| Back When We Were Grownups Contributor(s): Tyler, Anne (Author) |
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ISBN: 0345446860 ISBN-13: 9780345446862 Publisher: Vintage OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2002 Annotation: "A WONDERFUL NOVEL . . . Tyler's eye and ear for familial give and take is unerring, her humanity irresistible. You'll want to turn back to the first chapter the moment you finish the last." -"People (Page-Turner of the Week) "STUNNING . . . 'Once upon a time, ' the story begins, 'there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.' . . . With Rebecca Davitch, Tyler has created a character who is brave enough to look back on her life and to imagine herself making different kinds of choices. Brave enough to wonder what honesty looks like, whether there is ever really a single distillation of self that is unshakable and true. . . . Anne Tyler has a talent for spinning out characters . . . who go on living long after their stories end." "-The Baltimore Sun "Her characters endear themselves to the reader with their candor and their wit and their simple decency. . . . The charm of an Anne Tyler novel lies in the clarity of her prose and the wisdom of her observations." "-The Washington Post Book World "RESEMBLES JANE AUSTEN'S "PERSUASION IN THAT IT'S A NOVEL ABOUT SECOND CHANCES . . . The tension that keeps the narrative alive is our desire for Rebecca to get the recognition and respect that we know she deserves from her family, and from herself. It's always good to have a character to root for." "-San Jose Mercury News "Maybe there's something glorious to be said, after all, for companionship, common cause, and sanctuary. And what there is to say, Anne Tyler has been saying for decades, with gravity and grace." "-The New York Times Book Review |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Family Life - General - Fiction | Sagas |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 2002090423 |
| Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 5.54" W x 8.16" (0.53 lbs) 288 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Maryland - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic - Demographic Orientation - Urban - Topical - Family |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: You'll want to turn back to the first chapter the moment you finish the last." --PEOPLE Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation--something she married into after Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family's crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was his family business. What caught Joe's fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited divorc with three little girls swept Beck into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family--plus a child of their own--and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms. Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family party, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. Is she an impostor in her own life? Is it indeed her own life? How she answers--how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been--is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. |