From Anne Tyler's Digging to America -I'm putting this in the Favourite Writing forum, even though I haven't read the book yet - but I was very struck by this extract (reprinted in an Observer review by Adam Mars-Jones)

In one quietly devastating passage, from the point of view of a man recently bereaved, the fate of a tree recapitulates his wife's cancer: 'He sat dully at the kitchen table and gazed out at the neighbours' backyard, where the tree men were cutting down a huge old gnarly maple. The day before they had lopped off the leafy tip ends and fed them to the chipper, and he could imagine that overnight the maple must have stood there in some botanical version of shock. But only the smallest branches had been removed, after all. A tree so large could adjust to that. This morning, though, the men had moved on to the larger branches and perhaps that, too, could have been adjusted to even though the tree had become as stubby and short-armed as a saguaro cactus. But now they were setting their chainsaws to work on the trunk itself, and all those earlier adjustments turned out to have been for nothing.'

Frances
I read this recently and found it wonderful. I hadn't ready any AT for quite a while and it really struck me, coming at it from a writing perspective, that she is an absolute master of the old 'show not tell'. She makes it seem so easy! Thanks for highlighting this.

Thanks for your response to this, Caroline - yes, so quietly written, with an edge of humour, and yet so moving.

F

I really enjoyed this book and think AT is a highly underrated writer. She is an example, I believe, of the male/female divide in novel writing. Because she writes about the domestic she is not lauded as the Amises, etc. are. But for me what she writes about is the stuff of life - marriage, kids, generational conflict, retirement etc. I loved her take on missing a partner. Haven't been there but I almost believed, when I read this novel, that I had. What greater praise?

Jem
Nick Hornby is a massive fan, so it's nice to know there are men out there who like her too!

I've only ever read the Accidental Tourist but enjoyed it. She does the basics well, keeps things relatively simple but is very effective. I like the fact that in this book she is not self-consciously literary, but does enough to drive the plot on while giving the reader pause for thought.

Gorgeous writing. Thanks for posting.

Nik.

I love the simplicity of the vocab and sentence structure. But there's such a sense of music there.