Anne Tyler
Ladder of Years
Knopf
by Rose Martelli
It always amazes me that more people haven't heard of Anne Tyler, as she has been subtly crafting stories about average Joes in Baltimore for 13 novels now. Five novels ago, she penned The Accidental Tourist, which everyone's heard of because Geena Davis won an Oscar for her role in the movie version. Two novels ago, she won a Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons. And in her latest novel, Ladder of Years, she sustains the type of storytelling that can immediately lift or drag your spirits, even if you read it in snatchets on the bus between classes.
Delia Grinstead lives in a house cluttered by her husband (who inherited her father's physician practice), her three distanced children, and her imposing older sister.It's the house she's lived in her entire life, as "even after the wedding she had not moved away but simply installed her husband among her sweet-sixteen bedroom furniture."
But then one day Delia Grinstead goes to the supermarket, where she meets Adrian, the young divorcee who asks her to pose as his girlfriend. Afterwards, Delia knows that the event should rank as miniscule, at best spontaneous, in the course of her life, but she can't seem to dismiss it as such. It eventually prompts her to hitch a ride from a stranger while clad in nothing but a bathing suit and flip-flops.
Tyler has a beautiful gift for getting inside people's headsDnot just the heads of people who are characters in her novels, but the people who read those novels as well. She possesses a style so fluid and unique that I find myself thinking in Tyleresque phrases. Rose knew she shouldn't admit to such trappings, and would pay for it later when Sam Grinstead would cast an inquisitive, arched eyebrow her way. She twirled her skirt hem around an extended finger, and staring bleakly at its loud pattern, decided that she didn't care.
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