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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Your
protagonist in this novel, Barnaby Gaitlin, has been described as an average,
ordinary man. Is this how you would describe him?
I think Barnaby is
average and ordinary only to the extent that most people are average and
ordinary--that is, not very, if you look carefully enough.
Barnaby is, among other
things, a man struggling to cast off the weight of his past. How successful is
he, and indeed any of us, in doing so?
I do believe that
Barnaby is at least largely successful in getting out from under the weight of
his past--that's where the plot derives its movement.
At the close of this
novel, we are left wondering just exactly who is Barnaby's angel. How would you
answer this question?
Barnaby has not just
one but many angels--the network of people he lives among who see him for the
good man he is and wish him well and do what they can to ease his life.
You delightfully skewer
class pretensions in this novel, most notably in the form of Barnaby's mother,
Margot, and explore the cost and meaning of class mobility in America. Why is
this such a central theme in your work?
I've always enjoyed
studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level. And I am
...
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Clock Dance
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The short fiction of Deborah Carol Gang has been published in Literarymama, Bluestem Journal and The Driftless Review.
Her poetry has appeared in JJournal/CUNY, New Verse News, The Michigan Poet, Arsenic Lobster, and The ...
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If you enjoyed:
A Spool of Blue Thread
Try:
The Half-Life of Everything
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