By Valerie Walley. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 15)
Clock Dance is Tyler’s 21st novel, her 20th to be published by Alfred A. Knopf (Hogarth published Vinegar Girl, loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew, for their reimagined Shakespeare series). This is one of Tyler’s best books yet! If you’ve never read an Anne Tyler work, Clock Dance is a good place to begin, and, if you have read one of her many novels, you will be charmed and delighted as ever.
As the type of character only Anne Tyler can conjure and bring into being, Willa Drake, the protagonist of Clock Dance, is the source of pure reading entertainment…along with all the other characters in the novel. Willa has led a relatively sheltered life by falling into life events that have defined her course, putting up little resistance even though secretly harboring plenty of opinions.
We see her as a young girl reacting to her mother’s sudden disappearance, then flashing ahead ten years to her approaching marriage, then ten years later as a young widow, then another ten years on as a remarried woman living in a golfing community in Tucson (she couldn’t care less about golfing).
When Clock Dance gets underway, Willa is summoned to Baltimore from her home in Arizona to help take care of her son’s ex-girlfriend who’s been shot, the ex-girlfriend’s young daughter, and their dog, Airplane. The story takes off from there as we are introduced to and taken in by all the quirky neighbors in this community. You find yourself asking again and again, “Why would anyone do such a thing?” while also being absolutely riveted and entertained by what happens next. Ultimately, everyone falls in love with Willa. Not to give anything away, but Willa does more than accept this turn in her life.
I have been a fan of Anne Tyler’s since I discovered her work in 1980 when I read Morgan’s Passing. I quickly went back and read her previous novels, and then, in 1982, her breakout novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, was published. Clock Dance is reminiscent of some of my favorites – Dinner, but also Earthly Possessions, The Accidental Tourist (made into the blockbuster movie), Back When We Were Grownups, and Breathing Lessons (which won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction).
If Morning Ever Comes, her first novel, was published in 1964, shortly after her graduation from Duke, where she was a student of Reynolds Price. Anne Tyler has said that one of her–if not her–favorite writers is Eudora Welty. She has always cited the literary influence and appreciation of Eudora Welty in her work. She paid a visit to Jackson which she published as “A Visit with Eudora Welty” in the New York Times Book Review in 1980.
Now is a great time to celebrate Anne Tyler’s work. Vintage is reissuing her paperbacks in stunning new packages, so you can find these classic novels on bookstore shelves waiting to be rediscovered.
Every time I read one of Tyler’s novels, I always think back to an essay of hers, “Still Just Writing.” When her daughters were little, various moms at the schoolyard would ask her if she’d found work yet, or was she still just writing? And Tyler’s reply was “still just writing.” And, all these many years later, her readers could not be more thankful that she is.
Valerie Walley is a bookseller and Ridgeland resident.
Anne Tyler’s novel Clock Dance is Lemuria’s July 2018 selection for our First Editions Club for Fiction.
Comments are closed.