Anne Tyler Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Picture Books

Anne Tyler is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist born on October 1941. With several dozen novels to her name, Anne Tyler has won numerous awards during her writing career, this including the Sunday Times Award and the Ambassador Book Award. Anne’s works place special emphasis on family and marriage in America, and the various conflicts that surround these relationships.

Biography

Anne Tyler was born to Lloyd parry Tyler (an industrial chemist) and Phyllis Mahon Tyler (a social worker) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Tyler family lived in various Quaker communities before finally settling down in a commune in Celo. In her new home, Anne would spend several years of her young life caring for livestock, participating in organic farming and partaking in educational activities such as carpentry, art and cooking, this meant to make up for the fact that she didn’t attend a formal public school.

Anne Tyler has often spoken of the first time she experienced the spark of storytelling, specially the minutes and hours she would spend under her bed covers at the age of 3, creating stories in her attempt to fall asleep. She has also spoken of being profoundly influenced by ‘The Little House’, a novel by Virginia Lee Burton that she read on numerous occasions (due to her limited access to books), and whose contents shaped her understanding of people and life in general.

By the time Anne left Celo at the age of 11 along with her family, she found the world to be a very different and surprising place, this emanating from the fact that she had was still yet to attend public school and had never even used a telephone in her life.

Settling down in Raleigh, North Carolina, provided Anne her first taste of the world outside the commune, allowing her the opportunity to finally attend public school; and even with her lack of formal education, Anne excelled far better than her classmates, access to libraries allowing her to explore new worlds during which he would discover esteemed writers like Eudora Welty and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Following her graduation from high school at the age of 16 (a feat she imputes to teachers like Phyllis Peacock who pushed her to succeed), it was Anne’s wish to attend Swarthmore College (founded by the Hicksite Branch of the Society of Friends in 1860). However her parents pushed her to utilize the AB Duke scholarship she had won because the opportunity would allow them to save money to meet the educational needs of Anne’s siblings.

At Duke University, Anne Tyler met, studied under and charmed Reynolds Price who was particularly impressed by the young girl’s maturity. Anne also had the opportunity to work alongside future greats like Fred Chappell. Even under the guidance of minds like William Blackburn, Ann Tyler did not immediately determine to pursue writing, not when her passion for the visual arts was starting to bloom. Along with partaking in various plays as a member of the drama society, Anne also showed an interest in Russian literature.

She eventually graduated from Duke in 1961, immediately choosing to pursue a fellowship to graduate school at Columbia University in Slavic Studies. New York provided her various new experiences, chief amongst which were the train rides. She found her mind drawn to the world of storytelling. Upon leaving Columbia University a year later (without completing her Master’s Thesis) Anne Tyler returned to Duke, taking up the position of Russian bibliographer in the library.

It was there that she met and later married (in 1963) a resident in child psychiatry called Taghi Modarressi.

Writing Career

Anne Tyler’s first project of note was ‘Laura’, a short story she published in the Duke literary journal Archive (which won her the Anne Flexner Award for creative writing). She would go on to write numerous short stories while at Duke, one of which Reynolds Price called the most complete short story he had ever read.

Price’s referrals put Anne in touch with his own agent, Diarmuid Russell, who also became her agent. She begun working on ‘If Morning Ever comes’ while at the Duke Library; she published her first novel ‘The Tin Can Tree’ in 1964 while living in Montreal (after her husband’s visa expired). She would however disown both ‘The Tin Can Tree’ and ‘If Morning Ever Comes’ in later years, disparaging them for their lack of proper character development.

Following a hiatus between the years of 1965 and 1970, choosing to inject time into raising her children, Anne Tyler didn’t receive true recognition for her writing until the 1970s, during which she produced works like ‘A Slipping-Down Life’. The fact that her children had entered school allowed her to focus on her projects, producing novels that attracted praise from the likes of Gail Godwin and John Updike. Her literary career has only continued to grow, especially following her reception of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989.

Anne Tyler and her husband have two daughters, both of whom share her interest in the visual arts. Her work is credited for essentially celebrating the unremarkable lives of Americans.

If Morning Ever Comes

Ben Joe Hawkes spend a lot of his time worrying. Ben was raised by his mother and grandmother. And, alongside a flock of sisters, he has always felt like an outsider. Upon learning of the upheaval facing her sister’s life, Ben decides to return home to face chaotic childhood memories and unforeseen love.

Anne Tyler’s first novel reflects her writing style ostensibly; while the plot is hardly visible, the character manage to remain engaging, especially the voices of Shelley and Gram. The novel works to present a very realistic picture of its characters within a story that doesn’t completely impress or intrigue.

The Tin Can Tree

The accidental Death of 6 year old Janie Rose leaves the lives of the Pike family in the small town of Larksville hopelessly out of step with the daily routines of life. Mrs. Pike blames herself for the accident and barely speaks while Mr. Pike finallt comes out of his long comfortable silence. Ten year old Simon cannot quite understand why he no longer has a baby sitter and where she has gone. Those persons close to the Pike family will have to push past their own private grief to comfort the family, bringing hope into a world that is suddenly so dark.

The second of Anne Tyler’s novels, the plot of the Tin Can Tree is rather sad; and like Anne’s previous novel, it isn’t much of a plot in the first place. However the lives of the characters are interesting enough to make the Tin Can Tree a fairly interest read, one that allows you an intimate look into the lives of characters you will grow to love.

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