Rating: 
Summary: Delia's great adventure certainly doesn't teach her much.
Review: Delia leaves for almost a year and walks right back into the same crap. She is totally inconsiderate and mindless in her leaving of two families; first her husband and spoiled children, and secondly Joel and Noah who come to love and attach to her. I've read many of Anne Tyler's books and I'm starting to wonder why. Her female characters are always confused and weak. Somehow, I expect better of female characters. The only lesson Delia ultimately learned was how to become a better "doormat".
Rating: 
Summary: O.K., but Tyler disappoints in the final analysis.
Review: Tyler uses language very well and, in that sense, the book is a delight to read. On a few occasions I was positively delighted at some turn of phrase, description, or insight. In general,though, in reading Ladder of Years, I remembered why I hadn't read anything by Tyler since The Accidental Tourist. I really can't get that involved with her characters. Her women are so frustratingly out of touch and are not very interesting characters. They seem to lack emotional depth. Tyler tells us Delia cries herself to sleep every night for a long time, but she never convinces me that Delia has the emotional reactions I would expect a mother to have when she leaves her children and the rest of her family whom she claims to love.
The extraneous characters, who became Delia's friends, didn't make much sense to me. ( What was the point of Mr. Lamb? Another very desperate woman? or another man who Delia didn't see clearly?) I did like the growth in Delia when she developed a better relationship with Eleanor and even with
Joel's ex-wife. I wish these kind of relationships would have been developed more. I do think Delia is beginning to gain some insight at the end of the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book/Great Read
Review: Boy, did this book generate a lot of discussion in my book club! I thought it was wonderfully humorous, like all of Ann Tyler's books, but absolutely sad at the same time. I think Delia just got fed up with being ignored and had sort of a minor breakdown. What mother hasn't fantasized about going off and teaching them all a lesson?! I think that at the end she did go back to them and that things would absolutely be different. I also loved her children and felt very sad for the father and son she had been caring for, but she belonged with her own family. She had helped them over a rough period in their lives and even though they had come to depend on her, they are going to be fine. I enjoyed this book so much!
Rating:
Summary: A part of me wants to do what Delia did, just walk away.
Review: I admired a large part of this book, Delia's view of her family, Delia's need to leave, Delia's experience with living with herself. I appreciated that Delia, for the first time in her life, could leave home and establish her own self-worth among strangers and be appreciated by those around her in a way that her own family apparently never did. However, Ms. Tyler could have done a better job in estalishing the characteristics of the key players in her book. For example, Sam, I sensed he was distant and somewhat aloof but I never really felt I understood fully why Delia needed to run away from him. And Delia's father -- I would have liked more history regarding their symbiotic relationship, at least that's the type of relationship I thought Ms. Tyler was trying to establish. Also, I wanted to know more about her relationship with her sisters. The ending was disappointing. Delia, at last, seemed to accept the good and bad in herself, and in her husband and her children. Ms. Tyler never really seemed interested in persuing anything profound in her feelings toward Delia's sisters. And what about Joel and Noah who had come to depend on her, actually need and love her. I generally liked Ladder of Years, I related to much of what Delia was going through but in the end the book just did not have enough depth and there was only a cursory exploration of significant characters.
Rating:
Summary: It's a tragedy
Review: I didn't like this book as much as I liked her previous work, but I still liked it. Anne Tyler has the gift for using the most perfect words to describe everything. Even the names of her characters tell you something. I think the end was perfect because her family didn't even know what she went through during her time away..so how could they have possibly appreciated her any more? Their lives went on just as her's did...and her absence became more of an annoyance to them. To me, Ladder of Years was more of a tragedy on the more literal side, but a triumph for Delia who discovered so much about herself. Lastly, who could forget the whole "Playing Baseball in the Fog" part, where they presevered with the traditional Bay Borough baseball game despite the weather? I was starting to believe that all the lost souls end up at Bay Borough. :) Grab this book, it's worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful language, characterizations, but no depth
Review: The back cover says Delia Grinstead walks up a beach and away from her life as a wife and mother. Delia doesn't walk away -- not really. She drifts. The main character feels like an outsider in her life and the police report confirms that her family hasn't a clue who she is. But then neither does she. On a whim she drifts away, stumbles into a new life and finds she's not helpless. She can hold down a job of her own. Then her old life intrudes. But Delia drifts only marginally reacting when others act. We see the world through her eyes but she never makes a decision. She never says 'I have decided to whatever'. The ending is an insult to everyone. Once again I finished a Tyler book to throw it against the wall. If only her characters would DO something for themselves rather than just drift along not acting.
Rating:
Summary: I don't think she went back to her husband at the end.
Review: I was glad to see so many readers also baffled with the end of this book. I was too. But I think we're being too literal. Throughout the book, there are several critical moments where it feels like Delia has made a decision, but you turn the page and find this didn't happen. Like a feint. She either wimps out, changes her mind, or the impulse didn't last. It's never explained to us. I believe that in that last moment when she is in bed with her husband, she has *emotionally* reunited with him in a lasting way; she has forgiven him his frailties and failures -- and has forgiven herself. But outside of that moment, they must each live their own lives, including the kids. I believe in the morning, she goes back to Bay Borough and resumes her life there. But it's not the same -- she has reconnected with her old life, and remains connected to it into the future. Like so many other false turns in the book, describing her as back with her husband "for good" reflects her feelings *at that moment*, not a decision she's made or a plan she pursues. That's what I think.
Rating:
Summary: An avarage book
Review: Well, for a synopsis you can read other reviews. I just stickto my opinion about the book. I'm sorry for Anne Tyler, but Icertainly read better books. Nonetheless, it's still worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-written, escapism.
Review: Anyone who has ever been tempted to run away will applaud the imagery in this book , for it captures that sense of longing and despair to perfection. It is the story of a middle age woman who runs away from her day to day boredom in order to find herself. Overall it is not a great book but Ann TylerÃÔ writing style is incredible. There are lines that take your breath away, merely from impact of the truth that is being conveyed. The flaw is the avoidance of the emotional turmoil that such an act demands. The result is a fairy tale ending that is an insult to the reader and the writer.
Rating:
Summary: Home appliance grows legs and walks out.
Review: Miss Tyler has, once again, sliced an American pie right through the middle, taken out a damaged piece and served it with whipped cream. How many people, not just women, go unnoticed in thier every day existence? How many have become fixtures in the shadows of a home that never receive a personal thought. There was lots of truth in Ladders, also lots of hyperbole that made it tolerably unreal. The ending seemed a bit surreal given Delia's journey and distancing. I hoped for a different outcome, but, that's Tyler for you..
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