Rating: 
Summary: Not her best, but ...
Review: still an enjoyable read after all. Tyler created Rebecca Davitch, a 53-year old woman known for her joviality, and her unfailing sense of parental responsibility toward her deceased husband's children and family. She manages The Open Arms, the family home which also serves as a party locale rented out for various types of occasions. Rebecca always seems to be doing everything on her own, and taking care of everybody around her, and everybody seems to expect her to do so, because that is who she is. Or is it? Rebecca starts to question who she is and what happened to the Rebecca of her youth, the person she was just before she met Joe, her husband, back when she was in college. The book revolves around her search for the Rebecca of the past. However, I never saw the Rebecca character evolve. She makes a start toward one potential outlet, but never actually takes that step. It seemed pointless after a while for me to hope that she would transform and recover some happiness, after having taken care of the ungrateful now all grown up step-children who have been taking her for granted for so many years as they expect Rebecca to manage their lives for them still. The supporting cast of characters are less interesting than those usually found in Tyler's novels, except for Poppy who has been preparing for his 100th birthday party for months. Besides the dead husband, I didn't feel that I would want to meet any of these people, ever. This story has the potential for being just as wonferful as Tyler's books usually are. But it seems that the author wanted to leave her main character in misery. Unfortunately, since I wanted and expected her to move forward, even just a little, I felt disappointed after reading the last page seeing that she had not really evolved.
Rating: 
Summary: Rebecca studies her life and wonders how she got there.
Review: Rebecca spends her time thinking about how she got to be a widow, a stepmother, a grandmother and the social spark that rents her home for professional parties. I enjoyed her introspection, and her attempt to return to the past with her high school sweetheart. She is at 53, wondering how she has become the woman that she is. Her family, NoNo, Min Foo, Patch, Zeb, and all the players offer variety to Rebecca's life and it is obvious that Rebecca is their steadying force. The family, in my opinion, did not appreciate Rebecca, and I wondered if she even noticed that at times. This is the first Tyler book that I have read, and I enjoyed the plot and her characters. Overall, an enjoyable read, worth 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Rebecca thinks she's lost
Review: Everyone at some time or another has or will wonder what their life would be like if they'd taken another path. Tyler's main character is in the throes of a midlife reinspection of who she is and where she's going. Her predicament should resonate with anyone old enough to have made choices that aren't easily reversed. You do not have to be 53, the age of the main character. Tyler leads the reader through Rebecca's experiences while she lives out the search for her 'real self,' which she suspects was left behind when she jilted her college boyfriend for an older man she'd known only weeks. The supporting character names have the charm and eccentricities of intimate family nicknames. The supporting cast is not fully developed, but this isn't the story of the supporting cast. This is Rebecca's journey through midlife's questions. It is a good read that just might make you consider your life decisions. Who is your real self?
Rating: 
Summary: Never really grew to love the Davtich's...
Review: As much as I tried, I never could make myself feel anything more for Rebecca Davitch than a passing nod of "Oh well..." There wasn't much "substance" to this novel and the point was lost somewhere along the way. I finished it, but only when there was absolutely nothing else to read.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I found this book to be a very slow read. It was very difficult to identify with the "issues" of the lead character. I could not summon sympathy for her.... I felt frustrated with the way she handled the chaos around her. Even the brief romantic possibility was boring.
Rating:
Summary: Once when we had more time to read slow books..
Review: I was lucky enough to be in the wilderness of Yaak, Montana, when I was reading this book. I moved to Rick Bass' s excellent "Book of Yaak", which is (a bit slow but) well written until I had left the area, and completed "Once when we were...." on the plane ride home. It was plodding and I kept waiting for her to take her life into her hands; fine for the plane, but not something to race back to. Not bad, not compelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Bored to death ...
Review: Very boring writing, absolutely not interesting. It has really nothing to say, not even to its supposed target group of middle-aged women.
Rating:
Summary: Rather disappointing.............
Review: I had very high expectations when I began reading this book. I kept waiting for it to get exciting or even for something to happen - 100 pages into it I was still waiting. I can't believe that it took her almost twenty years to contact her old boyfriend. And she was so stoic - never complaining or telling any of those step-daughters off! I couldn't take it - she was so passive and they just walked all over her!
What a disappointment when she did get back together with Will only to realize why she had dumped him in the first place and to settle for the life she had been living all those years. What was it about - her finding herself and learning to be happy with what she had???
It is a not a book I would highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Life is too short to waste on such books.
Review: I decided to read this book because of the very favourable review from The Economist. To quote The Economist: "Back When We Were Grownups is as perceptive, as full of gentle comedy and human warmth, as any of Ms Tyler's previous novels." But I found that it is just one of the so many books written every year. Don't waste your time if you have not read or liked Anne Tyler before. The title suggests that the story is about Rebecca Davitch who at the age of 53 is wondering what her life might have been if she had married her college sweetheart (Will Allenby). But the novel is filled with pages describing the countless parties that Rebecca hosts in her house for her living. I did not count, but Rebecaa-Will covers not more than 15 pages.
So now you know what the novel is worth.
Rating:
Summary: Living in the Everyday
Review: This book, Anne Tylers 15th novel takes place in an old rowhouse in Baltimore in 1999. Its hero is Rebecca Davitch, a 53 year-old widow and grandmother. She rents portions of the row house, which is known as the "Open Arms" out for large parties and catered affairs, a business she inherited from her husband and operates with his relatives. As we meet Rebecca, she is dissatisfied with the apparent clutter and confusion of her life as one of her stepdaughters prepares to be married. The reader embarks with Rebecca on her voyage of self-discovery, where she is, where she has been, where she wants to be. Perhaps it is important that the adjacent rowhouse to the Open Arms happens to be a meditation center. We learn in the novel that Rebecca dumped her college and high school sweetheart, Will, and dropped out of college to marry Joe Davitch, 13 years her senior and the proprietor of the Open Arms. At the time of the marriage, Joe had three young daughters from a failed earlier marriage. Joe and Rebecca have a daughter of their own before Joe's untimely death leaves Rebecca to raise the three step-daughters and her own daughter. We see the bric-a-brac of life in this book in the old rowhouse and in the family which is Rebecca's. Each of the grown daughters and their (sometimes multiple) spouses or partners is highly eccentric, from their nicknames to their characters. The children are as well. The Davitch's are indeed blended in that the family and their spouses and others represent a variety of races, ethnic groups, religons, level of education, interests, what have you. They are an interesting but confusing group and their various peculiarities made the story difficult to follow for me at times. When we meet Rebecca, she is harried by the everydayness of her life. She remembers Will, the young man she dumped in college in favor of Joe, and is bothered by the possiblity that she made the wrong choice. Much of the book describes how Rebecca makes contact with Will again. In one of the best, because one of the simplest and most obviously felt passages of the book, Will tells Rebecca upon their first new meeting that "you broke my heart." By finding Will again, and trying to see if a relationship with him is possible in mid-life, Rebecca comes to terms with her life. There is the touch of family in this book with its estrangements, its clutter, its loves, and its daily tasks. Rebecca questions at times whether there is more to life. Her college hero was Robert E. Lee whom she sees, both in her college days and when we meet her, as a heroic figure (very properly so) who tried to act beyond the chores and trials of everyday to make a principled decision to stand with the South. Robert E. Lee is something of a foil to the actions in the book, (as is, in a different way, the meditation center next door.) The book is effective as a whole because Anne Tyler has a light, deft touch and doesn't take herself too seriously. The book is funny and generally reads well. Unfortunately the book (and virtually every character) is far too mannered. The mannerisms and eccentriciteis pale quickly and they mask a certain sameness and triteness in the story. There is too much attention paid to the quirkiness of each character. This distracts from the story to me and makes Rebecca's search shallower than it should be. It adds undue sentimenality to the book, and it is cloying. Part of what I get from the book is that life is lived in moments and we need to cherish and understand the everyday. The sentimentality, the peeling plaster and spasmodic electricity in the rowhouse, the adventures and misadventures of Rebecca, her children and grandchildren all have a touch of the down-to-earth. It is not the sort of spiritual journey in which the protagonist seeks solitude or some innder source of wisdom. Think again of the kind of spirituality sought by those at the meditation center next door and of the ways in which it probably differs and probably resembles Rebecca's search. The book teaches a spirituality of the common life.
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