Rating: 
Summary: She's Done It Again !!!
Review: How does Anne Tyler, over and over again, write novels about ordinary, albeit quirky, people who are quietly appealing and make the reader feel their physical and social awkwardness?I was hooked from the first sentence: "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person." One MUST continue reading to find out why...and when Tyler introduces, in the next few pages, characters named MinFoo, NoNo, Poppy, Jeep, and Patch, I settled down to a long evening of reading. Where has Rebecca Davitch's life gone? This is what she wants to know. She is 53, widowed for 27 years, and has brought up three step-daughters and one daughter whom she had with Joe Davitch. Joe's first wife had left him to become a singer and when he died, they continued to live with Rebecca. She was also left with "The Open Arms", a once-elegant but aging city house that the family rents out for parties and where they also live. We meet Rebecca when she is wondering how she became what she now is: arbiter of family disputes, handyman, "cruise director" at "The Open Arms", caretaker for her elderly uncle-in-law, and a person of "unrelenting jollity" (a state she has had to struggle to attain). Is this her life, she wonders, or someone else's? What happened to the dignified, serene young woman she was at 19 when she married the 33-year-old Joe Davitch? She proceeds to awkwardly explore what might have happened had she married Will her hometown/college sweetheart and not lost her identity when she became immersed and enmeshed in the Davitch clan. Rebecca asks herself "Wasn't it strange how certain moments, now and then - certain turning points in a life, contained the curled and waiting seeds of everything that would follow?" It is obvious, as Tyler said in an interview, that her heroes are those who manage to endure and she wants everyone to understand what she is getting at. As one reviewer said "She never blinds us with her prose....instead, the quiet accretion of her insights hit one in the chest." I would highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Vintage Tyler
Review: If you are already a fan of Tyler's you will love this new novel. If you haven't tried her yet, this is a wonderful one to start with. Nobody gets into the lives and minds of their characters quite like Anne Tyler. She understands them, their motivations, their feelings, their joys and regrets. This is a novel about families and how the lives of sometimes mis-matched people end up intimately connected by a quirk of nature or marriage. Rebecca Davitch married for love and then lost her husband far too early, inheriting a typically dysfunctional family, including an elderly live-in uncle, and a business organising and hosting parties. Just turned 50 and at a family picnic Rebecca begins to look inward and back, asking that tricky question often avoided - "what if? - exploring the corners unturned, the roads untravelled, that have placed her in this moment in this unexpected life she is living. Like all families, the Davitches are ripe with tensions and misunderstandings, but also with love and affection, and inspite of everything that has happened, inspite of the "might have beens", Rebecca is and remains the heart and soul of the family. Anne Tyler writes with real warmth and insight and brings all the characters to life. She writes like a dream and draws you into the world she has created. Not to be missed.
Rating: 
Summary: awful
Review: I tried three times to finish this book, but it was so boring and shallow that I finally gave up. I agree with some of the other reviewers-- the main character is not interesting, and not the kind of person that you would spend much time with. I was very disappointed in this novel,and do not recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Overly Familiar
Review: I think I've broken down the Anne Tyler formula. Novels which are narrated by male characters are instant classics, books to be read a hundred times and enjoyed letter by letter. Novels from the POV of female characters are excellent -- but just not quite as memorable. My introduction to Anne Tyler came with "Accidental Tourist", and since then I rate "Saint Maybe" and "A Patchwork Planet" as two of my favorite books of all time. Tyler gets inside the heads of her male characters with alarming humor and accuracy. I am less fond of the women of "Ladder of Years" and "Breathing Lessons" -- and now, of "Back When We Were Grownups" -- although I still rate them as fine books. Perhaps, as a guy, I just can't bring enough to the table to appreciate the insights and sentiments. "Grownups" is a bit predictable, as if it followed the same chapter outline as Tyler's last six or seven books. There they are, in all the expected places: Rebecca, the main character who feels she hasn't become the person she always wanted to be; the annoying extended family, with bizarre names (NoNo, Biddy, and Patch -- who for good measure marries a man named Jeep); Rebecca's reluctant relationship with her off-kilter ex-boyfriend; the reluctant parting of ways late in the day; and then finally Rebecca's inevitable acceptance of just who she is, warts and all. Rebecca's a memorable character, and so are some of the other Davitch family members (especially Poppy, the centegenarian uncle). But my greatest sympathies lay with Will, Rebecca's once and future boyfriend, the insular college professor with the troubled daughter and the completely astray domestic life. There was a time when this book could have been about Will (and it was "The Accidental Tourist"). Instead, Will comes and goes, sometimes funny and sometimes poignant, and at the end of the day I almost wished the book had been about him, instead.
Rating:
Summary: This book grows on you
Review: I picked this book up at the discount racks and was filled with mixed feelings on whether to purchase it or not. I've heard about Anne Tyler for the longest time, and Nick Hornby, one of my favourite contemporary writers, did hail her as the greatest fiction writer in our times. However, the first few pages of the novel did cause me great doubt as to the veracity of all these compliments...
That is, until I patiently read the rest of the novel. My conclusion is that this book grows on you. If like me, you're disinclined towards the "Oprah Winfrey Bookclub type" of fiction, I think you may find that Back When We Were Grownups does a neat twist on "heart" kind of books - a term I've bestowed upon Oprah-type books.
Tyler does a good job of making the unlikeable characters (I found Patch the most irritating adult-brat ever!) unlikeable, and the endearing ones (aww, who else but Poppy) make you want to read on to discover what quirky priceless gems of speech they have in store for the reader.
Though overall a very 'heart' book (the kind I don't often enjoy), there is something in it that makes it stand apart from the other 'heart' books. I think this thing is the fact that Tyler has managed to carefully delineate her characters - an imperative thing to do in writing 'heart' books which 99% of the time have plots that don't exactly blow readers' minds away.
Not what I would call an outstanding work of fiction, but this ranks amongst the better of the 'heart' books.
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Summary: What if?
Review: This book was an amazing read. The story flowed and I quickly became wrapped up in the characters. They are well defined and FUN to read about. Not cardboard cutouts. You fall for Rebecca. Even though Rebecca is older, I think every woman can look and at some time or another wonder where her own "self" went. In the end Rebecca at least finds some of herself. A definate read.
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Summary: The Very Best of Anne Tyler
Review: I wept when this book ended, and that is a very unusual experience for me. I don't know whether one has to be middle-aged to become so completely involved with Rebecca Davich, the book's main character, as I became, or whether my reaction was due to a combination of the spot-on rendering by Blair Brown (on the unabridged audio recording--superb!) and the fabulous writing we have come to expect from Tyler. No matter. All I can say that all Tyler does best, from her quirky, distinctive characterizations (and there are quite a few in this book, from 100-year-old Poppy to NoNo, to Min-Foo, to Patch, et al.) to her insightful looks into the special qualities she finds in every ordinary human being, comes together to make this book a perfect whole. The story of Rebecca, who wakes up one morning convinced that she has turned into the "wrong person" is enormously moving, even though Rebecca is an ordinary too-heavy middle-aged woman given to intoning rhyming toasts at endless family parties, and to wearing blowsy hippie-dippie clothing. I loved her from the very first page, which is always Tyler's magic. She makes the reader care deeply about all the Rebeccas she writes about, and this is no exception. Rebecca married on a whim, leaving college and her stodgy college boyfriend to marry a dashing divorced man with three young girls, a decaying old mansion his family rents out for parties, a demandingly impossible mother, and an extended family one has to know to believe. Rebecca walks into all this with aplomb, rescuing the family's business, dealing with her mother-in-law, raising resentful and difficult stepchildren and eventually a daughter of her own, and finally inheriting her husband's elderly uncle, "Poppy," who becomes a full-time job in himself. Rebecca has only 6 years with her husband before he dies in an accident, but she carries on with grace and aplomb--in her own unique way. It is only when she is 53 that Rebecca grinds to a mental halt, so to speak, and wonders whether she took a wrong turn in her life, whether it has all been for nothing, and whether she matters one bit to all the people for whom she has sacrificed. She finds out in this moving, funny, poignant and wonderful journey into her past and her present in this wonderful, special book.
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Summary: Have You Ever Wondered What Your Life Could Have Been Like?
Review: Rebecca, known as Beck to the Davitch clan, made a sudden decision back in her college days to breakup with her studious boyfriend, Will Allenby, for a whirlwind courtship with the older Joe Davitch, an exciting grownup whose wife had left him with three small daughters. However Joe died six years into their marriage, leaving her with three stepdaughters and one of her own, all in a house constantly in need of repair. Plus, Rebecca's ninety-nine year old uncle-in-law, who lives on the top floor, is obsessed with his upcoming 100th birthday party and Rebecca's and Joe's daughter is just about to give birth to her third child from her third marriage. Now fifty-four years old, Rebecca looks back over her life with questions and self-doubts. What would her life have been like if she'd married Will? Her reflections become sort of a midlife meditation, an obsession and her family doesn't even seem to notice. Casting her mind back to her college days, she decides to look up Will. However, when she meets him, she finds that he has turned into a prematurely old fussbudget without any social graces whatsoever. What comes next, I can't tell here. Howeverm I will say that you will enjoy going where Anne Tyler will take you in this wonderful story. She is a master storyteller who writes with a style and grace that is so beautiful it almost makes you want to cry. Sophie Cacique Gaul
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable and entertaining
Review: Mid-life may not seem the most exciting center for a story but it certainly provides for an intersecting of emotions from those older and younger. It seems Rebecca Davitch serves as ring master for the whole clan and everyone seems surprised when she takes time to discover who she is at this point in her life. This story is funny when you get to some part and realize what you're reading reminds you of your family or someone you know! The range of characters covers many diverse types of personalities. This is a very enjoyable read.
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Summary: Who we have become may be a revelation
Review: Rebecca, thirty-three years ago, found herself at an engagement party for a friend at a row house in Baltimore. She had intellectual aspirations as a history major at a small college, and was "engaged to be engaged" to Will Allenby, a serious physics student. But her life was about to undergo a profound change. She met Joe Davitch, the operator of this house turned party and meeting hall. Joe adroitly, though unknowingly, changed Rebecca's self-perception as a quiet student to someone who enjoyed the fun of parties. Though doubts lingered, Rebecca accepted a new approach to her future and married Joe within weeks of meeting. She became an instant mother to Joe's three daughters and a partner in the business of providing space and entertainment for all manner of clients in the downstairs of their row home. Now at this point in her life, Rebecca is seriously considering that she is not what she seems to have become. At heart, she is convinced that she remains the contemplative, serious student of her earlier days. She understands that Joe had subtly shifted her outlook and altered the course of her life. With Joe having died many years before, Rebecca is free to reengage with Will, now the head of the physics department at the same small college. What she finds out about herself and Will hardly reaffirms her fixation on her past and her imagined better life. The author wants us to consider, at what point does a life lived define the real person, despite any fanciful self-definitions? In "Grownups," Rebecca's search for her true self is interleaved with all of the daily affairs of running a business and her dealings with the now large Davitch clan. Not only do the daughters have quirky names like NoNo, Biddy, Patch, and Min Foo, they all seem to be inexplicably irritable. The only other resident of the house is Poppy, Joe's uncle. He is obsessed with turning one hundred and seems to be a metaphor for staying the course in a life. At its best, "Grownups" is a study about the ramifications of choices made and what really constitutes the core of a person. It can be a challenge to sort through all of the mundane actions of all of the children, husbands, and grandchildren. But life is messy, as Anne Tyler understands.
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