If Morning Ever Comes: A Novel

Anne Tyler's voice is very distinctive and I was a bit surprised to see it so well developed in her first novel. The novel is an exploration of family life and small town dynamics set (probably) in the early 1950's. Her art is that she conveys the thought processes and actions of her characters, not as we would like to see them, but as they actually unfold---illogical, hazy, confused and erratic. Perhaps because of that, her eccentric characters are easy to relate to and draw the reader into a book that is more like a life experience than a story. This is quite a lovely little book and surprising, given that the author was still in her early 20's when she wrote it.

If Morning Ever Comes was Anne Tyler’s first novel. Written in 1964 it still seems fresh upon rereading. Although Ben Joe Hawkes has gone to New York to college, his mind and heart are in Sandhill, N. C. with the family he left behind. Perhaps because he was the only male among the gaggle of sisters (6!), mother and grandmother, he feels a sense of responsibility greater than most freshmen would and abruptly returns when he learns a married sister has come home with her child.
Ben Joe is an unlikely hero but acts of kindness come naturally to him. He befriends an elderly man on the train, he visits the woman who had been his father’s mistress. He is considerate to his Mother and Grandmother, despite his awareness of their faults and show more idiosyncrasies. The family and a former girlfriend are confused by his presence: he should be at school, and yet he’s with them as if he’d never gone away.
Anne Tyler gives readers vignettes of smalltown life: a doctor with athlete’s foot who goes shoeless (to the consternation of his patients), the harried staff of an old people’s home, the front porch swings on every house.
Ben Joe can’t solve his family’s problems. He does his best and that will have to do for the time being. They’ll be distracted, we know, when he calls from New York to tell them he’s taken his high school sweetheart back with him, and that the next time he visits it will be as a married man. show less

I love Anne Tyler and find her books in general to be a really comforting and soothing read. This book provides some insight into a rather odd family, who are totally charming aside from their strangeness. The only character I found hard to relate to is the mother, who despite a very thick shell of defences, loves her family and does her best to provide support (in her case, financial but not emotional). The emotional support burden has landed on the eldest and only son, Ben Joe, and this book is mainly about his struggle to find himself while balancing the need he feels to be the anchor for his family. A lovely read!

Anne Tyler’s debut novel tracks the self-realization of a young man whose character struggles to negotiate a balance between self-identity and family identity.

Tyler's characteristic wit and eccentricity of characters is shown right off the bat even in this first novel.

"Seems like you are always loving the people that fly away from you, Ben Joe, and flying away from the people that love you. But if you've decided, this once, to do something the other way, I'll be happy to agree."

Ben Joe Hawkes is attending law school in New York while his mother, grandmother, and five sisters go about their lives in North Carolina. When he finds out that his oldest sister has left her husband and come back home, he also feels drawn back home. At home, Ben Joe is haunted by his past, but learns that by embracing it, he can find a way into the future.

Anne Tyler's books are wonderful to read because there are so many layers in them. Her characters are so quirky and outlandish that the logical part of your brain thinks, "no one is that messed up," but somehow, Tyler always makes it work. This story didn't come together for me until the end of the novel, but the wait was worth it.

Enjoyable light read, with Anne Tyler's usual excellent observations and pithy humour. Focuses on a delightful young university student who worries about his family a lot.

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors. My son told me that I was just like one of the characters in Accidental Tourist. I had to go back that re-read the book and I still wasn't sure of which character. Oh well. I found a lot of her books at used book store. I did not know when I bought this one that it was her first and that she had disowned this book and the second one! I am giving it a three stars because the characters needed more development and the plot was very simple. I agree with her but she has come so much farther in her later books.

Two things struck me: When the main character Ben Joe Hawking said " Every place I go, I miss another place. That rang true for me. Except that I have never missed high school. The grade school show more that I went to has been demolished and newer and uglier one took its place It is sad when you miss a place and it no longer exists.

I had trouble understanding Ben Joe Hawke, why did he want to get married? Who in his family,did he like the most? Why did he get tired of Columbia and New York? I have many unansered questions for him.

I identified a little with Gram who got tired of the same old food that her daughter cooked every day. Even though I like strawberry Greek yogurt, I do not want to eat it every day. My husband does our grocery shopping and last week, they did not even have vanilla, much less lemon, banana or chocolate. I cannot blame him for that, our choices are fewer with the pandemic.

Gram also wondered what her life would have been like if she had married a different man. I felt anxious for her to get out all her questions to her old boyfriend in the Old Friends Home. That is the same way that I feel when my son calls me from China. I felt very sad for her when her boyfriend died the very next day. I wanted them to connect again.

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