every grownup you see, you know there must have been at least one person who had the patience to lug them around, and feed them, and walk them nights and keep them out of danger for years and years without a break. Teaching them how to fit into civilization and how to talk back and forth with other people, taking them to zoos and parades and educational events, telling them all those nursery rhymes and word-of-mouth fairy tales. Isn't that surprising? People you wouldn't trust your purse with five minutes, maybe, but still they put in years and years of time tending their children along and they don't even make a fuss about it... isn't that something?"

[Joan Concilio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll give this the same review I give every Anne Tyler book: I could read a new one every week for the rest of my life and be happy. I’ve never read anyone else who so clearly captures how people are and how life is. This is an older book but it holds up pretty perfectly. Her books sort of stand outside of time.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one my mom bought for me because I was interested in reading something, whatever it was, that she had liked. After dabbing in a few other books, I finally picked up Clock Winder. The story centers around a matriarch whose children have spread around the country. She is trying to take care of herself and her estate in Baltimore some months after her husband dies (a great character in his own right, even though he never says a line), when Elizabeth happens by and helps move some furniture around. The scenes that follow include many with Elizabeth and the Mrs. Emerson, the matriarch, as they develop a sort of family connection while Elizabeth works for her as a handyman. Over the course of the story (it's really more of a chronology of several relationships), Anne Tyler fleshes out some great characters, but I left with the sense that I didn't really know any of them. I don't mean to second guess the author, because she knows a crapton more than I do probably about everything. But I wanted to know more about her characters, what made them tick (pun intended). And I for sure wanted a better hold on the changes that occur with the characters. Instead, it had a little too much "This American Life", where substantive life change has no identifiable antecedents and only relies on tenuous connections between individuals. In my experience, people don't just change. They don't wake up one day, smell the roses, and say, "Today and for the rest of my life I will be a drastically different person." It takes a lot of hard work for someone to change even a little, especially when they're adult-aged. I guess I wanted a little death-and-resurrection in the character arcs, and when it didn't show up, none of it seemed quite as real. Just a nice painting. At any rate, I'd still recommend this one. I liked the characters, and it's nice to read about families as unique as my own. And my mom likes it, so I bet she picked up on that, too.

[Bridget · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Ann Tyler and another absorbing and thoughtful read. I got all swept away with the family in this book, a bunch of nutty but lovely, well for the most part people. Elizabeth, the handyman, is the heroine of the story. She enables the rest of the family to be as eccentric as anything while she calmly fixes the things they own but also fixes them along the way. There is a lot of love in this story, and everyone loves Elizabeth, and who can blame them.

If you are an Ann Tyler fan you'll love this one as much as all the rest. It is gentle, except for the gun incidents, and it is fun, sweet and thoughtful.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've really liked a number of Anne Tyler's books (especially "Digging to America" and "Saint Maybe". This book was a real disappointment. I kept waiting for whatever it is that has made the aforementioned books special, but it never appeared. If you want to read one of her books there are quite a few others more worthy of your time.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of Tyler earliest works, in which she shows promise, though the book never really comes together. Worked okay for me to fill time, but if you're looking for anything along the lines of her later, more acclaimed work, you'll likely be disappointed.
Audio narrator does a decent job with the material.

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've really enjoyed other books by Anne Tyler but didn't like this at all. I'm not sure if we're supposed to find the 'quirky' characters endearing but I just found them irritating. The characterisation is all very flat - we're told about the characters rather than getting 'inside' them - with the result that I didn't particularly care what happened to them. This was a tedious slog to the end.

[Cynthia Sillitoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn't like anything about this rather tedious book. At one point, a character wonders if she brought home the wrong baby from the hospital. I wonder if they put Anne Tyler's name on someone else's book?

[Arwen56 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Della Tyler non è che abbia mai avuto una grande opinione, ma una cretinata come questa ci vuole un bel talento per scriverla. Un bel talento per la stupidaggine.
Allora perchè hai letto tanti suoi romanzi, direte voi? Perchè, talvolta, in alcuni passaggi dei suoi scritti, coglie momenti ed esprime le sensazioni umane in modo veramente azzeccato.

Ma mi sa, ormai, data l'esperienza fatta, che le capita per puro caso e non perchè rifletta davvero sui problemi.
Bye bye, Mrs. Tyler

[Ineffable7980x]

DNF

This is not a bad book, it's just not to my taste.

At one time, 30 years ago, I considered myself an Anne Tyler fan. I read at least five of her books, including her two most famous, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist. But my tastes have changed over the years. I gave her another try, but this book just felt mundane and dull to me.

[Albablume · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another discovery for me as this is the first book I've read from this author and I loved it.

[Tim Buggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

One of the more melancholy and subdued Tyler novels. It had some tender moments and explored the dynamics of a dysfunctional family very well. But overall I think the story was just a little bit flat for me.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth is an unusual handyman in the 1960s and her interactions with the Emerson family shape her and the family for decades to come.

[Gina Lynette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. I love Anne Tyler. And there were absolutely sections of this book which were flawlessly written. However--and this is a huge however--there were 3 or 4 chapters which were completely baffling and confusing and even hard to follow. :) Most of the narrative involves Elizabeth--from her perspective and over the course of weeks. But in those 3 or 4 chapters you jump time and perspective. The narrators are drawn from minor, previously barely-mentioned characters--so their suddenly being front and center made for a strange adjustment. I had to re-read the beginnings of these chapters multiple times to figure out what was going on and who these people were. Then to be further vaulted into a completely different time period--sometimes several years later--simply added to my befuddlement. Okay--then the real kicker--in the final chapter, she not only changes time and perspective, she changes Elizabeth's name--in conversation as well as exposition--to Gillespie! Sigh. I wanted to love it. I didn't.

[Josie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a lovely little story which centres around a rather dramatic family, The Emersons. It follows a family's recovery from a life altering event.

I really enjoyed the unlikely relationship between Mrs Emerson and her 'handyman'. All the characters are delightfully flawed and 'real', but Mrs Emerson is by far my favourite; she's brilliant.

Not a lot actually happens, really. Just life. You see the characters grow and develop and live. It's nice.

The characters are difficult to like at times, as they are annoying and irrational. Life a real family I guess.

I breezed through this book in a few hours; it was really nice to read after a lot of heavy fantasy novels. I have seen the writer compared to a modern Jane Austen and I am inclined to agree.

However I am now going back to reading books about dragons.
Good day to you Sir/Madam/Unicorn

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

After three previous Anne Tyler reads which I completely failed to enjoy, I have finally read one I like. The book begins with quirky Mrs. Emerson firing her handyman. He is her last loyal retainer from her life with her husband and children. She doesn't even know why she fired him, but can't take it back. When a girl named Elizabeth happens by and offers to help her move her patio furniture, she takes a liking to her and hires her as the new handyman. They adapt surprisingly well to each other and their lives will never be the same again.
Like many of Anne Tyler's books, this is a story of people just living their lives, but there is quirkiness and humor and the occasional unexpected thing. I liked it a lot.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sigh. I can't give an Anne Tyler book anything less than a five star (except for one!). This one was sadder than most of them, and then ending was just a leeetle bit sketchy. But it's Anne Tyler and all's well that ends well.