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Back When We Were Grownups

a book review by Roxanna Cain

Back When We Were Grownups
by Anne Tyler
Alfred A. Knopf 2001, 273 pages

From the author of The Accidental Tourist and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler, her newest and expectedly wonderful novel Back When We Were Young, fresh off the presses in May, 2001.

This is the kind of novel this reviewer awaits with anticipation, impatient when the author has taken more than a couple of years to publish something new.

As in many of her other novels, Tyler takes us through the domestic travails of a run-of-the-mill person, in this case Rebecca Davitch, who at 53, is frustrated with her life. Her husband has been dead for decades, and she oversees the family business, party organizing, with efficiency, a glowing smile, and inner despair. Enter old college heartthrob and recently divorced Will Allenby and Rebecca thinks this is her second chance. She abandons her African motif caftan in favor of a slim blue skirt, pretties up her hair, and prepares to give the relationship a go. But something is askew. Meanwhile, her huge, rowdy family, which includes 100-year-old Poppy ---her dead husband’s uncle; NoNo, her florist stepdaughter; and an array of colorful characters who crowd Rebecca’s life and house with noise, grandchildren, and elaborate, often argumentative family dinners to which no one arrives on time, continues to exert its powerful pull. In the end, Rebecca follows a happy path.

Anne Tyler is a magical storyteller. With a penchant for the homespun, mobile homes, things like that, she would appear simplistic at first glance. Quite the opposite is true. She uses her eye for detail, simple language, and minimalist plots to convey often profound themes, heart-wrenching stories, and also happy endings that touch the heart. This is a book you can read right through. You will feel sad when you are done.