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Sometimes it's the most ordinary days that can take us most by surprise.

About the Author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons and many other bestselling novels, including The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Saint Maybe, Ladder of Years, A Patchwork Planet, Back When We Were Grownups, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America and The Beginner's Goodbye. In 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English' and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, which recognises a lifetime's achievement in books. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for both the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize. Her latest novel, Vinegar Girl, is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew.

Reviews

A work of art
*Guardian*

Her finest novel
*Irish Times*

A novel by Anne Tyler is a subject for rejoicing...Breathing Lessons is a pleasure
*The Times*

Anne Tyler has a real gift for generating tender and amazing moments
*Independent*

Displays her extraordinary gifts in supreme harmony: exquisite narrative clarity, faultless comic timing, and the Tyler trademark of happy-sad characters inspiring a mid-American domestic drama that somehow slips the surly bonds of the quotidian to become timeless and universal
*Guardian, Best 100 Novels of all time*

Every reader knows a couple like the Morans. Maggie is a compassionate flibbertigibbet whose best intentions always backfire. Dour and sensible Ira, ``born competent,'' Maggie thinks, ``should have married Ann Landers.'' As they drive inexorably (with a few detours) toward the most comical funeral in recent fiction, Ira ponders his wasted life and the traffic. Maggie, meanwhile, is hatching a plot she thinks could reunite their son with his long-estrangeed wife and child, based on the evidence she has fabricated. Tyler's most entertaining novel yet, a love story in praise of marriage; essential for all fiction collections. Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C.

A work of art * Guardian *
Her finest novel * Irish Times *
A novel by Anne Tyler is a subject for rejoicing...Breathing Lessons is a pleasure * The Times *
Anne Tyler has a real gift for generating tender and amazing moments * Independent *
Displays her extraordinary gifts in supreme harmony: exquisite narrative clarity, faultless comic timing, and the Tyler trademark of happy-sad characters inspiring a mid-American domestic drama that somehow slips the surly bonds of the quotidian to become timeless and universal * Guardian, Best 100 Novels of all time *