Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler (1991)

This year I’ve been joining in Liz’s Anne Tyler readalong for the novels I own and hadn’t read yet – I have one each lined up for the next three months as well. Saint Maybe was Tyler’s twelfth novel and forms part of what I consider to be her golden mid-period. It’s most like Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, my absolute favourite, in that both might be classed as linked short story collections: each chapter is a standalone narrative with knockout first and last lines; together they build a careful picture of a dysfunctional family over the years.

As the novel opens in the 1960s, Ian Bedloe is a lazy teenager contemplating college. When his older brother Danny marries Lucy, mother to Agatha and Thomas, Ian can’t help but comment on the timing of his sister-in-law’s third pregnancy. Danny didn’t realize he’s not the father of this new baby, Daphne, and the newfound knowledge pushes him over the edge. Lucy also fails to cope, and Ian is consumed with guilt at how he inadvertently caused the collapse of their family. In an effort to atone, he joins the puritanical Church of the Second Chance and drops out of college to help his parents raise the three children. Others have to convince him that life is not just about penance and that he deserves happiness, too.

This is one of those books where every character, no matter how minor, shines. I particularly loved Reverend Emmett, whose well-meaning doctrines have been taken further than he intended; Rita, whom the family hires to declutter the house (she’s reminiscent of the dog trainer in The Accidental Tourist); and Daphne, who turns into a rebellious teen for whom Ian will always have a soft spot. Ian’s parents could have faded into the background, but the book probes their grief and their feelings of purposelessness in retirement. My only slight qualm was about how Tyler describes the foreigners who live nearby: Middle Eastern graduate students at Johns Hopkins, they’re there simply to provide comic relief with their harebrained home maintenance schemes; the depiction is good-natured, yet seems dated.

In a few other Tyler novels, I’ve been put off by what can seem like flippancy or inconsequentiality. The works of hers that I love best emphasize both the humour and the sadness: the absurdity and tragedy of these ordinary suburban lives. Here, I especially noted the double-edged portrait of the nature of childcare: Ian “wondered how people endured children on a long-term basis—the monotony and irritation and confinement of them,” yet “They were all that gave his life color, and energy, and …well, life.” I also kept finding personal resonances – for instance, the whole theme of the short homily the pastor delivered at my mother’s wedding ceremony was second chances, my stepfather has a failing old dog like the Bedloes’ Beastie, and the account of Church summer camp rang all too true.

At the sentence level as well as the plot level, this is a very strong showing from Tyler, and a close second to Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant for me. I reckon anyone will be able to find themselves and their family in this story of the life chosen versus the life fallen into, and the difficult necessity of moving past regrets in the search for meaning. (Source: Charity shop) See also Liz’s review.

Favourite lines:

Bee (Ian’s mother): “We’ve had such extraordinary troubles, and somehow they’ve turned us ordinary. That’s what’s so hard to figure. We’re not a special family anymore. … We’ve turned uncertain. We’ve turned into worriers.”

“‘Mess up, I say!’ Daphne crowed. ‘Fall flat on your face! Make every mistake you can think of! Use all the life you’ve got.’”

“When is something philosophical acceptance and when is it dumb passivity? When is something a moral decision and when is it scar tissue?”

My rating:

 

The 14 Tyler novels I’ve read, in order of preference (greatest to least), are:

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Saint Maybe

Ladder of Years

The Accidental Tourist

Earthly Possessions

Breathing Lessons

Digging to America

Vinegar Girl

Back When We Were Grown-ups

Clock Dance

A Blue Spool of Thread

The Beginner’s Goodbye

Redhead by the Side of the Road

The Clock Winder

 

Next up for me will be A Patchwork Planet in late July.