Dinner at Homesick Resaurant

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant published by Vintage Books in 1982 and since then never out of print was authored by Anny Tyler, voted ‘the greatest novelist writing in English' in 1994 by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. If she has more in common with Roddy Doyle than Hornby then I'd go so far as to say she has more in common with Barbara Pym than either.

Her novels plough the same furrow as Pym but in a contemporary, North American setting. Famous for her novel The Accidental Tourist, made into a brilliant film starring? This one starts at the deathbed of the single mother of three now grown-up children and retraces their lives from childhood to the day of Peal's death. It is both comedic and tragic in the way life is and Tyler's skill lies in her ability to create a vivid sense of family relationships expressed through a concentration of daily incident. She has the ability to embed a phrase or incident in the minutiae of domestic life which acts as the pivot for later revelations. For instance Jenny, the daughter, is described in passing (no big dramatic scenes here) as pushing her daughter's face into her Peter Rabbit dish, a moment of casual violence from an otherwise jokey character. Of course the jokiness is a symptom of Jenny's inability to face up to the hard facts of reality. Only later does this little time bomb detonate when, again in passing, there's a phrase mentioning the daughter's anorexia. No comment, no judgement, no explanation. Merely another little stitch in the thick tapestry of daily life Tyler weaves. It is symptomatic of her style. It's also quite sly. You have to stay awake and pay attention to the apparently inconsequential. I would imagine that if you're one of those readers who skim from page to page, alighting only randomly as the mood takes you, you'll miss the deep enjoyment to be had from Tyler's books.

I won't give away the major incident around which the lives of all the characters, especially the absent father, endlessly spin but it's beautifully done. The attempt to have just one family meal in the restaurant of the title is on the same level as Mrs Dalloway's attempt to go to the Lighthouse. In fact Tyler might be seen as reworking the theme of Woolf's novel just as all great novelists rework the themes that deeply touch our hearts. Visit the Homesick Restaurant soon. But don't forget to take a tissue.