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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
I loved this book all the way up until the end. Oh well.
I've always found Anne Tyler to be a powerful writer in a subtle way, and I read this book at the encouragement of a good friend. But I found it to be slow moving for me and somewhat anticlimactic at the end.
Explores the question I am sure most of us have asked ourselves at one time or another... "What if I just got up right now, walked away, and didn't come back?"
3 1/2 stars. It was a very interesting coincidence to read this book the day after finishing "Spinster", and I won't say more about that. I enjoyed this book, in the way I remember enjoying the "Accidental Tourist": it seems like a fairly straightforward story which you read and enjoy. You close the book... and then the real magic begins. The characters continue to visit you, their choices continue to haunt you: would you have done the same? The seemingly mundane details of a life turn out to personify, then magnify, aspects of the personalities. Good read, good story.
You start off not loving her family, understanding her frustration as a mother and wife in a family that doesn't SEEM to appreciate her. She leaves, builds this life for herself. We follow her as she makes new friends, basically a whole new life. We fall in love with this life she's created. We see hope and possibilities. As readers we get soooo close to seeing those possibilities come true...only for her to just go home. Leaving all the characters we love behind.
Very disappointing.
Very disappointing.
Picked this book at a used bookstore while on vacation. Interesting read that didn’t take me where I expected it to go!
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Ladder of Years is a crisp, clear story of a number of people. They are a family. They are, as families often are, upset with one another, to various permutations and degrees. Tyler tells their story from their matriarch's first person limited point of view. Shortly into the story, said matriarch impulsively leaves the family and creates her own life and identity, for the first time, about two hours away.
And that's it. It's just that story. It is neither good nor bad. It is interesting but boring. The characters are well-drawn but due to the limitations of the narrator, fairly cardboard. I imagine that the ideal audience for this book would be an extremely dissatisfied housewife just itching to get revenge on the family who is contemptuous of her. It's a manual for abandoning a family and striking out on your own if "your own" is something that is aescetic and banal, so probably not something that most women, or anybody really, would ever do.
In the end, Tyler makes me ask why I just read her book. Why? The whole book is a big, pointless pile of why.
And that's it. It's just that story. It is neither good nor bad. It is interesting but boring. The characters are well-drawn but due to the limitations of the narrator, fairly cardboard. I imagine that the ideal audience for this book would be an extremely dissatisfied housewife just itching to get revenge on the family who is contemptuous of her. It's a manual for abandoning a family and striking out on your own if "your own" is something that is aescetic and banal, so probably not something that most women, or anybody really, would ever do.
In the end, Tyler makes me ask why I just read her book. Why? The whole book is a big, pointless pile of why.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Wonderfully written, as usual, by Ann Tyler. But I'm not sure about the plot or story. The middle wa too long and the ending too quick.