Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Anne Tyler (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 27, 1996 | Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle

“Beautiful . . . funny, heart-hammering, wise . . . superb entertainment.”
–The New York Times

“A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read.”
–The Boston Globe


Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore’s Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined, nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra, Pearl’s favorite, who never stops yearning for the perfect family that could never be his own.

Now Pearl and her three grown children have gathered together again–with anger, hope, and a beautiful, harsh, and dazzling story to tell.


“A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”
–Newsweek

“Anne Tyler is surely one of the most satisfying novelists working in America today.”
–Chicago Tribune

“In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power.”
–John Updike, The New Yorker

“Marvelous, astringent, hilarious, [and] strewn with the banana peels of love.”
–Cosmopolitan

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Beautiful . . . funny, heart-hammering, wise . . . Superb entertainment.”
–The New York Times

“A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read.”
–The Boston Globe

“A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well.”
–Newsweek

“Anne Tyler is surely one of the most satisfying novelists working in America today.”
–Chicago Tribune

“In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power.”
–JOHN UPDIKE, The New Yorker

From the Publisher

I first read this book back in 1984, long before I was in the publishing business. I was traveling through Greece with a friend and our hotel had shelves of books that other guests had left behind and were free for the taking.. I picked up Dinner.... knowing absolutely nothing about it. What a wonderful surprise and discovery!. I felt I had never read anything quite like it.The characters were so real, so familiar that I felt I did actually know them. In fact, for weeks after I finished the book, I had dreams about Ezra, one of the characters in the book and the owner of the Homesick Restaurant. In the dreams, he was my brother and he was just as sweet and vulnerable as he was in the book. I never re-read books because I'm usually disappointed the second time around because the sense of newness and discovery is gone. But I did read Dinner.... again and loved it as much, and even found new things I hadn't noticed before. This novel is truly a classic.
--Maureen O'Neal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First edition (August 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780449911594
• ISBN-13: 978-0449911594
• ASIN: 0449911594
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her 17th novel. Her 11th, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. A member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 87 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hands-down the best Anne Tyler (so far) May 8, 2000

By Peter or Mandy Houk

Format:Paperback

First I have to admit my bias ... I have read every Anne Tyler and will read them all again. That said, this is easily my favorite. Anne Tyler's gift is in presenting the reader with the extraordinary lives of ordinary people and polishing them into sparkling clarity. This is not a book for the plot-driven reader (nor are any of Tyler's). The plot seems to almost swirl around the sometimes bewildered characters, bringing their true selves into sharp, unsympathetic focus. The soul of this novel is in joining the Tull family members on their respective journeys ... the mother, Pearl, into her fears and regrets and resolutions at death (didn't blow a plot point, that's there on the first page), and each of the children into discovering how to soothe their own wounds and somehow become a family. This book is about pain, love, feeling like a stranger in your own family, forgiveness, loss, and allowing yourself and the people around you to be imperfect. Please read it!

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Ordinary family life...poignantly observed December 18, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Anne Tyler has written a beautifully lighthanded, poignantly observed novel of family life that rings so true it hurts. The story of the Tulls is for the most part unexceptional. But it is from this ordinariness that the novel derives its strength. Real life is for most people about coping. All the Tulls are dysfunctional in their own ways. Beck, the father, deserts his family and it is tempting to believe he is the cause of all their troubles. By the end of the story, you're not so sure. Pearl, the mother, is run ragged bringing up the children on her own but she is no saint. She resorts to abuse which scars the children (albeit to different degrees). Cody, the eldest, develops such severe hangups over his father's desertion and his mother's display of favouritism he becomes emotionally estranged from the family. His resentment of his younger brother borders on cruelty and is painful to read. Sister Jenny, also a victim of abuse by her mother, grows up scatty and remote. Ezra, the gentlest of the three children and owner of the "Homesick Restaurant" is the most sympathetically drawn character but even then, there is a feeling of defeat and being thwarted about his whole life. There are no saints, heroes or villains in the novel,only ordinary men and women who are different shades of grey. There are two scenes in the novel which are specially poignant. One is where Pearl in her old age relives one captured moment of happiness from an old diary. Another is where Beck returns momentarily for a family reunion at Ezra's "Homesick Restaurant" on the occasion of Pearl's funeral. The reunion is, like all of Ezra's earlier attempts, a failure. But Tyler seems to be saying perhaps it doesn't matter after all . Not ultimately, since failure is an integral part of family life. Like Pearl's memory of her youthful past, it's living that makes us human. Reading this novel won't change your life. But it will add to it.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tyler is the Best! August 25, 2001

By BeachReader

Format:Paperback

It is difficult to find anything to say about this book that has not already been said before, here and elsewhere, many times over. I had been saving this book for a long time and now I know what everyone was raving about. Tyler's books often have a theme of abandonment --- caused by death, disappearance, desertion, or just general malaise. No matter what the cause, the characters must go on, often propelled by the grief caused by this abandonment. The author always finds a way for her characters to get through and keep on going. In this book, the strange disappearance of the father, Beck Tull, is never mentioned by his wife and children..... it is as if he never existed. The family goes on, powered by Pearl's sometimes abusive strength and her unspoken grief at being abandoned. Pearl is so enmeshed in her own problems, so inflexible, negative, and narrow-minded that the family never really becomes a cohesive unit. Jenny says that they all grew up and "the three of us turned out fine", but did they really? I think, as Cody says, that they all were "in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place". Ezra, on the other hand, despite his seemingly low self-esteem, is the most optimistic character in the book. He is constantly trying to make the Tulls into a family, as demonstrated by his oft-failed attempts to have a completed family dinner. Even though someone always storms out before the dinner is finished, Ezra keeps on trying, over and over again.

Ezra is obsessed with food because he has a strong need to nurture, and food is his choice of how to do this. Unlike Cody and Jenny, he wants to believe that his family is normal and can have an amicable time together. Pearl is just the opposite of Ezra - her meals, if you can call them that, are tasteless, dull, and rare. She is abusive and mean, unlike Ezra, who has a sweet nature and seems determined not to be like his parents. Over and over again, Tyler has written novels about ordinary folks.....they are classless and unable to be pigeonholed. The families are "different" (just as Tyler's was) which sometimes translates into "dysfunctional". Her writing is as plain and unadorned as the people who populate her books (perhaps a throwback to her Quaker upbringing). Thanks, Anne Tyler, for many hours of wonderful reading.