The Accidental Tourist: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
by Anne Tyler
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne TylerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-04-09
ISBN: 0345452003
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of The Accidental Tourist: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
Book Review: Memorable and Moving
Summary: 5 Stars
Anne Tyler has made a career out of exploring citizens of Baltimore who are stuck in time, moving slowly in small circles while the world speeds ahead. And she does it wonderfully, plying again and again similar territory. In "Accidental Tourist," she follows this familiar outline, but pulls it off with humor and panache that places this book at or near the top of her very impressive achievements.
"Accidental Tourist" centers around a 40-ish man, Macon Leary, whose life is falling apart in the wake of a family tragedy. He moves back into the middle-class Baltimore home in which he grew up, joining his spinster sister and two divorced brothers. They immediately fall into the comfortable patterns they built up as youngsters, as bizarre as those patterns would seem to an outsider. Their lives are funny, touching, dignified -- and full of sadness and lost opportunity at the same time. They would apparently be happy to live that way for another 40 years, but just enough happens to unsettle their patterns and alter their lives.
Over the months that Macon lives with his siblings, stories emerge about his youth, his marriage, and his son. Those incidents, large and small, continue to influence what he does (and doesn't do) as he seeks to stabilize his life again.
Anne Tyler really shines in this book because Macon and his siblings are so delicious that their interactions carry the book beyond a fairly pedestrian plot. For example, the book's title references a series of travel books that Macon writes for business people who hate to travel; ie., he shows them how to travel while feeling they've never left the comforts of home and experienced anything new. Other examples include the card game Vaccination created by the Leary siblings or the courtship of Rose Leary by Macon's playboy boss. Priceless stuff.
Anyway, Macon's renewal after a year of sadness comes in the form of yet another memorable character: Murial, a working-class woman who trains Macon's unruly dog. Eventually, Macon becomes smitten by Muriel and, through her, sees another side of Baltimore, and of himself. And, as one would expect, Macon decides (after a series of retreats) that the looser life of Muriel is superior to the cautious, organized, stilted life he'd lived before. It's a story with a happy ending.
I'd recommend this book to anyone and everyone (and I'd recommend the movie, too, as Geena Davis is spot-on as Muriel). However, I'd also tell people that they shouldn't expect Anne Tyler's other works to reach such a perfect pitch. The other books are quirky, and they turn on the same issue of trying to break out of a stifled life. But they don't do it as well.
Summary of The Accidental Tourist: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
?POIGNANT . . . FUNNY . . . THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST IS ONE OF HER BEST. . . . [TYLER] HAS NEVER BEEN STRONGER.??The New York Times
Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon?s insular world?and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.
?BITTERSWEET . . . EVOCATIVE . . . It?s easy to forget this is the warm lull of fiction; you half-expect to run into her characters at the dry cleaners . . . Tyler [is] a writer of great compassion.?
?The Boston Globe
?Tyler has given us an endlessly diverting book whose strength gathers gradually to become a genuinely thrilling one.?
?Los Angeles Times
?A DELIGHT . . . A GRACEFUL COMIC NOVEL ABOUT GETTING THROUGH LIFE.?
?The Wall Street Journal
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