Rating: 
Summary: "Little Girl Lost"
Review: I enjoyed "Ladder of Years" immensly even though I do not agree with the tactics of our main character Delia. In a fit of desperation and anger, she leaves her family because she feels insignificant, but this reflects selfishness on her part. What about the children? Anyone with children can relate to her feelings, but not her actions. The children may not realize how important you are, but in the mean time, you can't just forget them until they do! Unethical as it may seem, Delia's absense was good for both her and the family. She realized she could make it on her own, reestablishing her self confidence and family realized just how important mother is and most often, you never miss a good thing until it's gone. In the end, both parties got the attention that was needed. I noticed that the gender of the respondents to years greatly affects the interpretation of the story. Women respond to the novel as though it is an awakening for a repressed woman. Men respond differently, mainly because it is impossible for them to understand how it feels to be an underappreciated wife and mother, especially on who is unemployed. I have not read a previous Anne Tyler novel, but this one, by far, will not be the last.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels I've read
Review: Along with many other readers of this novel, I found parts of it to be fairy tale like. However, these parts helped to make the novel move along more quickly. I completely understood Delia's reasons for leaving and respected her more and more as she began to develop as a person. Something that I found most interesting is that her family, instead of growing and developing in her absence, dispersed and decided it was best not to meet their problems head on. I think this book is worth anyones time. It really helps the reader to put thier own life into focus, and perhaps even make some changes.
Rating: 
Summary: Ever Want to Walk Away???
Review: Delia does what we all wish we could do at some point in our lives. She walks out on her life. Not because it's terrible or too hard, but because you feel like it. Who knows what the reason is? You need a change. You want to see what else is out there. The question of why will eat away at your mind while reading this novel and you'll never find a suitable answer. What Anne Tyler does in this novel is build a fictional story within a story. This woman creates a little world within her own world in which she feels space to breathe. A small apartment with a local library: what a perfect little escape. Every small action she performs within this world has something tremendously sacred attached to it because it belongs wholly to her. It is a chance for her to find out who she is again. After so many years of living in the role of a mother and having that image dominate the way in which people look at her, she is able to stand in the mirror and see herself as an independent woman. We should all be allowed small opportunities of selfishness from time to time. Delia is simply making up for lost time with the time she takes away from her family. You might think that it is inevitable she would return to her old life, but it isn't. It is her decision if she wants to go back or not and it is a hard one. This is the thrilling thing about this novel and it is why it is one of my favorite. Along with Delia, you are in completely unfamiliar territory where you feel the central character is empowered to direct her own destiny rather than the author or any of the other characters in the novel. You discover that we all have the choice to plunge into a well of potential and remerge as someone completely new. Each person is first and always in charge of whom he or she wants to be and if he or she needs to take dramatic measures to reclaim his or her identity than he or she should.
Rating:
Summary: Ladder of Years
Review: I found the book to be interesting and easy to read. I loved Ann Tyler's description of characters, right down to the kind of neckline on a dress! I felt like I could see Sam's office, the shabby boarding house, and the retirement home where Nat lived.I could identify with he main character, Delia, in some ways..what person who has ever felt under appreciated couldn't? Although Delia was annoying it was clear she was 'stuck' in the adolescent stage of emotional development. She had not developed her own sense of identity as she always looked to others to validate her, first her father, then husband, then children, then the people in her new life. One way the author made this clear was again in the use of wardrobe descriptions. Delia first wore immature, baby-doll clothes then as she tried to seek an identity for herself she selected severe, adult clothing. I enjoyed the characters as they appeared, each seemed vivid due to wonderful descriptions and dialogue. One thing I could not grasp was the day in her new life when she attended the Founders Day Picnic and the fog was so thick it was difficult to see the ball. Delia noted the ground radiated such heat it was quite noticeable, I guess I just have never seen thick fog in daytime on a hot summer day. I could understand her leaving her family behind but leaving her cat and doing it twice, that was hard to understand!! These were minor details and did not ruin the story for me. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves vivid character development, a very different story, and a look inside how one woman dealt with life.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Tyler.
Review: The thought of just walking away from a husband and three almost grown kids might pop into some women's minds, but who could actually do such a thing? Tyler's character Delia, that's who. Anyone unfamiliar with Anne Tyler's writing might be suprised at the plot of this book and the collection of quirky characters therein. But this is vintage Tyler and I loved this book as I have loved everything else she has written. Delia is particularly poignant when she is reading about her missing self in a Baltimore newspaper: "It hurt to read her physical description: 'fair or light brown hair... eyes are blue or grey or perhaps green...' For heaven's sake, hadn't anyone in her family ever looked at her?" If you have ever felt, even for a moment, that you are under appreciated, then you might just relate to Delia Grinstead.
Rating: 
Summary: Lands of make believe
Review: In this book about mid-life crisis (where have I been and where am I going?) Delia has two make-believe lives, but one seems more real than the other. In her first make-believe life Delia pretends her husband and children love her and that she has affected their lives. In fact, it appears her husband has married her to obtain her father's medical practice, and her children don't even remember what she might have been wearing when she walks down the beach and out of their lives one day during a beach vacation. She has been living in la-la land, reacting unconsciously to the sit-com version of life as she thinks it is, until she realizes she means nothing to her family, has no friends, no mission in life. The reader has to suspend disbelief to think it is possible to have a country doctor practice within a stone's throw of Johns Hopkins, and that a young doctor would covet that practice. The best the author can do is to state that the practice is diminishing. Delia walks into another make-believe land, a town which might have existed in the 1960's, where she can get a job as a typist (where have all the typewriters gone?) without references and book a furnished room while wearing a beach robe over a bathing suit. But at this point the story gets interesting, and she makes a new life starting with the clothes she stands in and $500 cash. Little by little she makes hereself meaningful to other people, until she is known to and valued by many people in the town. An invitation to her daughter's wedding brings her into a family crisis, where she realizes that she has been a force keeping that family together, and where she meets the crises in her new fashion, with backbone and good sense. The ending is ambiguous, but I can put up with that. The writing is not rich, almost all plot and declarative, but I found the characters, even the minor ones, to be three-dimensional. I have known women who walked away from their families and I thought them despicable, but Tyler manages to make us feel that Delia has been provoked into her action, and we are therefore more sympathetic. The book is thought-provoking and quite enjoyable. Not every book has to be a masterpiece. I would recommend it to my reading friends. nanlapidus
Rating: 
Summary: Banal at best
Review: While the book was an easy read, I found Delia hard to like. Her character throughout the entire book was very self-absorbed. When her son came to visit her, she didn't act thrilled, she acted like it was just another day with him, and carrying on with life as usual. When she was with her husband she was the doormat wife, but she swung too far in the other direction when she left, not caring a smidgeon for the ones she left behind. When she returned for her daughter's wedding, she just walked in and took her place and life carried on as if she had not spent the last 18 months of her life away from her marriage and children. She just went ahead and made her family's favorite dishes. The ending just seemed thrown together, and left it vague which life she returned to.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the WORST books I've ever read
Review: I really liked the premise of this book. Underappreciated housewife walks away from it all. But, it went no where from there. Delia, the wife and mother who walks away, was as hollow and unbelievable as any character I've ever read. Tyler failed to explore emotions of relief, guilt, doubt or any other feeling one might have in that situation. This 300+ page novel does nothing more than amble along a sleepy town where Delia goes about her new daily life without so much as a touch of introspection. The ending was terrible. I put down this book hating Delia, her family and quite frankly the author. This is my first Tyler book and would be my last but I already purchased A Patchwork Planet. That book couldn't be any worse.
Rating:
Summary: Typical Anne Tyler
Review: Delivered as a true quirky Anne Tyler book does. Interesting and amusing, yet a bit slow. Not her best. I wouldn't say it was "utterly compelling" or "virtually flawless" as the reviews did, but enough to keep me interested. Not as good as "The Accidental Tourist."
Rating:
Summary: Runaway Teenager
Review: In the story Ladder of Years the main character Delia could not stop "running away". I think even though she had many "runaways" she still did not acommplish anything. When she returned from her many runaways she still was not a change person and she still had little or no respect. Throughout the novel you can see no change through her pattern of escape. Delia was a person who would just drop everything and just "runaway". The author of the novel makes a very vivit picture of how no one even notices or may I dare say cares about Delia and her many escapes. Delia to me is an display of how woman reacts to things instead of taking charge and demanding respect. Delia reacted as a "runaway teenager" through her many escapes. As a reader her escapes allowed me to do what many novels allow readers to do. That is escape or runaway from a present stitution to a new found world that gives us that little needed respect. Even if when we return from our escape and things are still the same or have change only a little. It is still good to escape from the present once and a while and have things just as we wish they could be. That is why I give this book three ***. For allowing me and Delia to runway from the present and escape into the novel.
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