205 of 223 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tyler Does It Again, January 5, 2010
I remember emerging from a New York City art museum, some years ago, after spending an hour looking at the artwork in a Richard Estes exhibition. Estes is a photo-realist painter of meticulously detailed urban scenes. As soon as I hit the sidewalk I noticed that storefronts, taxis, buses, office towers, the dome of the sky -- all looked different. I was seeing the world with new eyes, with more sharply focused vision -- an aftereffect of immersion in Estes' art. Most striking was a heightened awareness of the unique light that fills the streets of Manhattan. Everything was vivid.
A similar transformation occurs whenever I finish a new novel by Anne Tyler and return to the real world. Time spent with Tyler engenders new perceptions of the everyday physical environment. It also inspires a more generous understanding of human interactions, personal relationships, family dynamics.
"Noah's Compass" is among Tyler's least ambitious novels. Still, the book's pleasures are abundant, and the author is in full command of her craft. Some critics disparage Tyler as a play-it-safe miniaturist. They say she avoids grappling with the Big Themes of history and politics, existence and death. She's stuck in the quotidian. Yet even in this modest story, Tyler is not afraid to confront harrowing truths. The novel's protagonist, Liam Pennywell, observes: "We live such tangled, fraught lives . . . but in the end we die like all the other animals and we're buried in the ground and after a few more years we might as well not have existed." Could these words be a bone Tyler is throwing to ravenous critics? Probably not, as Tyler likely doesn't pay much attention to what others would prefer her to write about. Even her most severe critics have to concede, I think, that she shares with the best Big Theme novelists a rare power to convey to the reader what it feels like to be alive. This talent is on display once again in "Noah's Compass".
One of the pleasures of the book is that its hold on the reader gains strength page after page. It begins in familiar Tyler territory, introducing a main character divorced from a full life, surviving on half measures. In one deftly sketched scene after another, Liam, passive and possibly depressive, is beset by the women in his life. They intrude upon his present as well as his memory. And, in a seemingly uneventful life, some events leave wounds. Complications blend the farcical and tragic. Inveterate Tyler readers, familiar with the usual arc of her plots, know from the outset that Liam will find himself in a different state by the close of the tale. He will grow a bit, as will the reader.
The book's final chapter takes place in a charmed setting: a preschool class of three-year-olds. It is a perfect stage upon which to close out the narrative with a modest summing up. A decade ago, on the final page of "A Patchwork Planet," Tyler led its young protagonist, Barnaby Gaitlin, to a life-changing decision -- the choice of a mate. Barnaby says yes to his intended by quoting a line from Shakespeare's Sonnet 29: "Haply I think on thee." In contrast, the end of "Noah's Compass" is more equivocal, more elegiac. Liam, a retired teacher summoned back to life, demonstrates simply (in the manner of old Prospero) that a new chapter is ready to begin, even while this tale -- this particular entertainment -- has reached its close.
Tyler's novels insist there are no solutions to the mysteries of why people are the way they are. Life offers no answers. Yet there are, in the author's universe, lessons to be absorbed, more things to learn, as when Liam looks upon the children he cares for as a volunteer teaching assistant:
"It came as news to [Liam] that small children maintained such a firm social structure. They played consistent roles in their dealings with each other; they held fierce notions of justice; they formed alliances and ad hoc committees and little vigilante groups. Lunches were parodies of grownups' dinner parties, just with different conversational topics. Danny held forth at length on spaghetti's resemblance to earthworms, and some of the little girls said, "Eww!" and pushed their plates away, but then Hannah -- first clearing her throat importantly -- delivered a discourse on a chocolate-covered ant she'd once eaten, while shy little Jake watched everybody admiringly from the sidelines."
What always happens when reading an Anne Tyler novel happened, this time, when I was halfway through "Noah's Compass." Tyler aficionados know what I'm talking about. You come upon a magical passage; read a perfectly-phrased description of a person or place or encounter; listen to a precisely-pitched stretch of dialog; savor a descriptive paragraph that expresses a sentiment often thought "but ne'er so well expressed" -- and you think to yourself, How the hell did she do that? Let me read that again. Let me grab a pencil so I can mark these spots. But then you find yourself marking up every page. Tyler has done it again.
I love the Baltimore dialect ("let me skootch this footstool around"), the surprises offered up from Tyler's rich bag of similes ("the marble treads were worn down in the middle like old soap bars"), and the Updike-like attention to detail. Rhymes and echoes abound, usually in service to Tyler's ever-wise examination of human psychology. Virtually everything has metaphorical significance. Relationships evolve through fits and starts. On his first encounter with a new acquaintance named Eunice, Liam reflects on her behavior: "Either she was admirably at ease anywhere or she suffered from a total lack of discrimination." The tension of yes and no, true and false, is non-stop. This is life.
When complications reach their heaviest, Liam asks, "How had things reached such a state? But it wasn't his fault. He honestly didn't think he should be shouldering the blame for this." This brings to mind the opening sentence of a notable Big Theme novel from the last century: "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested." In Tyler's hands, the serious is leavened with the comical. Liam, arrested in his tracks, comes across as a bit of a schlemiel. Although she loves her characters and watches over them tenderly from the sidelines (like shy little Jake), Tyler lets no one off lightly. None of us escapes unscathed.
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66 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fall In Love With Tyler's Characters!, January 5, 2010
Noah didn't need a compass, a rudder or a sextant because he wasn't going anywhere; he just bobbed along trying to stay afloat. Liam Pennywell, the 60 year old narrator of Anne Tyler's latest novel, "Noah's Compass", has been getting by without a compass for years. Alone, unemployed, a little lonely, closed off, thinking his life is behind him, Liam has what we call a "life-changing experience". In fact, he has two of them; one is physical and the other metaphorically dangles in front of him his much needed "compass" ...if he'll only recognize it.
To open an Anne Tyler novel is to open yourself to care about her characters and "Noah's Compass" is no different. I fell in love with Liam Pennywell and Eunice Dunstead, (a "rememberer"). Even Tyler's less loving characters are appealing through their all-too-human faults. Liam's stern older sister, his brisk ex-wife, and his three daughters, are all endearing in their own way. One never wishes evil on a Tyler character because they all reflect back something of ourselves. Her characters are familiar, archetypal and "Tyler-esque"; in all her novels we see people who are stumbling around in the dark. They don't even grope for their identities and their life purposes, those things just seem to fall upon them like odds and ends off an attic shelf.
One quirky character (a redundant term in Anne Tyler's world!) misquotes: "Those that forget the past are doomed to regret the present." Eventually Liam does take some ownership of his past mistakes, but will he use the insight to change his present? Will Liam wake up from his malaise and start living a full life? Will he grab his last chance at love? Will his life change? Should it? Is contentment enough?
The worst thing about a new Anne Tyler novel is the wait for the next one. In the meantime, I'll re-read "Noah's Compass" and several other of my favorite Tyler novels and I'll love them as much as I ever did, and glean new insights from each.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Tyler - observations on aging, memory, and living a full life, January 23, 2010
Summary and review, no spoilers.
This story is told from the point of view of 60 year old Liam Pennywell, who due to financial cut-backs has recently been let go from his position as a 5th grade teacher at a boys school. Liam didn't try all that hard to be spared this dismissal, and in fact Liam seems as if he doesn't care much about anything at all.
Liam has downsized from a spacious apartment in a nice part of town, to a small two bedroom in a seedier area. Like many an Anne Tyler character, he is looking back on his life and trying to figure out how he got here, and why he has not had the success he should have had, and why he is leading the life he is now.
During the course of this seemingly simple yet complex little novel, we are introduced to the cast of characters that make up Liam's past - his wives, his daughters, his own parents, and an oddball (this is Anne Tyler country) woman with whom Liam establishes a rapport.
There is not a lot of action in this novel. We don't go traveling very far, and the story takes place over just one year. Yet, Anne Tyler once again makes brilliant observations about people and what makes us tick. You may think your experiences and reflections and hopes and dreams are unique - but they're not. They are shared, and there were many moments in this book that just had me shaking my head in recognition and empathy. Her observations about aging are spot on.
The only criticism I have is that I was a bit unsettled at the end. I know that some of the complaints about this book have been about the ending, but I believe that Tyler is telling us something about memory - that truly seeing and understanding our past will enrich our lives and make getting old not just a wait for the end.
I recommend this book can it be enjoyed by anyone, but best appreciated by those 50 and older.
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