by Anne Tyler
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BookExcerpt
Published: 2015
Publisher: Bond Street Books
Genre: Literary, Family
Hardback: 368 pages
Rating: 3
First sentence(s):
Late one July evening in 1994, Red and Abby Whitshank had a phone call from their son Denny.
"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father.
Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.
My two-bits:
This story is a light family drama with details of each member and daily living that plods along life through three generations.
It is written well and will not disappoint Anne Tyler fans. However, I was lukewarm to the characters and doings.
The story picked up for me towards the end where we hear about the romance of Abby and Red.
