Rating: 
Summary: One of Her Best
Review: I have read a lot of Anne Tyler, but for some reason, this one slipped by until now, but I don't know why. It is clearly one of her best, if not her best, novel. The story of this dysfunctional Baltimore family is very well done, well-written, well-paced, with a perfect blend of humor and pathos. Pearl is in her thirties with three young children when her husband walks out on her. She does not have it easy, but she tries her best, which unfortunately does not get her family all the way to Norman Rockwell. The children all have their issues. One brother is ridiculously jealous of another, to the extent that her ruins what may have been his brother's only chance at happiness. Pearl's daughter leads an unsettled life which is somewhat reminiscent of the life of the protagonist in Tyler's more recent Back When We Were Grownups. There is a lot in here, a lot going on, but Tyler always manages to get to the point, so there is no time wasted reading endless paragraphs going nowhere. This novel is very well done and the perfect place to start if you have never read her before.
Rating:
Summary: Read it twice... love it.
Review: I have read the book twice and have loved it both times. I love the different dimensions that the book seems to have for me.
Rating:
Summary: Anne Tyler's Best
Review: I love Anne Tyler's writing, and I think this book is her best. The way she gets inside each character's head and portrays exactly what thought processes they go through is absolutely perfect. If you read The Accidental Tourist and Ladder of Years and liked them, you will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely delightful!
Review: I was amazed by Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant's ability to captivate me from beginning to end. Anne Tyler never fails to create an alarmingly vivid atmosphere that connects us with every character and ropes us into their lives. I cannot describe the reality of her writng, it is magic. In this story of a dysfuntional family, Tyler slowly builds a plot by giving us a taste of each family members perspective. The story does not focus on teaching lessons or morals but is simply a book telling of a family that could very well be any family and the growing and changing of their characters. It's beauty is that you grow to care deeply for the family throughout the story. You don't read this book, you live it.
Rating:
Summary: THE BEST TYLER EVER
Review: I've read, probably, ten of Anne Tyler's books. DINNER does take 70 or 80 pages to get into, but is without a doubt her masterpiece. If getting your emotions moved is your goal and you don't care where they move, this intimate family epic may change your life. As usual, Tyler's uncompromising compassion washes over all of her meticulously created characters. But in this case, there is none of the forced quirkiness which worked in THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST but became labored in LADDER OF YEARS and her current PATCHWORK PLANET. The meat-and-potatoes of this DINNER are the issues we all share--love, sex, death and the meaning of life. There's a life-affirming wrap-up, but for the most part this is a gut-wrenching depiction of the disappointment and emptiness many of us feel when we open our hearts. The life-affirming component is that, as with most of Ms. Tyler's books, it's nice to know there's someone else noticing and expressing these truths.
Rating:
Summary: A heartfelt look at the family in all of us
Review: In her book, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Tyler really identifies with the common person, something she does well in all of her novels. Not only does she NOT romanticize the family or the family ideal, but she allows us to be enthrawled in the sense of self and our place within our family. Now that the holidays are approaching, there is always that sense of the perfect holiday get-together -- one that seems to slip away every year, and, yet, we still seek for that perfection we can never achieve. Tyler allows us to see the beauty in the imperfections of our family and takes us into a world where we, ourselves, become diners at the Homesick Restaurant.
Rating: 
Summary: Family Values
Review: In her novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler shows how families endure through difficult times and the spirit that ties a family together. Tyler changes perspective and uses flashbacks to give a complete view of the Tull's family relations and their struggle to connect to each other. Tyler's characters describe one incident from the past from many perspectives to show the different views that exist concerning the same problem. For example, each character describes a family outing turned disaster as they remember it. The discrepancies illustrate each character's view of their life. Cody sees the outing as another example of his family's oddities. He also sees the outing as another time when his brother, Ezra, beat him and got away with causing a problem. Pearl remembers it as a turning point for the family. She remembers the happy days before and the hardships after. Ezra relives his guilt every time he remembers the accident he caused, but did not get punished for. Beck recalls the trip as an attempt to have fun as a family and to enjoy each other's company. He remembers the trip as another one of his well-intentioned attempts at normal family life that only led to the family's failure. The different perspectives of the same event show some of the causes of the family's difficulties. How each family member views this one occasion defines each character's philosophies of life and the principles they live by. Their different philosophies cause the friction that ignites the family problems. The family is unable to relate to each other on any level other than blood. Tyler shows the Tull's struggle to stay together with their repeated attempts at family dinners. The family comes to the title restaurant, the Homesick Restaurant, to celebrate numerous momentous occasions in one of their lives. Although they always have arguments and disagreements, the family still comes together. Through their attempts, the family shows the importance of family and the power and spirit that forever tie them together. All of the members of the family recognize their failures; however, they continue to come together physically in an attempt to come together emotionally. Tyler's portrayal of the Tull family gives every reader something to sympathize or with which to relate. Tyler allows the reader to recognize his own faults and family flaws. Tyler makes her book understandable and enjoyable by making her characters believable. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant leaves the reader with a renewed sense of family and a new appreciation for the different qualities each family member brings to the family.
Rating:
Summary: Tyler is the Best!
Review: It is difficult to find anything to say about this book that has not already been said before, here and elsewhere, many times over. I had been saving this book for a long time and now I know what everyone was raving about. Tyler's books often have a theme of abandonment --- caused by death, disappearance, desertion, or just general malaise. No matter what the cause, the characters must go on, often propelled by the grief caused by this abandonment. The author always finds a way for her characters to get through and keep on going. In this book, the strange disappearance of the father, Beck Tull, is never mentioned by his wife and children..... it is as if he never existed. The family goes on, powered by Pearl's sometimes abusive strength and her unspoken grief at being abandoned. Pearl is so enmeshed in her own problems, so inflexible, negative, and narrow-minded that the family never really becomes a cohesive unit. Jenny says that they all grew up and "the three of us turned out fine", but did they really? I think, as Cody says, that they all were "in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place". Ezra, on the other hand, despite his seemingly low self-esteem, is the most optimistic character in the book. He is constantly trying to make the Tulls into a family, as demonstrated by his oft-failed attempts to have a completed family dinner. Even though someone always storms out before the dinner is finished, Ezra keeps on trying, over and over again.Ezra is obsessed with food because he has a strong need to nurture, and food is his choice of how to do this. Unlike Cody and Jenny, he wants to believe that his family is normal and can have an amicable time together. Pearl is just the opposite of Ezra - her meals, if you can call them that, are tasteless, dull, and rare. She is abusive and mean, unlike Ezra, who has a sweet nature and seems determined not to be like his parents. Over and over again, Tyler has written novels about ordinary folks.....they are classless and unable to be pigeonholed. The families are "different" (just as Tyler's was) which sometimes translates into "dysfunctional". Her writing is as plain and unadorned as the people who populate her books (perhaps a throwback to her Quaker upbringing). Thanks, Anne Tyler, for many hours of wonderful reading.
Rating:
Summary: A quiet jewel! In my top ten!
Review: It's Tyler's gift that she takes ordinary families and tells their extraodinary stories with art. In a way that you believe. She uses first one person's view, then shifts effortlessly to another's. Don't look for epic heroes, or mysterious murders in this book (or any of Tyler's). This golden prose is the stuff of real family life.
Rating: 
Summary: Am i the only one who didn't like it??
Review: Maybe this just was not my type of book, but it didn't get wrapped up in it and I could definetly put it down and stop reading it. This plot was just ordinary, kept flowing, but there was no clinch to it. I read it for the sole purpous of school, but i didn't enjoy it very much. But if you like to read about the ordinary lives of people, then i guess this is your kind of book.
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