Morgan's Passing

Rating:
Summary: Touching portrait of a man in a muddle.
Review: Many of the reviews here are harsh with the title character and the choices he makes. I think that actually highlights why I like Anne Tyler's books so much. The people in her books are like people I know - they have many different sides, they are confused, they sometimes believe two totally opposite things simultaneously. Anne Tyler teaches me that life is long, that we often drift into situations over the course of years but that we have years left to change them. There's a timeless quality to her stories that I cherish. Morgan's Passing is an enjoyable book with engaging, eccentric characters who have an underlying core with which many people can identify. It does not offer black and white contrasts, which, in fiction as well as in real life, is a good thing.

Rating:
Summary: Eccentric mid-life crisis and human bonding
Review: Morgan and Emily's destiny is sealed after the ersatz obstetric delivery when the book opens.Morgan is missing or has missed life so he enacts many roles beyond that of just Cullen Hardware store manager.This ultimately leads to his settling down with mistress-puppeteer Emily and surviving the mid-life crisis that had engulfed him. In addition,I'm surprised Morgan didn't suffer a nervous breakdown given he was living with a stoic wife,a mother with Alzheimers and a sister who never changed out of her bathrobe.And then all those daughters....Great book,great detail and subtlety of prose.

Rating:
Summary: Actions without consequences
Review: Morgan spends his life pretending he is somebody else. . .doctor, inventor, whatever. He leaves his wife of thirty years and seven kids to break up the marriage of a young couple and their kid. No comment is made as to how this affects the children--the creep is presented as a funny charmer. If you think divorce and abandonment is a joke you will love this book.

Rating:
Summary: A gem
Review: Morgan's Passing is one of my top favorites of Anne Tyler's many books, perhaps because I'm a midwife, and the book contains one of the most hilarious, compassionate, and realistic childbirth scenes I've ever read. Morgan of the title delivers a baby in a car, and when he asks the guy to get some newspaper, the flustered fellow asks, "The Times, the Post, or the Trib??" or some such nonsense. And believe me, I know from experience that you just can't make that kind of stuff up. It's true, it's all true.
But back to the main theme. Morgan is a very odd and very irritating eccentric, married to a clearly long-suffering wife with whom he has seven children. All girls. Morgan works in a hardware store where he mostly tries to talk people out of buying the stock. Morgan talks and talks and talks and talks. And Morgan is going through a confusing slide into a mid life crisis.
It makes for some of Tyler's best writing - and for some of our best reading.

Rating:
Summary: Lengthy, boring descriptions about nothing in particular...
Review: Reading "Morgan's Passing" is like listening to your maiden aunt drone on about people from her past -- people you don't know, don't care about, and who don't seem to grow on you as their story unfolds. The title itself is like an afterthought, tacked onto the final chapter before the author decides to quit. Anne Tyler has written undisputed classics, but this one lacks her trademark zip and humor. But perhaps even geniuses need to have a break.

Rating:
Summary: Got through it - somehow
Review: The Accidental Tourist is MUCH better than this. Tyler has talent; how she ever told this tale is beyond me. Morgan is not a hero; he's a bumbling, eccentric and selfish man who doesn't have a clue. It would have been far more interesting if she had told the tale from the wife's point of view. To have this much home-wrecking in one book, and so little emotional fall-out is unbelievable. I think Tyler can do better.

Rating:
Summary: My recomendation if you read only one book this year.
Review: This book is one I hated finishing...it was wonderful. I read it in Italian but intend to purchase a copy in English, in case I missed any of Anne Tyler's subtlety!

Rating:
Summary: A lovely and sympathetic novel.
Review: This book unfolds gradually, but packs a quiet punch by its conclusion. Maybe it seems dull to say that the book is about the life choices made by a middle-aged Baltimore eccentric, but Tyler writes with such sympathy and generosity towards her characters that you're willing to follow them wherever they tend to wander. You might not fall in love with these characters, but they're doing the best they can. It's hard to ask anything more of them. The climax of the book, once it takes place, seems both inevitable and surprising, a sure sign of good writing. This is a subtle and impressive book.

Rating:
Summary: I liked Morgan and his story...
Review: This novel follows an eccentric named Morgan as he bumbles through his life, putting on one costume after another, one persona after another, in an effort to discover who he is really is. It's not him but the woman who falls in love with him who discovers that, though. A quiet, entertaining read.