February 2011 Guest Editor Carmen Reid on Anne Tyler...
This wonderful American writer gets everything so right about people. She understands just what makes us tick and she observes it all so carefully. She also has a deep and lovely sense of humour. The Accidental Tourist is the perfect novel if you ask me. There’s heartbreaking sadness all the way through as irritatingly uptight, perfectionist Macon tries to come to terms with the death of his son. But then this quirky, loving dog-trainer girl, Muriel Pritchett, is just desperate to get through to him and bring him back to life. It’s so funny, so terribly sad and so true. Just genius. There’s even a Jack Russell.
How does a man addicted to routine - a man who flosses his teeth before love-making - cope with the chaos of everyday life? With the loss of his son, the departure of his wife and the arrival of Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, Macon's attempts at ordinary life are tragically and comically undone.
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis in 1941 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. This is Anne Tyler’s sixteenth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore. In 2012 Anne Tyler was the winner of the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.
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