Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

The novel opens with Pearl Tull on her deathbed, attended by her son, Ezra. She fades in and out, lost in memories of years gone by. Born in the early 20th century, Pearl married and had three children. Her husband Beck earned his living as a salesman; frequent transfers required the young family to relocate on short notice. Pearl’s life was focused on her children and she had no social connections to speak of. When Beck up and left them all, she had no one to fall back on. But she managed.

Or so it seemed. In fact, Pearl’s end-of-life reverie was highly unreliable. While Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant initially appears to be the story of a quirky family, its dark side soon becomes apparent. Eldest son Cody is charming on the show more outside but inside is calculating and cruel, especially towards his brother Ezra. Jenny, the youngest, becomes a doctor but her personal life is a mess. And Ezra, the peace-keeping middle child, remains in Baltimore with his mother while working at the restaurant he eventually comes to own. Ezra repeatedly attempts to bring the family together by hosting elaborate dinners at the restaurant, which suffer under the weight of his perfectionism, shared family trauma, and the dysfunctional behaviors of every other family member.

The lives of each sibling unfold in alternating chapters, each a brilliant character study that also moves the plot along. I despised Cody and found Ezra and Jenny likeable, if flawed. The novel ends with Pearl’s funeral, where one particular loose end is resolved but much of the family’s future remains uncertain. I was actually glad Tyler didn’t fall back on a neat and tidy ending. There was no way this family was going to reverse the damage done to them, but they can move forward step by step, day by day. show less

I went into this novel with dread. I was expecting this book to hit a bit too close to home and maybe a little hard to swallow (mother death is always a hard one for me). To be honest, I have never read a novel by Anne Tyler and did not expect such incredible prose and vivid storytelling. This was a heartbreaking portrait of a flailing, damaged, and toxic American family doing their best (and as in life sometimes someone’s best just simply falls short). The heartbreaking, sad, and devastating moments of this novel felt both necessary and vital to the meaning of the story Tyler weaves in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (and weren’t the entire Tull family both homesick and in dire need of nourishment? Some of them literally show more starving?)

This is my first but certainly not my last Tyler novel. show less

Pearl Tull is looking back on her life with her three (now adult) children. Her husband walked out on the family when the children were young, and she found herself ill-equipped to cope. She carried on as if nothing had happened, not even telling the children that their father was gone. The narrative follows the lives of the three siblings – Cody, Ezra, and Jenny. It is a tale of a dysfunctional family that portrays how siblings remember the same events differently.

Set in Maryland mostly in the 1940s to 1980s, this is a story of life and a family, the passage of time, and the importance of communication. The author explores the ramifications of abandonment, with the three siblings trying to deal with it the best they can. Cody is show more aggressive, rebellious, and jealous of his brother. Ezra is the peacemaker who tries to heal the conflicts through food. Jenny engages in a series of failed relationships, eventually finding one where she feels needed.

The characters are deftly drawn, complete with strengths and flaws. The point of view switches among the siblings to provide the reader with a psychological portrait of each. This method allows the reader to gain a fuller understanding of the situation by viewing it from multiple perspectives. It is a quiet, reflective book. The main highlight for me is that by the end I felt I knew these people. I have read other books by Anne Tyler and this one is my favorite by far.

“Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again?”

4.5 show less

This novel is like a collection of old photographs, sorting through the Tull family history. There is Pearl, left abruptly by her husband with three children to raise; Pearl who is the master of denial and the queen of bitterness, but, really, just wants to live a life in which some happiness occurred. Cody, her oldest son, carries the family's jealousy and sense of being an outsider; he embodies that human tendency to look at other houses, where the living room light escapes into the darkening evening, and assume the people within are deeply connected and unthinkingly happy. Jenny is the hard-shelled daughter, the pediatrician who never lets anyone get too close, including the reader. And there is Ezra, the youngest child who is show more goodness personified. He is patient and kind, motivated by simple desires and an unshakeable optimism. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is not plotless, but its narrative arc is propelled by the unremarkable substance of everyday family life. In this, Tyler finds and exposes beauty, meaning, and drama. She skirts tiresomeness (just) and leaves the reader pleased to have known her characters. show less

The Tull family, led by demanding matriarch Pearl, is made up of a mishmash of three very different siblings. There’s the competitive and insecure eldest, Cody; the eternal optimist and quiet-natured Ezra, and Jenny, determined but cautious. The story is told in such compassionate detail from the perspective of each person in the family in turn. The rotating narrative takes us through their lives giving us a peak into the way each one thinks.

I wasn’t a fan of Tyler’s after The Accidental Tourist, but this has changed my mind. It’s reminiscent of other novels about dysfunctional families (As I Lay Dying and This is Where I Leave You), but it’s also wholly its own story. The father figure is absent and the lonely life they lead show more is rarely intruded upon by others. Tyler’s skill as a writer makes even the unsympathetic characters become relatable. You may not like them or what they’re doing, but you can somehow understand why they’re doing it.

BOTTOM LINE: A beautifully written story of a family that both desperately needs each other and can hardly function together. Just beneath the surface there is so much hurt, jealousy and resentment, but there is also a cord of similarity and shared experience that holds them all together. A wonderful book with characters that felt achingly real.

“Everything else - the cold dark of the streets, the picture of her own bustling mother - seemed brittle by comparison, lacking the smoothly rounded completeness of Josiah's life.”

“Pearl thought, how people displayed their characters in every little thing they undertook.”

“Wasn't that what a marriage ought to be? Like one of those movie-style disasters-shipwrecks or earthquakes or enemy prisons-where strangers, trapped in close quarters by circumstance, show their real strengths and weaknesses.” show less

Anne Tyler's 9th novel explores the travails of the Tulls, a dysfunctional, yet caring, white working class family from Baltimore. The narrative spans the life of the matriarch, Pearl Tull, (the early 1900's through the late 1970's). Pearl, a proud and highly critical woman, is abandoned by by her husband and must raise her young three children, on her own while working full time as a cashier at the local supermarket. She finds single motherhood overwhelming and her critical nature often veers towards abuse both verbal and physical. Yet, Pearl really loves her children and this comes through in her actions as well.

Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different family member and examines their struggles to form relationships and show more create family. The most distressing dynamic is the oldest son, Cody's almost pathological jealousy of his younger brother Ezra, who he believes is his mother's favorite. Tyler does an excellent job chronicling his obsessive, aggressive behavior and its impact on both of their lives.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is an outstanding novel by a Pulitzer Prize winner. It is my first Anne Tyler and I look forward to reading more. show less

"There ought to be a whole separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words - for perfect, absolute truth."

This was my second book by Anne Tyler, and I read it for Mark's AAC. The first book of hers that I read was The Accidental Tourist, and I really loved that one. What Tyler does so well is to create quirky characters and then slowly peel back and reveal the layers. I find that her books are more of a character study than a plot driven narrative, so she is not for everyone, and it shows over on the AAC thread. I like her because I find that she always has something interesting to say about life, and because I think she is a keen observer. What she captures over and over again is brokenness. This novel had show more less humor than The Accidental Tourist, but it really spoke to me - perhaps because I come from the same type of dysfunctional family that Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant encapsulates. If you have read this book, then you have met my mother, and I have found that the same insights that Cody, Ezra, and Jenny gain as adults also apply to my mom. Because distance and time reveal truths.

I know that some readers have commented that nothing happens in this novel and that there is no character growth. That it's too depressing. But that's just it. Life is like that sometimes. Painful to experience and tortuous to watch unfold. We want the characters to escape, to be stronger, to make smarter choices, to walk away. To not look back. But that is the burden and also the blessing of family - it clings to you, ensnares you and refuses to let go without a fight. Not everyone rises above their circumstances, and we certainly, even when we know it is absolutely hopeless, want our parents to value us. To love all of us, even the parts they don't understand or agree with. And when they can not or will not, it hurts. It breaks us a bit. And this is where Cody and Ezra and Jenny are stuck - in their brokenness. They cannot distance themselves from their mother's grip. And this impedes their forward progress in life.

"At the funeral, the minister, who had never meant their mother, delivered a eulogy so vague, so general, so universally applicable that Cody thought of that parlor game where people fill in words at random and then giggle hysterically at the story that results. Pearl Tull, the minister said, was a devoted wife and a loving mother and a pillar of the community. She had lived a long, full life and died in the bosom of her family, who grieved for her but took comfort in knowing that she'd gone to a far finer place.

It slipped the minister's mind, or perhaps he hadn't heard, that she hadn't been anyone's wife for over a third of a century; that she'd been a frantic, angry, sometimes terrifying mother; and that she'd never shown the faintest interest in her community but dwelt in it like a visitor from a superior neighborhood, always wearing her hat when out walking, keeping her doors tightly shut when at home. That her life had been very long indeed but never full; stunted was more like it. Or crabbed. Or...what was the word Cody wanted? Espaliered. Twisted and flattened to the wall - all the more so as she'd aged and wizened, lost her sight, and grown to lean too heavily on Ezra. That she was not at all religious, hadn't set foot in this church for decades; and though in certain wistful moods she might have mentioned the possibility of paradise, Cody didn't take much comfort in the notion of her residing there, fidgeting and finding fault and stirring up dissatisfactions." show less