Eleanor Wachtel recently
interviewed Pulitzer Prize winning author, Anne Tyler, on the CBC's Writers
& Company. I've read several of Tyler's novels and enjoyed them thoroughly, although I'd never heard the author interviewed before. Over
the course of Tyler's career, she has granted few interviews, and so this was a rare treat.
Tyler spoke about her novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, and about some
of her earlier works, such as Celestial
Navigation and Dinner at the Homesick
Restaurant (Tyler's 1985 novel, The Accidental Tourist, was a popular
film starring William Hurt). A recurring theme of families appears throughout Tyler's work.
What intrigues her about families is their propensity for conflict and drama and
how they usually end up staying together.
I enjoyed the part where Tyler spoke about her upbringing in a Quaker
household in Raleigh, North Carolina. She didn't enjoy being a
child (in fact she hated it) because she wasn't in control of her life. She
particularly disliked always being put into a car and driven somewhere and never
knowing where she was going (most children can relate).
I would have liked to hear
Tyler discuss her 1995 novel, Ladder of
Years, one of my favourites. Ladder
of Years tells the story of woman who deserts her family while they are on
vacation, for no apparent reason. Most of the novel concerns itself with the
narrator trying understand herself and find a purpose to her life
aside from being a wife and raising children. As with many of Tyler's novels, the actual
progression of events in this story is rather slow-moving and mundane, but the complexity and understanding that Tyler brings to her characters makes for a powerful narrative indeed.
All in all, this was a fascinating
interview with one of the world's most talented - and one of my favourite - novelists.
Here is the link to that interview: Writers & Company.
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