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The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 9780425092910 Books

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The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 9780425092910 Books

Wonderful book. All the characters are well-drawn, and all of them have depths that aren’t obvious in the beginning. When we meet him, Macon is someone who spends his life fending off the unpredictable. From the way he sews sheets together to make a sort of bag to seal himself in at night--to the way he discourages any seat mate who wants to talk with him on an airplane--to the way he advises people how to travel without encountering anything unexpected–Macon is hermetically sealed off from life. It takes a freak homicide to crack his facade and initiate the events that end up changing his attitude about everything.

The thing that struck me about this book–and I don’t know that anyone has mentioned this–is how every single character is underestimated, misinterpreted, and defined by the others. Other people are always telling Macon what kind of person he is. But Macon gets the people in his life wrong too–his sister Rose, his boss Julian, even his son has another side to him. I guess in the end, this is about how other people's expectations can limit us--or help set us free.


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The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler 9780425092910 Books Reviews

What a great book! it has it all compassion, humor, love and the ability we all have to make a change, mainly in the way we live our lives. Turns out that training a dog is pretty much like training a man! A must read for all who gave up on an angry dog or an unromantic partner. Anne Tyler is a wonderful story teller she really loves and cares for all her characters, even the lesser ones and the beauty there are no villains! Or maybe one but we don't get to meet him, just the damage he has done. Read, read, read!!!
This is one of Anne Tyler's best novels, and (for me, anyway) that's high praise indeed. It's impossible to read any of her works without feeling that you've known a couple (or more) of these people in your own life. Her dialogue is absolutely spot on for each character and -- well, if I go on and on it'll sound gushy and therefore not to be trusted. I'm a huge fan of this author.
This is an interesting study in the contrast between taking charge of your life versus having your life happen to you by momentum and happenstance. It was made into a movie with a stellar cast, but the movie is necessarily a tremendous oversimplification of the book (due to time constraints). Carefully chose which medium appeals to you in advance once you have read or seen this story either way, you will likely be let down by the other version. Reading it first makes the movie seem to lack nuance, but seeing it first gives away the ending — thus deflating the tension of the story,
Anne Tyler is the real meal deal. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons and was a runner up with this novel - losing to "Lonesome Dove". She was also a runner up with "Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant"; losing to The "Color Purple."  It took two legendary novels to keep her off the winners podium.

I read this novel after finishing her "Clock Dance" and was struck by the similarities in the two stories. In both the protagonists are drifting through life following a traumatic death. They are then jolted into the current world and are eventually faced with the decision to go back to their old life or move on with the new.

As the story opens Macon and his wife Sarah are returning from a vacation a couple of years after their son died. "They might have been returning from two entirely different trips." [p 1].  Sarah is exasperated by the ultra-organized Macon and decides to leave him. Sarah doesn’t want to get caught up in Macon’s way of life. “You’re so quick to be sensible, Macon, that you’ve given up on just about everything.” [p 161]

And she is right, Macon organizes everything in an attempt to get some space between himself and his life.

In some odd way, he was locked inside the standoffish self he’d assumed when he and she first met. He was frozen there. It was like that old warning of his grandmother’s Don’t cross your eyes, they might get stuck that way.” [p 59]

In “Clock Dance” Willa is jolted from her life by the shooting of one of her sons’ ex-girlfriends. Here, Macon breaks his leg which leads him to getting help training his dog. Interestingly, Daisy in “Clock Dance” has a leg injury that precipitates the central change. The hobbled legs are symbols of the inability to move forward.

In this case, Macon is caught up in the hurricane that is Muriel who takes on the job of training Macon’s dog. She is everything that Macon is not; the relationship puts Macon on a different course

"Then he knew that what mattered was the pattern of her life; that although he did not love her he loved the surprise of her, and also the surprise of himself when he was with her." [p 242]

The Macon at the beginning of the novel would never love the surprises that Muriel brings. Eventually, Sarah returns to Macon forcing him to make a choice - something he has spent his adult life avoiding.

"He couldn’t think of a single major act he had managed of his own accord. Was it too late to begin? Was there any way he could learn to do things differently?" [p 402]

That is Macon’s big question; is his fate due to entropy or purpose? Well, you’ll have to read it to find that out.

If you’ve read any of my other fiction book reports you know I’m a fan of similes - and this book has some gems.

- "The urge to sleep was like a great black cannonball rolling around inside his skull, making his head heavy and droopy.
- “The sky was bright but flat, the color of oyster shells.” [p 304]
- On his cast “The hardest blow felt like a knock on the wall from a neighboring room.” [p 68]

Finally, I found this passage - in a book written over 30 years ago - speaking to me about our current situation.

“It’s just free speech, that’s all we’ve got. We can say whatever we like, then the government goes on and does exactly what it pleases. You call that democracy? It’s like we’re on a ship, headed someplace terrible, and somebody else is steering and the passengers can’t jump off” [p 208]
I had heard the name from the movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis and that is about all. So when it turned up for $1.99, I decided to give it a chance. Boy, did I get my money's worth.

When Macon Leary's son is killed in a burger joint robbery, his life comes to an end. Frozen within himself he mechanically goes through the motions of living, but he is dead inside. Unable to give or take comfort from his wife, his marriage falls apart. He is left to live alone with his rituals and a vicious and uncontrolled dog, Edward. He pulls further and further into himself. When the dog hospital refuses to board Edward so Macon can travel to England to write another of his dreary guidebooks for business travelers who want to feel they never left home, he is forced to find an alternative. On impulse, he chooses the Meow-Bow Animal Hospital, and his life is never the same.

He meets Muriel, the dog trainer, and she turns his life upside-down. She is everything he isn't spontaneous, free, happy-go-lucky.

How their relationship develops and how he finds himself breaking out of his dreary routine against himself, supplies with bulk of the novel. Rich in observation and free of the usual romance tropes, this delightful novel delights and entertains at every turn. Highly recommended.
Wonderful book. All the characters are well-drawn, and all of them have depths that aren’t obvious in the beginning. When we meet him, Macon is someone who spends his life fending off the unpredictable. From the way he sews sheets together to make a sort of bag to seal himself in at night--to the way he discourages any seat mate who wants to talk with him on an airplane--to the way he advises people how to travel without encountering anything unexpected–Macon is hermetically sealed off from life. It takes a freak homicide to crack his facade and initiate the events that end up changing his attitude about everything.

The thing that struck me about this book–and I don’t know that anyone has mentioned this–is how every single character is underestimated, misinterpreted, and defined by the others. Other people are always telling Macon what kind of person he is. But Macon gets the people in his life wrong too–his sister Rose, his boss Julian, even his son has another side to him. I guess in the end, this is about how other people's expectations can limit us--or help set us free.