Anne Tyler is concerned with the lives of ordinary people—in this case a middle-aged couple, Maggie and Ira Moran. The novel explores a common confusion of middle age—how we got where we ended up in life.
After attending an unusual funeral, in which Maggie’s best friend Serena attempted to recreate her wedding day—Maggie talks Ira into detouring to visit their ex-daughter-in-law, Fiona, and their granddaughter, Leroy. The situation with these two is unfortunate, for the Morans have not seen their seven-year-old granddaughter since her third birthday. However, Maggie is convinced that son Jesse and Fiona still love each other, and all they need is a little nudge to get back together.
It is immediately apparent that Maggie is a somewhat scattered thinker, while Ira is more practical. It takes a while to learn, though, something that Ira understands—Maggie is so prone to look at the positives that she doesn’t see things as they are but as she wants them to be. Unfortunately, this includes getting carried away to the point of lying about things.
This wasn’t my favorite Anne Tyler book, but it depicts some characters who seem very true to life (but are also similar to the couple in The Amateur Marriage). Maggie is, I think, supposed to be lovable, but I sympathized with Ira and thought his patience was phenomenal. Jesse is a fairly typical boy-man, another one of Tyler’s types, lacking in responsibility but whose irresponsibility may have been encouraged by Ira’s lack of faith in him. Maggie fails to see that Fiona not only left Jesse, she left the whole family because of its dynamics.
What? Me Read? 
Tyler’s usual scatterbrained woman + useless man! I enjoyed this one, but didn’t think it stood out enough from her oeuvre to account for it getting the Pulitzer Prize. (I don’t know if you know blogger Liz at all; she did a reread through Tyler’s complete works last year and it was interesting to see how the typical themes and characters have played out across her career: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/about/anne-tyler-re-read-project-2021/)
No, I didn’t read that. I agree that some of her other books seemed more Pulitzer worthy, especially as I had just read The Amateur Marriage (not sure which came first), which was very similar.
I don’t know why I thought I had a copy of this, but I see that I don’t. Sounds okay, but not her best.
It’s the one that won the Pulitzer, though.
Yes, well… there have been a few instances where the Pulitzer goes to a novel by an author which isn’t actually their best, but they realize that the author deserves the prize for another work they overlooked.
That’s probably true.
This was the one with all the cat deaths, wasn’t it? It certainly wasn’t my favourite, and I liked Amateur Marriage better. This is a perceptive review; that’s definitely true of Fiona!
I don’t remember any cat deaths, but I could be wrong. I read it last year.
Yes, I checked back on my review, Maggie ends up letting three animals die through her vagueness, I didn’t put details into my review but it did affect my reading of the novel!
Wow! I forgot that!