[.ca] Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (ISBN 0099916401)

Really A Great Experience!:
Anne Tyler is quirky, but a master writer and this is her best! Her way with a story is amazing! I've read twelve of Tyler's novels and this is by far my favorite. You can read the description and storyline yourself. This is outstadning fiction!!

The Typical Dysfunctional Family:
Dinner at the Homesick Resaurant engages the reader by sharing a slightly altering story as it is told by each member of the family. Pearly Tull is the initial character of the novel and begins by describing the chain of events, such as her husband leaving, which lead her into single-handedly raising her children. Like a typical family of the 1930's, the Tulls are struggling to financially and emotionally make it. One by one, the children eventually grow up and begin lives of their own: Cody becomes a businessman like his father, Jenny goes to college and marries Harley Baines, and Ezra stays in town to run Mrs. Scarlatti's restaurant. Ezra's dream is to, just once, have his entirely family seated at the restaurant for a content family dinner. However, his mother, Pearl, seems to enjoy a little conflict and constantly instigates one. Once Ezra inherits the restaurant, he decides to slightly alter the menu, by switching to a homestyle variety of foods. He figures that this "home-cooked" meal can ease his homesick customers, but honestly, what does he know about home?

Family Life Can Turn into a Train Wreck:
For those readers familiar with Tyler's more recent works, such as _Amateur Marriage_, _Ladder of Years_, or _Back When We Were Grownups_, _Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant_ will undoubtedly be found jolting in its portrayal of some rather disturbing characters, even malevolent, in the context of family. As Pearl Tull lies on her death bed, _Dinner_ recapitulates the lives of the Tull family over nearly fifty years. Pearl, the mother of Cody, Ezra, and Jenny, never recovered from the abrupt abandonment by her husband Beck after fourteen years of marriage, some thirty-five years prior. But Pearl has problems beyond a marriage gone awry. She is unusually harsh and critical, and even abusive, with her children, exhibits almost no understanding of them, is quick to take offense or misconstrue situations, and is obsessed with appearances, hers and theirs, even pretending for years that her husband had not left. Cody is absolutely malicious in his dealings with his younger brother Ezra dating from his teenage years into middle-age. Jenny, after two failed marriages, manages to get through medical school but not without first being physically abusive towards her own daughter and then becoming strangely oblivious to the needs of her family in a third marriage. Ezra, the balancing humane element of the book, becomes a partner, with a worldly, elderly lady, in a restaurant near his childhood Baltimore row home, where he still lives with Pearl, despite his mother's abhorrence at the idea. After becoming the sole owner, Ezra remakes the restaurant in his own image, making it unpretentious and home-like, hence the Homesick Restaurant. Ezra makes several attempts to gather the family for dinners at his restaurant through the years. In an apt metaphor for the book, those meals are never completed, as squabbles, usually initiated by Pearl, break up the gatherings. It may be argued that many families are essentially dysfunctional, but the uptightness and antagonisms of the Tull's are a step beyond. Jenny's concern for her patients and Pearl's grandmotherly kindness softens the otherwise harsh picture somewhat. But Pearl has already had her familial influence. Has the author captured and shed light on a realistic or probable situation? As usual, she is highly consistent and not squeamish in examining her characters. Although the story is certainly grim and stark, it has a feel of legitimacy. And that is the book's appeal. Perhaps it can be said that all of Tyler's work questions many long-standing assumptions about families. Don't look for any big lessons or triumphs in the end in her books. According to Tyler, life is what it is.

Dinner table conflict as a metaphor for life:
Anne Tyler uses multiple points of view in this, one of her best loved books, tale to flesh out all the relationships and conflicts in the Tull family. As we hear each character's story in his or her own voice, another piece of the puzzle falls into place until we are left with a more or less intact understanding of how things came to be the way they are. Like all of Tyler's books, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is peopled with eccentric oddballs who are borderline social misfits, just working at trying to get through the day and make sense of their lives - but it always seems to degenerate into dinner table conflict.

A Real Family:
Anne Tyler does it again with her extraordinary ability to create offbeat characters that the reader comes to care deeply about. In this book, there are individual characters and there is the character of the Tull Family - an icon each of the family members sees in a different way. Tyler writes of the sometimes tragic life circumstances of each of the three Tull children with her usual eye for both the dramatic and humorous. This book is a must-read for anyone who loves home-cooking and their own lovable, dysfunctional family.