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Back When We Were Grownups

By Anne Tyler

(30)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780345477248

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Book Description

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? OContinue

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s?

On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.

Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.

As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.


From the Hardcover edition.

Critics

  • Young at heart

    Back When We Were Grownups Anne Tyler 274pp, Chatto & Windus, £15.99 Tweeness in fiction is always difficult to call. Its suggestion of affectation and quaintness, silliness and sentiment, provides writers with numerous opportunities for gentle satir ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • A formula that shows its age

    Anne Tyler's protagonists are dutiful, wistful people who, after a lifetime of looking after others, plan a timid and almost overlooked rebellion, such as walking away from a family picnic, or contacting a long- lost friend. Rebecca Davitch has every ... (read full critics)

    spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • 1 person find this helpful

    Read over two days. Funny and entertaining account of a large extended family and the woman at the centre of the family - but not a stereotype matriach. Usual standard for Anne Tyler. Shame about the physics teacher - obvious stereotype!

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    Canda said on Feb 5, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • Given to me in a load of books to read and release.
    Ann Tyler is one of America's most acclaimed novelists. It was much acclaimed when it was first published in 2001 when I read it. A comedy of manners.

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    Lindyloumac said on Sep 3, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

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ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780345477248 Mass Market Paperback $7.50 $6.75 bn.com
$7.50 $6.84 The Book Depository
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