Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't Get Into It
Review: I checked this one out of the library and read about 50 pages in 3 weeks. It didn't seem to be going anywhere, so I didn't finish it. It's not one of Anne Tyler's better books. If anyone wants to read a good book by Anne Tyler, try Accidental Tourist or the Ladder of Years or a Patchwork Planet.
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Summary: All about "Groan Children"
Review: This book touches anyone who has grown children and is willing to admit it can be painful when you keep on nurturing them, even when they take you for granted or don't appreciate you.I would have made Rebecca's choice as well, even though it would hurt. Ann Tyler knows where it itches- and she scratches for us.
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Summary: Oh, but you're wrong, Emily--
Review: there are indeed families where all the members have as weird names or nicknames as the characters in Back When We Were Grownups. I work at a dental school & can assure you, we have patients & families who have much stranger ones that Tyler came up with in this book. In fact, sometimes I double & triple check with varying documents, signatures & types of paperwork because I'm so incredulous at the names that show up, but appear they do.
I enjoyed the book. could identify with the impulse to look up someone lost touch with years ago, appreciated the character of Poppy & sympathized with the big, messy family situation.
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Summary: Empty-headed
Review: The outline of the story held some promise--especially the part about the protagonist, 6 years after having been widowed, contacting her first love and exploring whether, had she married him instead, her life would have turned out not only differently--but better. While the author has some very funny moments here while vividly describing the excitement and nervousness of the widow in her preparations for and actual meeting with her first love, these moments are not enough to save us from having to read about an empty-headed person who engages in uninteresting dialog with her new "old" boyfriend. Although he had become a college professor--even department head--their conversation never remotely touches on the subject he teaches, what is happening in his field, etc. Nor do we learn their ideas on anything--and I mean ANYTHING--outside the topic of their families. The shallowness of their relationship, their concerns and their conversations is breathtaking. Basically I disliked the book because I disliked not only the main character's life, but also her--in the sense that she is not a person whose company I would choose to keep. It's not that she was a bad person, which she wasn't, but rather that she had allowed herself to become an immensely boring person who seems not to have allowed an intellectual idea into her head in 30 years. Her conversation--and the book itself--lacks, in addition to ideas, both wit and humor. She--and the book--are devoid of personality...of sparkle! While this may have been the problem the author chose to address, one simply doesn't care enough as one trudges through page after page of the minutest details of a dull mental and physical life. --This is not a book for the thinking woman, unless she wants to read about a very nice, warmhearted woman who stopped thinking, and never started again.And now that I think of it, perhaps this is a brilliant book, in the sense that the author managed to demonstrate in the book itself--THROUGH the book itself and the experience of reading it--the "oh-yawn-ingness"-- from which her protagonist sought so desperately to escape. For there is a lesson here that's hard to miss: The question isn't only whether or not whether one is leading her real life; it's also whether or not she is leading a mental life. And one doesn't have to return to college and re-address up the old thesis topic--or a long-lost professor-- in order to do that. One could, for example, choose to read books about ideas now and then.
Rating: 
Summary: I've Enjoyed Many Anne Tyler Books in the Past But...
Review: this one just didn't do it for me. For starters, no family has that many weird names! I know she always comes up with interesting ones, but this was excessive. It's been a few years since I've read anything by Tyler, so it is possible that it's me that's changed, but I tend to think that this just isn't one of her best. The main character, Rebecca, is surrounded by a great many self-absorbed people and has little confidence in her sense of self. This central theme carries the book for a while, but seems stale by the end. I also felt that the story led me on with a bit of intrigue regarding her step-grandson, Peter, and then, in the end, just fell flat. Nonetheless, Tyler does have a flair for writing about ordinary people in ordinary situations and I'm sure I'll end up reading her next book.
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Summary: Proof once more that you can never go back.
Review: Rebecca Davitch is 53 years old when she begins to wonder if maybe she hasn't made all the wrong choices in life. She has four grown daughters, is a widow, and has a small party-giving business that she isn't really sure she even likes all the time. Rebecca isn't even sure she likes the woman she has become, and sets out to find and perhaps reincarnate a long dead past. This is an interesting look into Rebecca's mind and spirit, into one woman's soul searching and becoming. I liked Rebecca, I could relate to her thoughts and her uneasiness about her life, but I found that the story didn't adequately answer all her questions, and didn't adequately solve her quest for meaning in life. Rebecca comes full circle, and the descriptions of her journey around this circle are full of meaning and depth, yet I was left with a mind full of questions, which can sometimes be what makes a book great, but which in this case made me wonder what the point of the story was. I adored Poppy, the withering but challenging old man Rebecca lives with and takes care of, and had he been the focus of the story, I think this would have been a much better read. Poppy is going to be a hundred years old, and if anyone ever had reason to reach back into their past and scrutinize it, he surely does. But Poppy is a picture of good humor and a strong constitution, and I fell in love with him as he toddles through life reciting a favorite poem, being occasionally forgetful, and just being adorable. Rebecca finds Will, an old flame, and attempts to rekindle a past that was never clearly defined. Will has a seventeen-year-old daughter named Beatrice, who is an absolutely unnecessary character, as though Anne Tyler forgot to sprinkle salt on this story and threw Beatrice in at the last minute. Beatrice has zero connection in the scheme of things that I could decipher, and her minute appearance disrupts the flavor of the story to some degree. I wish Anne Tyler had thrown in some dilemma with meaning, or conflict with strong emotional depth, but in the end this story falls kind of flat.
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Summary: When Did I Grow Up?
Review: Anne Tyler defines a woman approaching the mid-life muddle. When did I grow up, why am I suddenly getting old? That point when you notice that - how did it happen? - my children are my age. The book delves right into the whys and hows of where we are and the choices that made this journey go this particular direction. A wild ride, with some fun and some annoying characters - very much like life itself. The characters are well developed, very real - and in her genius, the author shows us a glimpse of what might have been - warts and all. Reading an Anne Tyler book allows you to watch someone else falter along the thorny path. It gives a glimpse inside your own pysche, and the opportunity to really explore the maybes in a thoughtful sort of way - which is the real ending of this book.
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Summary: Just livin'
Review: "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person." The older I get the more inclined I am to at least give characters like a chance. In this case, it was worthwhile. Anne Tyler sometimes turns me off with concerns too domestic for my taste, or just so bound up in their own problems that I don't find them interesting. Beck was different for me. When she had occaision to stop and think about her life, she did a little mild exploration, and then rethought her hypothesis and its outcome. And she did all this in the same stalwart, responsible way she'd really lived her whole life. I liked her, and her story. Most of us don't launch our lives with grand plans that explode into something even more grand. We spend our lives, just livin'. Doing whatever seems right at the time, like Beck. "Back When We Were Grownups" is not a family saga on an epic scale, but it does touch on certain universal truths. At some point in our lives, we all look around and wonder, "How did I wind up here?" Poppy said it best on his 100th birthday, "There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be."
Rating:
Summary: I WANT TO BE A GROWN-UP
Review: THIS WAS MY FIRST BOOK THAT I HAVE READ BY ANNE TYLER AND I THOUGHT IT WAS VERY WELL WRITTEN AND I REALLY ENJOYED THE STORY LINE.THERE WERE QUITE A FEW CHARACTERS TO KEEP UP WITH SO I HAD TO WRITE DOWN SOME OFTHE NAMES AND OUTSTANDING POINTS ABOUT SOME OF THEM.I ESPECIALLY LIKED THE UNCLE AND THE THINS THAT WOULD COME OUT OF HIS MOUTH
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Summary: Ann Tyler: America's Greatest Living Writer
Review: I'm not using hyperbole when I say Ann Tyler's America's greatest living writer. She proves it in book after book. While A Patchwork Planet and Saint Maybe are my favorites, Tyler does her magic again with this one. No writer creating literature in America today can plumb the emotional depths she does with the same finesse and nuance. Her language is deceptively simply and straightforward and the things she writes about are things that dwell in our hearts. Don't waste another minute! Read this book then give it to a friend!
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