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Loading... Back When We Were Grownups (Unabridged) (2001)by Anne Tyler
Work InformationBack When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (2001)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. What if? That is the theme of this book. What if, thought Rebecca Davitch, I had not married Joe? She was almost set to marry handsome Will Allenby. Her mother and Will's mother were counting on it. But she became completely taken to Joe and married him without a question, thereby jilting Will. Joe was considerably older than her and left her with three stepdaughters to raise. Rebecca thought of herself as shy and retiring but had to come out of her shell to save the party-giving family business. At a picnic that she gave for her daughter, Patch says that No No's future husband and stepson introduce them to the family, and then she has a revelation. All these years, she had never been herself She never thought that she fit into the Davitch family. Her eldest daughter was dismayed at No No for marrying into a ready-made family. Rebecca thought to herself, that is exactly what I did! Rebecca has the chance to be back with Will Allenby. She also has been living with and caring for the oldest member of the Davich family, Poppy who was her husband's uncle. All that he talked about is the party for his 100th birthday, he decided it was time to tell Rebecca about it. About 100 guests, nothing to eat but sweets and a big cake! You will love this funny family with big problems and Rebecca will learn a lot about herself during this book. Enjoy! Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d made different choices earlier in your life? At 19, Rebecca was in a relationship with Will, certain they would marry after graduating from college. But instead Rebecca fell for a much older man and left Will behind, only to find herself a widow, mother, and stepmother just a few years later. Now 53, Rebecca reflects on her adult life which has, on the whole, been happy and successful. But she feels a certain emptiness and tries to turn back the clock and have a do-over of sorts. This book is another example of Anne Tyler’s knack for writing about families and family drama. Rebecca’s quirky family brings a lot to the table through side plots that add interest and, in some cases, inform Rebecca’s decisions. But the huge cast–-and their quirks–-can also be a distraction. The ending is ambiguous but pointing in a certain direction, which Tyler endorses in an author interview at the end of the book. While I might have wanted that outcome to be made explicit, I also kind of like the future being left to my imagination. no reviews | add a review
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HTML:"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone elseâ??s? On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocationâ??something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his familyâ??s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcĂ© with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms. Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers itâ??how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once beenâ??is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. As always with Anne Tylerâ??s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but al No library descriptions found. |
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Eventually she comes to accept, as her 100 year old Uncle Poppy points out, "there is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with,whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got."
The most inspiring passage come during Poppy's 100th birthday. He describes, in agonizing detail, everything about his day. From the beauty of the sunshine on his bedspread, to the taste of his waffles, the texture of his pbj sandwich, and the trickle of the icing on his cake, it is a meditation on mindfulness. It brings Rebecca to the realization that "there were still so many happening s yet to be hoped for in her life." ( )