Customer Reviews

Digging to America (Random House Large Print)

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

There is much of the familiar in Anne Tyler's latest novel, "Digging to America"; endearing characters, the bustle and flow of family life, and the small wonders of the quotidian world, but much is new here as well. For one thing, the protagonist Maryam is a most unusual "Tyler woman". She is small, compact and spare, elegant and soft spoken. She holds herself in and thinks before she speaks. She doesn't trail scarves, tissues and hairpins the way many of Tyler's women do. She's not prescient Justine from "Searching for Caleb", nor scatter-brained Maggie from "Breathing Lessons", nor a caretaker like Rebecca from "Back When We Were Grownups". And Maryam's "difference" is purposefully apt, for she is a foreigner. This novel, about two families who become intertwined when they both adopt Korean girls, explores the notions of fitting in, what it means to be "different", of what it is to be an "American", of what must be lost of the self to join a community. (This last point is amusingly illustrated in an attempt to coerce a tiny Chinese girl into giving up her pacifier.)

Readers familiar with Tyler's work will not be surprised to find that September 11th is given but a glancing swipe. After all, Tyler skimmed past WWII and the Vietnam war in her last novel "The Amateur Marriage"! The outside world does not affect Tyler's landscape the way family does. Ever.

This insightful tale of culture clash and will delight all Tyler fans. One can't help but assume that much of this story is autobiographical given that Tyler's late husband was from Iran. That certainly adds credibility to the characters. Also, the candid conversation two characters have about losing a spouse rings very true. I'm a huge Tyler fan, so she could publish her collected grocery lists and I would love it, but I can honestly offer my opinion that this novel will satisfy any reader interested in what it means to be a part of a whole; country, community or family.

I always marvel at what a quick and easy read Anne Tyler is without being glib and facile. Her latest novel DIGGING TO AMERICA is no exception. It's as if Jane Austin came to live in present day Baltimore and was kinder and gentler. There is not a single villain amongst Tyler's latest group of just off-center characters-- and there are enough folks here to fill up a Eudora Welty Sunday dinner-- I'm almost positive Ms. Welty would like this novel if she were alive.

Two couples, previously unknown to each other, arrive at the Baltimore airport on Friday, August 15, 1997 to meet their newly adopted baby daughters from Korea. Because of that meeting, they become friends, particularly the two mothers. The Donaldsons-- Bitsy and Brad-- are as American as key lime pie, and their new friends, Sami and Ziba Yazdan, are Iranian American. Much of the plot has to do with Sami's mother Maryam who came to the United States as a young bride and her difficulties with being between two worlds and not feeling at home in either.

The characters sometimes act silly, occasionally badly; but to a person they mean well. Ms. Tyler writes beautifully about finding love again in old age, a topic few writers do well or even attempt for that matter. Of course Gabriel Garcia Marquez covers that topic in the incomparable LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA; but then he writes well about everything. The author also tackles the tricky task of getting into the head of an Iranian character and apparently pulls it off. There are many instances of gentle humor here. Ms. Tyler pokes fun at Americans and all our foibles. Maryam has so much difficulty understanding Bitsy's father Dave: "He is so American. . . He takes up so much space. He seems to be unable to let a room stay as it is. . . He has cluttered my life with cell phones and answering machines and a fancy-shmancy teapot that makes my tea taste like metal. . . You think that if you keep company with them [Americans] you will be larger too, but then you see that they're making you shrink; they're expanding and edging you out."

Ms. Tyler writes eloquently about the solitude of old age. Her description of a day in the life of Maryam (p. 255) approaches poetry: "What a small, small life she lived! She had one grown son, one daughter-in-law, one grandchild and three close friends. Her work was pleasantly predictable. Her house hadn't change in decades. Next January she would be sixty-five years old-- not ancient, but even so, she couldn't hope for her world to grow anything but narrower from now on. She found this thought comforting rather than distressing."

Finally only a writer of Ms. Tyler's ability could make-- for me at least-- a party to wean a baby from pacifiers interesting. The guests at the event tie the pacifiers ("binkies") to helium-filled balloons and release them into the sky.

Another winner for Ms. Tyler.

Anne Tyler has such a wonderful way of spinning a web around her readers...you are drawn in and trapped within her world of lush characters, all of them so unique, and yet so familiar. Such is the way with "Digging to America," one of her best in years.

The book begins with two families at the Baltimore Airport, each picking up an adoptive daughter from Korea. The first family, the Donaldsons (Brad and Bitsy, can we get more American? hahahha), are in-your-face, especially Bitsy. She is a "type"--she wears her own hand-woven clothing, she fiercely keeps her child's Korean name (Jin-ho), she is into health food and "cultural identity."

The other couple, Iranian Americans Sami and Ziba Yasdan, are a sometimes uncomfortable mix of their very strong ethnic roots and the need to be uber American. Their daughter, whose Korean name they change to Susan, is not as huge and healthy as Jin-Ho, and altogether different in every way.

Nevertheless, these two unlikely couples meld in friendship, largely through the overbearing efforts of Bitsy, who insists on having a yearly "Arrival Party," with both extended families on each side, to celebrate the girls' arrival. Sami's mother Maryam, a widow who emigrated 40 years ago but who still keeps herself aloof, comes along every time, although she very busily keeps herself separate. She adores her granddaughter Susan, but cannot fathom the ways of the Donaldsons, who are wont to do things like giving annual autumn "leaf parties," where everybody rakes.

The entire theme of this book, woven so effortlessly throughout the pages, is identity. Who are we? Are we each separate entities floating through life? Are we a "cultural" identity, such as "American" or "Iranian"? Are we all just humans in one big soup pot? Do we NEED these labels? It's a fascinating story, with a truly moving ending. I loved it and recommend it very highly.

Anne Tyler is the master of creating characters so real you can laugh with and cry with, be disappointed by but love unconditionally. In this novel she connects two such families, one American and one Iranian-American, by a chance meeting at Baltimore's airport where both families are awaiting adopted daughters from Korea.

Bitsy Donaldson, the American mother, is an organizer and planner and conceives the idea of an arrival party each year to celebrate the day both girls, Jin-Ho and Sooki (later Americanized to Susan), arrived in America. The families are quite different, drawn together only by August 15, 1997, the date they both received Korean daughters. Their differences are the basis of this book, the exploration of the outsider in all of us and the drive to be accepted.

Bitsy's family is traditional American, never doubting their way is the right way, but very politically correct about accepting the traditions of foreigners. Susan's adopted parents, Ziba and Sami, want to fit in and be accepted as Americans on the one hand, while laughing and mocking American ways on the other. Although they grew up in America. they have always been "outsiders" and continue to embellish on that by adopting a Korean baby. Perhaps they felt that by Americanizing her name and clothing they would make her an insider. The Donaldsons, however, are intrigued by their baby's other-world culture and embrace it without realizing how they are making her an outsider in her own family.

But beyond the parents and the children, this is the story of Susan's paternal grandmother, Maryam Yazdan, the ultimate stranger in a strange land. Although she has been in America for most of her adult life, she feels removed and not part of her adopted country and yet, she knows that she would be as out of place back in her birth country. Tyler weaves Maryam into a love story, very touching and poignant in its portrayal of love in the golden years after the death of a long-time spouse. Will the outsider be able to accept an insider or will that insider destroy the relationship by constantly reminding her of her foreignness?

Anne Tyler has a beautiful gift and it is that she can create characters that seem so real, you forget they are only fictional. In this book particularly, I felt as if the Donaldsons and the Yazdans were my neighbors and I loved every minute I spent in their homes. Also, if you ever indulged in the childhood pastime of digging to China, you will fall in love with the very clever title of this book.

Unlike many recent reviewers, I like this book very much. Like most Anne Tyler books, it has many levels. I think that there is a reason for the stereotypes she reiterates - most people do not leave their heritage behind when they immigrate. Perhaps total integration into America was not possible - nor desirable - for the Iranian family. I found it interesting that the American family retained the Korean name of the baby they adopted (and insisted on her wearing traditional Korean garb), while the Iranian family changed their child's name to a very American name and dressed her as an American. Surely this is worthy of contemplation. I think that Anne Tyler is saying many things in this book - it simply is not possible nor desirable for many to totally assimilate, nor is it healthy to retain every custom from their birthplaces. This is not a book about international adoption (pro or con), but about the ways that people see themselves when they are and become Americans. I liked Dave the best - he seemed to endure the absurdity of many of his daughter's actions and to see beyond the backgrounds to the people themselves.

After being disappointed in the past few Tyler books, I approached Digging to America hesitantly. But there is real substance to this story. Tyler has reclaimed her gifts for storytelling, gentle irony, and wonderful observations. This is the kind of book that keeps you thinking about it after you've finished it. I laughed out loud in several parts. And was touched by others. The key gift of this book is that there is true change in some of the characters. Following their journeys is engrossing. And the changes are completely believable. She is the master of style: subtle and unobstrusive. A book more substantial than the media reviews acknowledged.

From the generous canon of Anne Tyler's works, most readers select personal favorites. For me, Digging to America is the new best-beloved. All the familiar, cherished strengths are there--the exquisite skill with detail and description equalled only by that great old warhorse, John Updike; the marvel of dialogue that is at once natural, even inevitable, and yet astonishingly fresh--but I sense a new mellowness of both style and substance that makes every, single page ring like a silver bell. Having received the book in the afternoon mail, I was aghast to discover, at bedtime, that I had read almost halfway through.
I had hoped to savor it, to make it last longer, but . . . .

I just finished this novel yesterday. While reading it, I was constantly disappointed when I had to put it down. I came to really care about the characters in the book, even--as Maryam seems eventually to do--about Bitsy. I had not read Anne Tyler before, and given the dismal response to this novel from her frequent readers in this section, I'm not sure I want to go back to the "old" Anne Tyler (although, based on how much I liked this book, of course I will). They rave about her former novels and then describe this one as "boring." The reason I read it to begin with was that I heard a reviewer from the New York Times enthusiastically recommend the book, saying that it signalled a breakthrough for Tyler.

I'm surprised at how many readers could not see the so-called repetitiveness of the "Arrival Parties" as the device by which Tyler developed her characters over a period of time. Also, one reviewer in this section said that she was disappointed that Tyler did not portray what it was like for foreigners in a post 9/11 atmosphere to live in the U.S., but that was clearly not Tyler's intent. While 9/11 was mentioned at one point in the book, its effects on the characters were not meant to be central to the book's story. Another critic in this section, who herself has an adopted Korean daughter, complains that Tyler does not describe the experiences of having such a daughter. I am puzzled again: This book is all ABOUT the experiences of having such a daughter, albeit from the perspective of two different families. And since I have friends who themselves have adopted Korean and Chinese daughters, I can refute another critic's claim that the process as Tyler shows it in the book is unrealistic. It is, in fact, very realistic.

The seeming simplicity of the book's plot, which others berate as repetitiveness, gives the story its sophistication. The book is also very funny (the pacifier party chapter that one reviewer criticizes is, from my perspective, the funniest chapter.) I hope potential readers of this book will not be put off by some of these "I just don't get it" reviews. If they do, they will be missing out on some fine reading, indeed.

Maybe it is because I recently returned from a trip to China where there were two precious adopted babies on the flight; but, whatever the reason, I found DIGGING TO AMERICA deeply affecting. For anyone who has, or has had, a family, this fictional account breathes believable life into these two families, their members, their problems, and their joys. I would recommend this book simply for Anne Tyler's writing style which I have always found moving. For anyone contemplating adopting an Asian baby (nearly always a girl), I think it is a "must" read.

I'm not going to rehash what everyone else has critiqued about this marvelous book. I just finished it an hour ago. Am still wiping my eyes and I still have a lump in my throat. Ms. Tyler never fails to grab me, twist me around, make me cry and then give me a big hug. I have ALL of her books. I have read several of them over and over. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was my first and I have been hooked on her books ever since.

Anne Tyler's late husband was an Iranian, Dr. Taghi Modarressi, a psychiatrist, so she knows a lot about the Iranian culture. I am sure that she writes about her personal experiences of being an American woman married to an Iranian, and about the grief of losing a loved one to cancer. I don't remember the name of the book she wrote after her husband passed away, but I do remember the change in tone of that book -- more somber and more reflective. However, some parts of this book made me laugh out loud, especially Xiu-Mei and her "binky."

One of her best, if not the best.