43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Amalgamation of Two Uniquely American Families, October 26, 2007
This review is from: Digging to America: A Novel (Paperback)
I've always loved Anne Tyler's novels. Frankly, I consider her to be a modern American literary treasure. I love the predictability of Tyler's novels--there is usually a Baltimore setting, a focus on small family drama, a woman who suddenly find herself a stranger in her own life, and a host of unforgettable spot-on-perfect characters that jump to life off the page and live alongside us while we observe them interacting with one another. Tyler's latest novel, "Digging to America," is no exception; however, with this new work, Tyler adds a number of wonderful new ingredients.
The new ingredients are cultural differences, cultural assimilation, and an endearing Iranian-American character who finds herself a stranger, not only in her own life, but in her adopted country as well. There is an intriguing additional ingredient for those readers who love to get inside the minds and lives of authors: this book has strong autobiographical overtones, and this is a real bonus for an author as reclusive as Tyler! More about that later.
"Digging to America" is a novel about the slow amalgamation of two very different American families: the Donaldsons, a bright, cheery, everything-out-in-the-open, mildly quirky, but nonetheless typical, middle-class American family; and the Yazdans, an Iranian-American family who exhibit most of the archetypal cultural hang-ups of that particular ethnic subculture. On first appearance, these families seem to be polar opposites.
They are drawn together by chance at the Baltimore airport, where each family comes to collect its newly adopted baby daughter from Korea. From the very first, all the differences between these two families appear in strong, stark, loving, humorous, and typically Tyleresque contrast.
After this first meeting, it would have been natural in "real life" for both of these families to disappear from each other's lives. But, this is an Anne Tyler novel, and you can count on Bitsy Donaldson's quirky, meddlesome, everything-is-possible nature to get these two families together again and again, year after year at annual family rituals. There are the "Arrival Parties," where the families celebrate their daughter's first entrance into America. These parties are an all-American patchwork of 4th-of-July celebration and family hoedown. The centerpiece is a manic family sing-a-long of "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain." Then there are the autumn "Raking Parties," both girls' birthday parties, Thanksgiving celebrations, Christmas parties, and most original of all, the "Binky Farewell Party." This last affair was specially designed to help the Donaldson's second adopted daughter--this time from China--give up her embarrassingly long-lived reliance on binkies.
These parties provide the novel with its structure. Each event works like a short story, and as such they are complete and enjoyable in their own right. But Tyler chooses to weave these events into a novel. She uses these parties as perfect observation points for readers to watch these two families interact, grow, and change over time. We watch them for a decade. Between the parties, there are major life-altering events that occur in the lives of individual Donaldson and Yazdan family members. But these big life events are not the focus--the focus always remains on the small everyday dramas and the slow changes that move these families--little by little--together, until they are seamlessly one.
If there is a main character in this novel, it is Maryam Yazdan. It is her life that Tyler focuses on with great love, insight, humor, and understanding. Maryam first comes to America four decades before the opening of this story. She comes as a teenage bride willingly accepting a quasi-arranged marriage with a slightly older man who has already made America his home. For 40 years, Maryam has been a woman caught between two cultures--never feeling at home in either. She feels perpetually "the outsider," with no concept about how to live as one who belongs.
Anne Tyler married an Iranian-American psychiatrist at the age of 22 and this marriage lasted for 34 years until her husband's untimely death from cancer in 1997. She has two children from this marriage and has not remarried. Obviously, she knows a great deal about the intermingling of Iranian and American families. Undoubtedly, there are strong autobiographical threads hidden within the fabric of these characters' fictional lives.
It is Maryam that we readers end up rooting for at the end of this novel. It is her life that we want so much to see changed for the better. Perhaps this is Anne Tyler unconsciously trying to write herself into a less solitary future. Regardless, Maryam is pure magic--a character long to be remembered, a character long to be loved.
Eventually, the families amalgamate into one big happy multiethnic Donaldson-Yazdan Tribe--part Korean, part Chinese, part Iranian...but finally, for all of them, one-hundred percent American.
This is a book about families It is about what is means to be a family. It is also about Americans and what is means to be an American. It is not one of Tyler's masterpieces, but it is delightful and enjoyable on many levels, and I recommend it highly.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Richly textured and rewarding, December 14, 2007
This review is from: Digging to America: A Novel (Paperback)
As a big Anne Tyler fan, I had long been looking forward to reading her latest book, not just because I am a fan, but because of the subject matter. My maternal relatives are Armenian/Assyrian immigrants from Iran, and although Maryam and Ziba are Iranians and (I assume -- religion is touched upon very lightly in the book, if at all) Moslem, I knew there would be lots of cultural things in the book that I could identify with.
I was not disappointed in this -- Tyler blends her wonderful characterizations deftly with descriptions of the food and customs of the country, along with some very insightful writing regarding the feelings of the immigrant in the U.S. I know firsthand (from my mother and her relatives) the longing for assimilation, and the feeling of hopelessness that you will ever be looked at as anything other than an object of curiosity.
Maryam was, to me, by far the most interesting character and the one Anne Tyler herself grew to be the most interested in. She is very different than my own mother, who is an extrovert and LOVES talking about her cultural differences and her past life. Maryam's reserve and dignity are more reflective of the Iranians I have met. I would have liked to have seen Ziba's character developed more. She was young when she emigrated to the U.S. and definitely embraced American life and customs to the nines, but I felt there were some ambivalences there that were touched upon that could have been better developed.
There really isn't much of a plot, and Anne Tyler herself says that plot is the last thing she thinks about when writing her wonderful novels. She is all about character development, and that suits me just fine. The constant shifting of viewpoints got on my nerves a little bit. That is a very popular technique these days, and I can follow it just fine, but after awhile I usually find myself wishing the author had stuck to just two viewpoints. Even as skilled a writer as Anne Tyler can leave the reader feeling that the book was just a little shallow as a result of this. Kind of like having too many people at a party, or more acquaintances than real friends. Luckily, Maryam is such a fascinating character, the book works well.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, October 6, 2007
This review is from: Digging to America: A Novel (Paperback)
This is a charming book in its own placid way (had there been the possibility, I would have rated it with 3 1/2 stars).
Initially, I thought the main subject was adoption, in reality this book explores more than that. In fact, I believe that its core revolves around the issues of family dynamics and integration in every sense of the word, starting from adopting babies from a far away country/culture and the subsequent adjusting to a new life, all the way through the struggles (for the older members of the family) to become well-integrated in a foreign country.
This is true especially for Maryam, one of the Grannies, who moved to the USA as a young bride from Iran. Although the narrative gently shifts from character to character (the two adoptive families, the new babies, all the relatives on both sides etc.) -and each and every one has a fair share of space in the book-, I perceived that the main character is Maryam herself.
She has been a widow for years and it seems that, to this day, she has a sort of polite resilience to adjust to the American way of life (although she doesn't seem to miss her native country too much). Even so, she has found her niche and is content with the daily regularity of her life, until someone belonging to the other adoptive family -and to her, the sterotype of everything American- starts to show affection for her. Her sense of belonging, emotional and geographical, starts to oscillate causing a lingering and subtle vulnerability.
I see the rest of the story (the adoptions, the description of both families and most of the ensuing situations), almost as a contour line surrounding Maryam's tale.
On the whole, I'd say that the characterizations in this book are good and very real-life, but the story line is a bit weak. Not too memorable but certainly a pleasant read, even comical at times (the give-up-binky episode was very hilarious). I think this book is suitable for young readers too (14+).
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