Noah's Compass
by Anne Tyler
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne TylerEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2010-01-05
ISBN: 0307272400
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Noah's Compass
Book Review: Liam In Love
Summary: 5 Stars
Liam Pennywell, at 60, has just lost his job as a fifth-grade teacher in a "second-rate" private boys' school. A philosophy major-- surely the second most useless degree on earth after English-- his career has spiralled downward from college philosophy instructor to history teacher, then fifth-grade teacher. In his love-life, he goes from his first wife, a "water maiden," to a woman no one would notice in a crowd to someone whose own parents see her as a loser. That first wife, the mother of his oldest child Xanthe, committed suicide 32 years ago. "If she were to see him now, she would think, who is that old man?" He and his second wife Barbara, two years his senior, are the parents of two daughters, Louise, a Christian fundamentalist who attends Book of Life Tabernacle, and seventeen-year-old Kitty, who was their child born late in their lives to save their marriage but did not.
Now Liam is downsizing, moving to a smaller apartment. "What reason would he have to move again? No new prospects were likely for him. He had gotten married, had children--and now he was winding down." Just like the Old Testament character Noah, he needs no compass because he isn't going anywhere. His life sounds all too familiar. And like the characters in the novel A WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN and the movie by the same title, nothing new would ever happen to him again. Then he is confronted with the possibility of a new love.
Tyler does here what no living American writer I can think of does any better with the possible exception of Reynolds Price, she creates the most ordinary but complex character and convinces you to completely care about him. NOAH'S COMPASS is in the solid tradition of this writer's previous novels. Someone often has a slightly off center occupation as in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST and A PATCHWORK PLANET. In this instance it's a "hired rememberer." Tyler's other earmarks are here: the novel is set in Baltimore, there are no villains, no tsunamis, and the conflict is domestic. As the writer has aged, so has her protagonist, however.
Ms. Taylor asks a hard question: do we have the right to harm others in order to have what Liam's father calls "our share of happiness"? The novel is about love late in life and family relationships and ultimately acceptance of the life you have lived. "And Liam really wanted nothing. He had an okay place to live, a good enough job, a book to read, a chicken in the oven. He was solvent, if not rich, and healthy."
Finally there is Ms. Taylor's disarmingly transparent language that is always so effective. Liam's two page description of his new love (portions of it repeated here) are apt examples and remind us of the joy of first being in love: "He found her fascinating and funny and complex. She was a perpetual astonishment. He studied her like a language.
For instance: She was chronically late everywhere, but she fanatasized that she could outwit herself by keeping her watch set ten minutes ahead.
She acted completely besotted whenever she met a small dog.
Direct sunlight made her sneeze.
Among her most deep-seated fears were spiders, West Nile disease and choral recitals. (She suffered from the morbid conviction that she might suddenly jump up and start singing along with the soloist.)"
NOAH's COMPASS is a welcome addition to Ms. Tyler's other fine novels.
Summary of Noah's Compass
From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn?t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.
His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is?well, something quite different.
We all know a Liam. In fact, there may be a little of Liam in each of us. Which is why Anne Tyler?s lovely novel resonates so deeply.
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