Rating: 
Summary: Patchwork Planet: a story of little America
Review: I too read lots of books and have read several Anne Tylers in the past. This book seems typical of the kind of work one can expect from her. The writing style is deceptive in that it's easy to miss her point. One can easily get caught up in the character's lives and not see the forest for the trees, as several amazon reviewers seem to have done.
Barnaby Gaitlin seems to be a loser, a sort of lost child, the kind of kid who should have done better, a disappointment to his parents. He's struggling to overcome his childhood problems, while looking for his angel (all the Gaitlins have them). Meanwhile, he has worked for a company called Rent-a-Back for eleven years, helping senior citizens with small jobs. (Read between the lines here: isn't there something truly noble in the way Barnaby goes about this work?)
His family sees his work as nonsense, not in keeping with the family's station so they continue to treat him like their wayward child. This is the essence of the Patchwork Planet, that Barnaby must figure out what is truly important in life. Barnaby eventually does sort things out and grow into a man, and as he does, he gives us hope.
Rating: 
Summary: Overflowing with good writing
Review: Barnaby Gaitlin is an employee of Rent-A-Back. He has a daughter, Opal, who lives in Philadelphia with her mother, Natalie, and Natalie's second husband. Natalie believes it is detrimental to his daughter's well-being for him to visit her once a month. When the story opens Barnaby is three weeks short of thirty. He has not completed college. He has not found his life work. He is a member of a notable family that even has a charitable foundation bearing its name. He meets Sophia on the train between Baltimore and Philadelphia. Sophia Maynard visits her mother every week. Fortunately Barnaby does not stop visiting his child because it turns out that Opal does care about him. Barnaby celebrates his birthday at his parent's house. Sophia arranges to have Barnaby work five hours a week for her aunt. In one of the scenes Barnaby and his mother attend Opal's dance recital. It is related that Barnaby thinks of his mother as spiny-backed. (She changed the spelling of her first name on her wedding invitations to honor the acquisition of her new foundation-endowed married name.) Since Sophia got her roommate's name from a community bulletin board she claims she doesn't care what the roommate thinks about the relationship between Sophia and Barnaby. As when pregnant cats start looking for drawer space and older people start sorting their possessions, it seems that something is about to happen. This is the sort of really solid information Barnaby obtains on the job. One of the Rent-A-Back clients confuses names through anxiety. Sophia and Barnaby make a remarkable couple. Sophia loves to dash the expectations of her tyrannical mother. The book is hilarious. Barnaby reports he has an aversion to restaurant dishes with dropped g's in their names. Barnaby had taken a sort of voyeuristic pleasure in the burglaries committed in his youth. On the Rent-A-Back gig Anne Tyler gives him a similarly-charged propensity to enumerate carefully people's personal effects. When Sophia's aunt accuses him of theft he is shattered. His other customers rally to his defense and call his boss to schedule extra hours for him. Sophia tries to cover up for him and then the aunt realizes that she had moved her money. Pretty soon his equilibrium is restored and Barnaby is reporting that the little dogs in the park are dressed better than he is. Thanksgiving dinner is at Barnaby's brother's house. There is no turkey, but three desserts are available. Sophia and Barnaby run into a rough spot and it isn't even clear they will remain a couple. The book has exuberance. It is overflowing with good writing.
Rating: 
Summary: A Whole Lot of Nothing
Review: *A Patchwork Planet* tells the story of misfit, Barnaby Gaitlin. Barnaby's in his early thirties, and is not particularly pleased his life. He's got a demanding ex-wife, a pre-teen daughter he can't connect with, a nowhere job and wealthy parents that don't understand him. He's in a rut, and he doesn't know how he got there or how to get out of it. Really, it isn't so much that he made poor choices, as that he never really made *any* choices--he just sort of lets things happen to him. I think that's why I didn't like him as a character, and couldn't get terribly interested in what happened to him next. Barnaby believes that his life will improve once he finds his "angel". (His family fortune came about as a result of several family members finding their angel--kind of like a muse, I guess.) Early on in the book, Barnaby believes his found his angel in Sophia, a woman whom he overheard in conversation in a train station. Against his character, he decides to pursue her. Once they become involved he proceeds, for essentially the rest of the book, to wait for the "angel" to bring about his reversal of fortune. What passive, frustrating character! He doesn't grow or improve. Things do somewhat improve for him by the book's end, but more by chance than by his actions. Tyler's writing is good, but perhaps I've missed her point. I can't recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: My first Anne Tyler novel - not disappointing!
Review: This was my very first Anne Tyler novel - I picked it up after hearing so many great things about her writing. I was not disappointed in the least. I thought this was a very good book, well-written and touching. The story kept me involved, and was one where you wonder what the characters are doing even when you're not reading the book! There were several times when this book made me laugh out loud - and a time or two when I got tears in my eyes. I will miss Barnaby and Sophia and will always wonder what became of them...
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