Searching for Caleb

This was Tyler's sixth novel, from 1975, when she was starting to become well-known - Wikipedia tells us that this one was favourably reviewed by John Updike. We're initially wrong-footed by being introduced on the New York train to some characters who live in Virginia and are on the point of moving to a small town in Maryland, and we have to wonder whether this can really be a proper Anne Tyler novel at all, but it soon becomes clear that Justine and her grandfather are actually fugitives from a complicated extended family that lives in a couple of big houses in Baltimore, as is the grandfather's elusive brother Caleb, who hasn't been seen since 1912. So all is as it should be!

It turns out to be a touching and often very amusing story show more about whether it's better to live our lives according to preset rules and patterns, or to be open to the whims of chance. Justine, like her missing great uncle, is an extreme case of the follow-the-whims school of thought; the rest of the Peck family are so afraid of any randomness in their lives that they have great difficulty in ever leaving the family home in Roland Park, Baltimore. Not as hard-edged as some of her later books, perhaps, but there are some great scenes (especially the one where a young clergyman comes to ask Justine and Duncan for their daughter's hand, and everyone is so distracted by other things that they hardly even notice him until he resorts to eloping with her) and some very memorable bits of observation - the Peck obsession with not forgetting to write a thank-you note after a visit, even if you have decamped through the window, for instance...

Nothing very profound, but worthwhile as always. show less

Page 50 of Ann Tyler’s early novel, Searching for Caleb, is the end of chapter three. Around page 40, I decided I would give this novel to exactly page 50. But suddenly, the story became really interesting, and I plowed right through that barrier.

According to the dust jacket on her latest novel, Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has written eleven novels, and Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Most of her novels detail the lives of slightly dysfunctional families, but she does so with a dry and subtle wit. Almost all her novels I have read are set – at least in part – in Baltimore, Maryland.

The novel opens with a somewhat dreary portrait of the Peck show more Family. The patriarch, Daniel Peck, inherited a rather exhausting array of rules governing his family. The least peculiar of which involved carrying cream-colored paper, and an addressed and stamped envelope. These “bread and butter” notes were to be written immediately upon leaving the home of family or friends after a visit. The notes were formulaic. A brief thanks for the hospitality followed by a specific mention of some bright spot in the visit. Daniel required mailing at the first post office spotted on the way home. He
did not trust corner mail boxes when they changed from Army green to red and blue.

The story revolves around Justine – Daniel’s granddaughter -- her husband, Duncan, who also happened to be her cousin, their child Meg, and Caleb. Caleb left home unannounced in 1912. He never contacted any members of the family. As Daniel aged, he clung to a single, odd photo of Caleb, with a cello, in the doorway of the second floor of a barn. The compound of houses provided living space for all the children and grandchildren. He becomes obsessed with finding his brother.

After Caleb, Justine and Duncan were the first to break away from this restrictive family circle. Justine loved all of her relatives, especially Daniel, so she reluctantly left with Duncan to start a goat farm. As Duncan became bored with this project, he suddenly changed to chickens, then antiques. Tyler describes the young couple’s arrival at their new house. She writes, “‘Look! Someone left a pair of pliers,’ she said. ‘And here’s a chair we can use for the porch.’ She was a pack rat; all of them were. It was a family trait. You could tell that in a flash when they started carrying things in from the truck – the bales of ancient, curly-edged magazines, zipper bags bursting with unfashionable clothes, cardboard boxes marked Clippings, Used Wrapping Paper, Photos, Empty Bottles. Duncan and Justine staggered into the grandfather’s room carrying a steel filing cabinet from his old office, stuffed with carbon copies of all his personal correspondence for the twenty-three years since his retirement. In one corner of their own room Duncan stacked crates of machine parts and nameless metal objects picked up on walks, which he might someday want to use for some invention. He had cartons of books, most of them second-hand, dealing with things like the development of the quantum theory and the philosophy of Lao-Tzu and the tribal life of Ila-speaking Northern Rhodesians” (31).

An example of Tyler’s humor involves Justine, who hated sweetened tea. On a visit to her daughter, Meg’s home – shared with her mother-in-law, Mrs. Milson – Justine is given a glass of sweetened tea, despite the fact Meg asked the elderly woman to fix her some without sugar. The excruciatingly polite Justine, sips the tea without complaint. Then she notices candy on the coffee table. “Justine chose that moment to reach toward the green glass shoe on the coffee table – sourballs! Right under her nose! – and chose a lemony yellow globe and pop it into her mouth, where she instantly discovered she that she had eaten a marble. While everyone watched in silence she plucked it out delicately between thumb and forefinger and replaced it, only a little shinier than before, in the green glass shoe. ‘I thought we could have used more rain,’ she told the ring of faces” (227).

Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb is a lot of fun. She expertly handles all the peculiarities and foibles one can imagine in an overly eccentric family. Try any of her novels, and you will be hooked as I am. 5 stars.

--Jim, 1/10/15 show less

Since 1975 (before I was born), this book lived at the library where I now work, surviving a relocation and multiple rounds of weeding, but its time had come. I rescued it*, along with several other Anne Tyler novels that I haven't read yet, and used it to fill in a gap between more recent releases. While it's not my favorite Anne Tyler, it still fits her cozy/quirky niche that I really enjoy.

Following four generations of the Peck family, an extremely insular WASP clan in Baltimore, the title somewhat ties the novel together. Patriarch Daniel, a retired judge, has made searching for his long-lost half-brother, Caleb, the focus of his twilight years. His fortune-telling granddaughter Justine (daughter of his youngest daughter and show more married to his son's shiftless son) accompanies him, often by train, following leads throughout the northeast.

It's very Anne Tyler and very 1970s.

*temporarily, from the Friends of the Library book sale, which is probably where it will end up now that I'm done reading it, because I don't think I'll reread it. show less

About 2/3 through. A breathless read. I'm made to feel that if I don't finish it quickly, I'll fall off the rails/ lose track of what & who. I suspect only bits will stay with me after I'm done, for example Daniel's fondness for horehound and root beer, and Justine's inability to figure out who she is and what she wants (at least so far), and omg I'll never know (or care) who all Pecks of Roland Park are.

Ok done.
What I love about Tyler's writing is the details. He wasn't doing a jigsaw puzzle, he was doing a 1200 piece puzzle of "Sunset in the Rockies" ... and thinking of turning it over and doing the gray side. Another "enjoyed his work as a short-order cook, frying up masses of hashbrowns and lace-edged eggs...." Or consider, "They show more were all particularly careful of each other, if you didn't count X pinching Y when he didn't know Mrs. Z was looking." (Note the "know" instead of "think" you see.)

Oh but poor Meg. I don't recall that Tyler generally abandons innocent characters to the vagaries of bad luck. I hope not. I hope I missed something, and that Meg is going to be able to work her way to joy.

And not least, birthday candles for grown-ups = age 93 is 9 large and 3 small. show less

Amateur fortune teller Justine Peck is a typically quirky and interesting Anne Tyler heroine. I found myself rooting for her despite her slightly unseemly marriage to her cousin Duncan, a feckless drifter who subjects his family to a rootless, uncertain existence in a succession of small towns. I was more interested by Justine's efforts to help her grandfather Daniel locate his long-disappeared brother, which offer moments of both humour and pathos. An enjoyable read.

3868. Searching for Caleb, by Anne Tyler (19 Mar) This is the seventh book by Tyler I have read. It did not catch me up until I was about 2/3rds the way thru, but it then became often funny and was well worth reading to the end. There are the usual Tyler character quirkiness and some poignancy--but the characters are so odd it is hard to identify with them. There are ten other Tyler novels I have not read, and I have no intention to read them all, but I might read another.

A friend gave me a Anne Tyler omnibus that included Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons and Searching for Caleb. Searching for Caleb, the last novel in the book, was my least favorite of the three. Tyler is a gifted writer with a clean style, writing with humor and insight, and features characters that are rounded, real and very strikingly individual, from minor secondary characters to the major ones, like Daniel, and his grandchildren, cousins married to each other, Duncan and Justine Peck.

Daniel is an old-fashioned gentleman who last saw his brother Caleb sixty years ago in 1912. He periodically goes on trips with Justine searching for his brother, and you get the feeling the journey is more important than the goal for both. Daniel show more is the most appealing character in the book, despite his at times strict and stiff ways. Justine and Duncan, on the other hand, I didn't care for much--which may be why this book dragged for me. Justine "endures" and "adapts," and puts up with far too much from Duncan--and Duncan is hard to take. He's not abusive--he's just completely thoughtless, flaky, flighty and feckless. Growing bored just when it seems he might succeed at a new endeavor, he sabotages himself, then uproots his wife and daughter to a new town. At times I found I hated him with the heat of a thousand suns, and I found the entire cycle repeated in the book depressing. It seemed the farther I got into the book, the slower, tougher going I found each page. If this weren't a relatively short novel, I probably would have given up--but having gotten two-thirds through, I grimly pushed through.

The last two pages made it--almost--worth it. But not quite. I can't say I recommend it to anyone but a diehard Tyler fan. show less