When Joe Davitch first saw Rebecca, it was at a party at the Davitch home - a crumbling nineteenth-century house in Baltimore where giving parties was the family business. Young Rebecca looked to Joe like the girl having more fun than anyone in the room and he wanted some of that happiness to spill over onto him, a 33-year-old divorce with three little girls. Swept away, Rebecca soon found herself mistress of 'The Open Arms', embracing not only this large spirited man and his extended family but expertly hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms where people pay to have family celebrations in style. But now, years after she has lost her husband in a car accident, Beck (as she is known to the Davitch clan) asks herself whether she is an impostor in her own life. Is she really this natural-born celebrator, joyous and outgoing? Can she always be there for Poppy, her almost 100-ear-old uncle-in-law who lives on the top floor, for stepdaughters - Biddy and NoNo and Patch and the husbands and fiances, as they come and go, and their children - and for her own daughter Min Foo, pregnant again? What would have happened if she'd married her blond college sweetheart, Will, back then when they were so young and so serious and so sure about everything? Can one ever recover the person one has left behind - and would one ever like them? With perfect pitch, Anne Tyler explores these unsettling questions of love and loss, of identity and family, moving with breathtaking assurance between heartbreak and hilarity, between tenderness and razor-sharp observation in a novel that we wish would never end.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964 whilst her 11th novel, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1994, Tyler was nominated 'the greatest living novelist writing in English' by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
108 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Anne Tyler Excels With Laugh-out-Loud Yet Poignant Story,
By
This review is from: Back When We Were Grownups: A Novel (Hardcover)
Much has been made, and deservedly so, of the excellent opening line to this novel---Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. Not since Daphne DuMaurier penned Rebecca have I read such a strong, enticing opening. Coincidentally, the heroine of this story is named Rebecca. Like many middle-aged women, she reaches a point where she wonders what happened to that intelligent, inquisitive 18-year old and how she evolved into the family planner and consoler, a grandmother who dresses like a bag lady. Anne Tyler keeps her brilliant humor with this one as she gives us quirky, slightly offbeat characters surrounded by chaos, trying to make it while sliding downhill all the time. This work is all about the choices we make and the big "What IFS." In the midst of one typically chaotic moment, while trying to cheer up an unhappy, grumbling family during a picnic, a perpetually jolly Rebecca is shocked to realize what a clean, simple life she would have led of it weren't for love. Nothing in the much-extended and offbeat Davitch family ever "flows" and it is always Rebecca at the epicenter of all crises. Apparently, she learns, you grow to love whomever you're handed whether it's a 99-year old man on his way to the hospital or a daughter who drops husband after husband, always after having given birth to a child. Tyler gives us a look into the everyday events in life that are fraught with laughter (but only to an outsider or years later in retrospect.) Her meeting with her former fiance, the dinner with his multi-pierced daughter, the 100th birthday party she hosts for her uncle-in-law, and her attempt at an elegant dinner party while two gardeners discuss their mating habits outside an open window are just some of the laugh-out-loud funny moments that fill this book. It is Rebecca's long-put-on-hold study of Robert E. Lee that leads her to the realization there are no grander motivations than family and friends and your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. Rebecca finally sees herself on a family video and realizes she really had been having a wonderful time. And you will, too, as you share her middle-aged crisis with her. Happy reading!
59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Anne Tyler's saddest book,
By Kinsey Millhone (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Back When We Were Grownups: A Novel (Hardcover)
Anne Tyler is a private person who never gives interviews, does readings, or signs autographs. For many years, I lived less than a mile away from her home in Northern Baltimore, and occasionally I would drive past in hopes of catching a glimpse of her out in the yard. I never did. However, in her last book, "A Patchwork Planet," she did provide one small window into her personal life: a dedication in memory of her late husband, who must have died while that book was being written.With that piece of information in mind, it becomes apparent to the reader that "Back When We Were Grownups" is Tyler's first novel as a widow. The main character, Rebecca, is widowed; there are aching descriptions of what it's like to lose a loved one. If this is Tyler's most melancholy work, well, it's understandable, given the circumstances. Somehow, she manages to make each new family of Baltimore eccentrics seem fresh; the dialogue rings true, and each character's traits are carefully observed (I particularly loved Rebecca's ex-boyfriend's obsession with his home-cooked chili). My only quarrel is that there are SO many characters that at times, I felt like drawing up a family tree just to keep track of all the in-laws and children and ex-husbands (not to mention the many repairmen constantly tending to Rebecca's crumbling old house). This is a bittersweet, beautifully written work.
43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enter the Chaotic Life of Rebecca,
By C. Garrett (Glendale, AZ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Back When We Were Grownups: A Novel (Hardcover)
I have to be honest. I nearly put this book down within the first few pages, having been introduced to such characters named Biddy, Patch, NoNo, and Jeep. I mean REALLY, I was wondering what was up with Anne Tyler's choice of names. Nevertheless, I stuck with it and discovered that the unique nick-names (as later found out) are a benefit to keeping the family tree straight, saving the reader from what would otherwise cause the greatest of headaches... there are so many people in this book!That is how I know Tyler is a great author; she offers us a book of only 274 pages and gives us a story that is 1,000 pages in magnitude, a history of so many persons tucked into this easy-to-read package. "Back When We Were Grownups" truly deserves four and a half stars. (My best rating, being that I don't believe in a perfect score.) I truly empathized with the character of Rebecca, a widowed fifty-three year old woman whose sole responsibility seems to be as peace-maker to her riotous family; meanwhile, paying the bills as a professional party-planner at the "Open Arms." She seems to have lost her life, having given all her time to everything or everyone other than herself. She starts to wonder about the road less traveled and what makes this novel inviting is that she goes back to that road, years later, and picks up the journey. "Back When We Were Grownups" is a book about re-evaluating our choices, deciding whether we've carried our life or if life has carried us. This is a novel about the question of fate, if one has - somehow, accidentally - denied her own true destiny. In its conclusion, I had two distinct endings in mind. But, as if emphasizing the moral of her story, Anne Tyler gave me something I had not considered; something so subtle that it didn't seem to be the end. Even in its resolve, there is an emphasis that life cannot be predictable and yet, Tyler hints that one should respect that life is such a way. In "Back When We Were Grownups," Anne Tyler has brought forth the beauty that is life, examining all its disappointments and surprises. This is a very enjoyable read.
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