Ladder of Years

This is a book I reread often. The premise is simple: Delia Grinstead, a vaguely unhappy forty-year-old homemaker, runs away from home without any conscious intention of doing so. The tone is humorous, even upbeat, but it's impossible to lose sight of the fact that she abandons her family. Every step of her journey is an accident, a stumble; but she allows each step to carry her away. Is she forgivable? After at least a dozen readings, I still can't answer that.

I do know that the writing here is brilliant. Little phrases catch at me. A cardigan "clung gently to her arms and made her feel like a cherished child." Delia scoops up a cat "beneath his hot little downy armpits." Rock music is performed by "singers who might as well be show more gossiping amongst themselves except every now and then you manage to overhear a stray word or two."

And this passage, maybe my favorite from the whole book: "She was learning the value of boredom. She was clearing out her mind. She had always known that her body was just a shell she lived in, but it occurred to her now that her mind was yet another shell -- in which case, who was 'she'? She was clearing out her mind to see what was left. Maybe there would be nothing."

I have very mixed feelings about Delia's final choice at the end of the book. I even have mixed feelings about the fact that I have mixed feelings, because how could the story end any other way? Only one thing is clear: people who haven't read this book yet, should. show less

When Delia Grinstead walks out on her extended Baltimore family during a beach holiday in Delaware, her spontaneous decision not to return from her walk seems to be vindicated by the way the Missing Person notice reveals that her husband, sisters and children are not at all sure how tall she is, what colour her eyes are, or even what she was wearing when they last saw her.

Tyler has fun exploring the idea of fugue, something we’ve probably all had fantasies about at some point in our lives, and imagining how a woman who has always been taken for granted by those around her might emerge as a distinct personality when she is placed in a new setting. As usual, the characters and their surroundings are flawlessly drawn, the dialogue is show more wonderfully convincing, but the plot makes us wonder how Tyler ever imagined she would get Delia out of the corner she had painted her into. show less

With her usual genius for bringing very ordinary people into sharp focus, Tyler tells the story of Delia Grinstead, a 40-year old mother of three who literally walks away from her life without plan or purpose in the middle of a family beach vacation. Not surprisingly, she finds that starting over "from scratch" isn't as simple as she tries to make it. The story feels absolutely "true"-- I believe every sentence, every action, and never have that "Oh why don't you just (insert advice here) already!" feeling. And Tyler makes me chuckle over the simple little daily moments that I laugh at in my own life. I think sometimes it's easy to overlook her humor---she's so often gently poking fun at her characters, but with love. I was not at all show more surprised by the ending, but it did come on a bit abruptly. Otherwise, nary a quibble with this one. Oh, wait, yes, one more---was it absolutely necessary to include an unlikeable character named Linda???? show less

I never know how an Anne Tyler novel is going to end. She has a way of trailing infinite possibilities behind her advancing prose. This is part of what keeps me reading her books. Usually I'm content enough when I arrive at her final destination. However, the ending to this one infuriated me, causing acute pain and a sense of betrayal. The pain and betrayal came from having liked the book a lot up until then, and from my sympathy toward the main character. Sometimes as a reader one sees things quite differently from how the writer sees those same things. Unfortunately, sometimes this difference isn't fully revealed until the very end of a book. But I don't want to think about it for the length of time required to write any more details, show more nor do I want to hide the review because of spoilers.

In the case of this rating, ending trumps all: 2 stars for the ending, 4 stars for the rest of the book. show less

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this story and these characters. At first I was annoyed with Delia for being so self-centered, for not attempting to truly understand her loved ones, for thinking that all they said and did was a reflection of their interactions with her. But gradually & subtly she, and we, learn more about their inner lives.

By the time the book ended, I *still* wasn't sure just how it was going to... even though I read carefully, fully absorbed, savoringly. And even when I learned the ending, I had to think about it. I'm still not sure it was the ending *I* wanted, but it's the best for these characters.*

And Tyler makes it all look effortless. The theme of second chances in love is expressed in so many different show more characters' lives, in so many different shapes & styles, it feels like we're reading several stories at once. In that way, it somewhat resembles a Maeve Binchy book - but it's even better.

Tyler is such a good writer. All the details she drops in with such studied casualness make it easy to feel as if one knows the characters as real people. A ginger jar in the B.B Dr's waiting room, the twins' dresses the color of Crest fluoride toothpaste, buying barley for gripe water (I never heard of it before, but from those two sentences I know I want to make it).

Walking with a two year-old, at his pace, Delia felt she had never seen Bay Borough in such detail -- every plastic cup lid wheeling along the sidewalk, every sparrow pecking tinfoil in the gutter." This detail was perfect for me, because I notice litter & such one of the first times I walk through a new place. And so that's one way Delia and I differ - she's more focused on what's in front, what's significant, and I (as Tyler has made apparent) need to spend less time looking down and focusing on the negativity.

I love that Delia, at age 40, discovered the library, and started borrowing books, instead of buying trashy romances. After a bit, well before she started reading classics, she isn't satisfied by the books she used to read. And when she is caught away and needs to buy a book, (because she finds TV exhausting, as do I) she buys "something serious and believable, about poor people in Maine." (Probably [b:The Beans of Egypt, Maine|263862|The Beans of Egypt, Maine|Carolyn Chute|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389141854s/263862.jpg|464869]**)

Btw, I'll save you some research (if you want, but I'll hide it in spoilers if you don't. Very early on we learn that Delia's name is Cordelia, and when a character asks if she's "her father's Cordelia" he is referring to the youngest daughter of King Lear. And the song Delia's father sang to her as a lullaby is something I'd consider entirely inappropriate, by Johnny Cash:
Delia's Gone

Delia, oh, Delia Delia all my life
If I hadn't have shot poor
Delia I'd have had her for my wife
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

I went up to Memphis
And I met Delia there Found her in her parlor
And I tied to her chair
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

She was low down and trifling
And she was cold and mean
Kind of evil make me want to Grab my sub machine
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

First time I shot her I shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot she died
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

But jailer, oh, jailer Jailer,
I can't sleep 'Cause all around my bedside
I hear the patter of Delia's feet
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone
So if you woman's devilish
You can let her run
Or you… Full lyrics on Google Play

And probably one of my favorite passages (even though, if over-analyzed, it can certainly be rendered meaningless):
"Oh, the otherness of Delia's children never failed to entrance her! She considered it a sort of bonus gift -- a means of experiencing, up close, an entirely opposite way of being."

*Some readers' reviews question the ending. Do *not* read the spoiler if you have *any* intention of reading this book. Even after you've read it, think about the ending, come to your own conclusion, before reading what I figured out:
The idea is that she owes her first allegiance to her own family - and that she's come to realize they do need, and deserve, her. And that she does love them. Noah and Joel will be ok. Maybe even Ellie will come back - she was advised to by Delia, remember, when she confessed to D. that she wonders if she'd made a mistake, and that she missed them.

I imagine, based on clues in the text, that she'll visit Bay B. sometimes. And folks back there may visit her... after all, Nat did in his hour of need. She'll not just run away like she did the year before.

I think I was able to read carefully because I empathized. I am actually, embarrassingly, on my third marriage. I'm a slow learner - so I wanted to pay attention to this story and learn how Delia made her choice.

** Well, researching that cleared up a confusion that's been lurking in the back of my mind. [b:The Beans of Egypt, Maine|263862|The Beans of Egypt, Maine|Carolyn Chute|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389141854s/263862.jpg|464869] is *not* [b:The Bean Trees|30868|The Bean Trees (Greer Family, #1)|Barbara Kingsolver|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362981087s/30868.jpg|1095121], though they do both have something to do with rural poverty. Yay for me figuring that out." show less

It took a while for me to warm up to Delia Grinstead. She was on a beach with her family, her husband and three children, the youngest was sixteen. She ambles off with her beach tote, takes a bus to another town. Then she starts up a whole new life, rents a room, gets a job for an attorney and takes in a cat offered by her employer. Apparently, she wants some solitude, some time to read her romance article in peace and to escape her family's assumptions that she would do everything for them.
Her husband never said that he loved her, did he marry just so he could inherit her father's medical practice and the house that she grew up in?

She meets her eccentric landlady who yearns to marry, a strange man who stays alone all the time, and show more later when she changes her job to taking care of a small boy, she welcomes his desire for caring mother who won't leave, and learns why the boy's mother left the family.

Sometimes, I wanted her to go back home and sometimes I loved her feeling of independence and peace that she created for herself.

The most poignant part of the story is when Delia askes her husband what he crossed out on a card to her. That was heart breaking, and contemptible was her sister who wanted Delia's husband for herself. Sad was the grandfather of the little boy she took care of who thought he could start his life over again after his wife died with a much younger wife.

Humor, great sadness, misunderstanding and love are the key elements of this book. show less

I think every married woman with children who is overworked and unappreciated imagines just walking away from it all and just being ALONE. Delia Grindstead does just that, much to the shock of her family. The characters were written like real people, quirks and all, and jumped off the page, and the story was excellent right up until the end. So as not to spoil the book for others, I will only say that the ending was a disappointment and did not live up to the expectations that were created by the rest of the book.