Noah's Compass

"In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job." Well, now, you can't get much more timely than this. I'm a bit older than Liam, and so was my husband when the same thing happened to him, but still at a point in life when it leaves you wondering "Am I really finished with work? Am I ready to retire? Do I have other options?" Liam hasn't set the world on fire, to say the least, and now he's thinking he might just relax into his rocking chair with his books and wait for the end. Except that his rocking chair isn't all that comfortable, as it turns out. And everyone keeps asking him what he’s going to do “next”. And the first night he spends in his new, cheaper apartment he forgets to lock the patio door, and gets show more knocked out by an opportunistic burglar. (Not such a great opportunity for the burglar, either---Liam doesn't own one thing worth stealing.) He wakes up in the hospital with a bandaged head and no memory of anything past settling comfortably into his tightly made bed. He is much more disturbed by the lack of memory than by any other aspect of the event, a fact which neither his family, his doctor nor his friend Bundy seem to grasp. They all feel he should be grateful not to have a memory of being assaulted in his own apartment, but to Liam it’s an ongoing source of frustration. There isn’t a lot of plot in this novel; Tyler gives us life’s mundane moments, touched with a bit of short-lived excitement and a lot of introspection on the fly. As she has done before, (in The Accidental Tourist, for example) she creates a slightly disconnected male character who has functioned well enough up to a point in his life, but seems to have no inner core of support when life stops being routine, and who finds himself drawn to a woman whose appeal is that she fits no familiar pattern. Unfortunately, he rather pins his hopes for recovering his memory and turning his life around on this woman, who clearly isn’t wrapped too tightly at the core herself. I almost always enjoy Anne Tyler’s characters, even when I want to give them a good shake and a swift kick in the butt. This time was no exception.

Review written in January 2016 show less

Liam Pennywell has been made redundant from his teaching job at the age of 60. He needs to economise so he moves to a smaller apartment further out of town. He wonders if losing his job is a sign that it’s time to move on to “the final stage, the summing-up stage”.

This is the opening of Anne Tyler’s 18th novel. Like all her others, it is set in Baltimore. Although Liam has lived alone for some years following the end of his second marriage, this novel is about his past and present relationships with other people, his family and others. This is familiar territory for those like me who have read a lot of Anne Tyler’s other work.

As in her other novels, the story of Noah’s Compass is gradually built up, it is a quiet, show more reflective novel about thoughts and feelings rather than a fast paced action-packed novel. Liam deals with what is happening to him by trying to focus on the positive side of it – paring down his possessions to prepare for the move is a chance to simplify his life.

Liam is proud of his memory but just after the move he wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of the knock on the head which caused him to be there. This does worry him and he sets out to find out. The loss of his job, the move and the gap in his memory force him to realise he is lonely, and he begins, very hesitantly, to re-establish relationships with his daughters, two adults and a 17 year old. His conversations with his family are often quite amusing and rather sad at the same time, as it becomes very clear that it is not just being hit on the head that is his problem, perhaps there is rather a lot he doesn’t know.

He is attracted to a younger woman because she seems to be someone who could help look after him, and a friendship, then a relationship slowly develops. But is there more to dowdy but caring Eunice than meets the eye? The Eunice storyline is important, but I didn’t like it that much, I had been drawn into the book enough to care about Liam and to think that there was something not quite right, that the romance didn’t convince me. I was much more interested in reading about Liam re-establishing relationships with his three daughters, particularly teenage Kitty who comes to stay with him after lots of fights with her mum.

I found this story of Liam’s first year of this new life a curiously absorbing read, and would recommend it to those who like this kind of quietly reflective, thoughtful fiction. show less

Anne Tyler books are all character driven novels whose main characters are usually hapless, white suburbanites (Digging to America was an exception about an Iranian Family who adopt a Korean child), emotionally disconnected types who are surrounded by quirky family members or friends, and are at a turning point in their lives. This book is no exception. While this novel is perhaps not quite as good as some of her previous work, she remains a keen observer of the foibles of humans, retains her keen ear for dialog, and her continues her wonderful use of metaphors and similes.

Her novels always show that life is complicated, even for the hapless and clueless, and there are no easy answers. In this case, Liam Pennywell, the 60 year-old, show more layed-off school teacher, begins a relationship with 38 year-old, Eunice Dunstead, (the Rememberer), initially in the hope that she might be able to help him remember what happened to him when he is knocked unconscious by a robber in his apartment. While she doesn’t help him in recovering his memory of the robbery, the relationship does trigger his memory of his 2 “failed” marriages, and his relationships with his 3 daughters.

In the end Liam starts a new chapter in his life working at a Jewish day-care center as a Zada (grandfather), even though he was not much of a father to his 3 daughters. So perhaps he does learn something from one of the characters in the book who misquotes, "Those that forget the past are doomed to regret the present."

Anne Tyler fans should be happy with this latest installment, but those looking for an action packed novel will be sorely disappointed and bored stiff. show less

I haven't read an Anne Tyler for a while, so I anticipated this vacation read and it didn't let me down!

When I read Tyler I am struck by the ordinariness of the world she creates. It makes me want to open my eyes wider and look around at my own life and see what is happening!

The irony is that Liam, the main character in this story, is utterly unable to notice the world around him. He has recently been let go at the school where he was teaching 5th grade, he should have complained that he had seniority, but why bother. Because of his shrinking salary he moved to a much smaller and less desirable apartment, and the first night he spends in this new apartment he is attacked by a thief and wakes in the hospital.

When he awakes, he remembers show more nothing of the attack. Because he can't remember the events that brought him to the hospital he is utterly fixated on his memory loss. Fixated in a way that he has not experienced before. The reader finds that out as his ex-wife and three daughters enter his hospital room and his apartment and his life. Liam was clearly not a part of their lives - at least not on purpose!

And so this story follows Liam as he 'wakes' up to mess he has created by not being present even when he was.

I loved this book.

I love the way Tyler creates her characters. I have a feeling I would not really like Liam if I were to meet him in my work. But on the pages, it is completely different!

Instead, I loved the way Liam relished in his aloneness until he was really alone and in that moment he understood what he had missed. I loved the relationship that he created with Eunice Dunstead, a professional rememberer. And I loved his relationships with his daughters - each one completely different and yet quite the same.

This is a quiet book about a huge event. And I loved it!! show less

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite trees and this one shines for me. I identify some with the main character, a guy with no compass. I have had too many compasses in my life! All my life I have been excited by so many possibilities. Liam Pennywell. is sort of my opposite but also the same as me. He majored in Philosophy in college. I loved my philosophy classes in college but when my advisor suggested that I major, I laughed and said "What would I do with it". I knew that I would not go for a doctorate because I would not do the thesis and learn another language and I had never had a female philosophy major.

Liam never finished his thesis either! His carrier path went downhill, starting out as a history teacher in a private school, he show more later was a fifth-grade teacher, and finally, the low-paying job that he loved. I wonder if there is a correlation. I loved my three-year volunteer job!

His love life was OK but not as good as he would have liked. He was widowed and then divorced and lastly, a woman who he thought he would like and she grew on it but she had a terrible secret that he uncovered.

I loved the unexpected ending and thank you, Anne Tyler for letting me see myself some more. Not a duplicate but I do know what I want and I am happy with that.

Please read it and enjoy it.

Now eager to find my next Anne Tyler book! show less

I can best describe this novel as a quiet story. The main character, Liam, is insipid and ineffectual. Even his family members find him so. Slowly we see his increasing awareness of these traits. In fact full credit to the author as I think she has purposely written in this manner. The violent incident early in the story remains undescribed so the reader like Liam has no recollection of it, so we can appreciate his frustration.
The story gently progresses to a satisfying conclusion.

Finished up Noah's Compass. Tyler's gift, and it is considerable, is for family interaction in all its aspects from dialogue to body language. People who know each other and make allowances, and yet are determined to hold what little piece of individual ground they can. Erosion is a theme of all of Tyler's book, how the 'collective' tends to grind down the individual. Noah is 60ish, he's been fired from a so-so school; all his life he's viewed his progression as downward, ever since his first marriage..... now he has to figure out what to do, but when he moves to a smaller, cheaper apartment the very first night he is hit on the head by an intruder. And that does and doesn't change everything. He hates not remembering what happened, and show more this pushes him to some unusually active behavior.
I hesitate to say that Tyler is weary or wearying, because her essential gift remains unabated, but she hasn't challenged herself or her characters in some time. I understand the point Tyler was trying to make about Noah, a man who is barely 'in' his own life, and why she ends things the way she does, but it felt as if she took an easier path and I was't quite convinced. Ah well, I'm still giving her the 1/2 plus three because she's still a better writer than most. show less