Clock Dance / Anne Tyler

Having recently read a couple books by Alexander McCall-Smith, his wonderful knack for character development reminded me of another skilled author who is adept at drawing well-rounded 3-dimensional characters, Anne Tyler. I began reading Anne Tyler back in the 1980s with The Accidental Tourist, but it had been many years since I had picked up one of her novels. Clock Dance was available through the library's eBook service, so I reentered her world of quirky individuals, plotting their course through life.

We first meet Willa as a young girl, trying to navigate a tricky childhood with a mother whose mood swings introduce a difficult dynamic into the home. Willa holds things together, far too young to be doing so, trying to walk a tightrope and searching for that all important balance, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout her life. We next meet Willa in college, with a promising career in linguistics ahead. Instead, she acquiesces to fiance Derek's proposal of marriage which requires her to alter her future plans and concentrate on an immediate pregnancy instead. Later, Derek suddenly and tragically leaves Willa's life, and we next meet her in her 60s as she enters her senior years in a second marriage to no-nonsense Peter.

This all serves as prologue to a situation that results from an unexpected telephone call from Baltimore. (Baltimore is always calling, it seems, in Anne Tyler's novels.) Willa soon finds herself acting as a surrogate grandmother to a young girl named Cheryl while Cheryl's mother (a former paramour of Wilma's emotionally distant son) recovers from an accidental shooting in the leg. It's all a bit complicated and sometimes stretches credibility, but Willa soon finds a home with these near-strangers in their quirky neighborhood full of quirky neighbors.

I suppose the lengthy prologue summarizing Willa's early life stages is necessary to show how she always sacrificed her own ambitions, but I had rather hoped that her sister Elaine would come around, and that the story would have a more definitive ending that bookended the first part. It's a bit of a lopsided novel, but I enjoyed it nevertheless, and appreciated the wonderful multifaceted characters that I was looking for!

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