
` It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-&-green afternoon...` This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she & Red fell in love that day in July 1959. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. & yet this gathering is different. Abby & Red are getting older, & decisions must be made about how best to look after them & their beloved family home. They`ve all come, even Denny, who can usually be relied on only to please himself. From that porch we spool back through three generations of the Whitshanks, witnessing the events, secrets & unguarded moments that have come to define who & what they are. & while all families like to believe they are special, round that kitchen table over all those years we also see played out our own hopes & fears, rivalries & tensions
- the essential nature of family life. ” She`s changed my perception on life.” (Anna Chancellor). ” One of my favourite authors.” (Liane Moriarty). ” She spins gold.” (Elizabeth Buchan). ” Anne Tyler has no peer.” (Anita Shreve). ” My favourite writer, & the best line-&-length novelist in the world.” (Nick Hornby). ”A masterly author.” (Sebastian Faulks). ” Tyler is not merely good, she is wickedly good.” (John Updike). ”I love Anne Tyler.” (Anita Brookner). ” Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humour.” (Eudora Welty).