Friday, June 23, 2006

currently reading: Digging to America by Anne Tyler

From the cover, I thought this might go in a different direction than the usual Tyler novel, but the first sentence--"At eight o'clock in the evening, the Baltimore aiport was nearly deserted" establishes us firmly in her familiar territory. I'm enjoying it very much, perhaps partially because I'm very fond of adoption stories. There are some digs at the "mommy wars" too, though never in a cruel way.

This is a thought that surprises me, but this book is funny a bit in the way that Kurt Vonnegut is funny. (A humor I never recognized until I was an adult; I never understood why people thought Vonnegut was funny, his books were so sad.)

Final thoughts: I loved it. I'd call it her best book since Saint Maybe, which it somewhat resembles, stylistically and thematically.