by Anne Tyler
So she is surprised when in 2017 she is given one last chance to change everything, after receiving a startling phone call from a stranger.
Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to help a young woman she's never met. This impulsive decision, maybe the first one she’s consciously made in her life, will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places.
A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers.
So she is surprised when in 2017 she is given one last chance to change everything, after receiving a startling phone call from a stranger.
Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to help a young woman she's never met. This impulsive decision, maybe the first one she’s consciously made in her life, will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places.
A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers.
Reviews-
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Starred review from May 7, 2018
Pulitzer winner Tyler (following A Spool of Blue Thread) takes a bittersweet, hope-filled look at two quirky families that have broken apart and are trying to find their way back to one another. Plaintive Willa is the link between her own fractured Pennsylvania family—rebellious sister Elaine, long-suffering dad Melvin, and “tempestuous” and abusive mom Alice—and that of lonely Baltimore single mom Denise and her precocious, love-starved daughter, Cheryl. The novel’s first half follows Willa as she negotiates her troubled teenage years in the 1960s and her 20s and 30s in the ’70s, her reluctant marriage to college sweetheart Derek, and her late-in-life second marriage with stuffy retiree Peter. The narrative then jumps to 2017, when Willa gets a breathless call to come to Baltimore to help take care of Cheryl, the young daughter of her son’s recent ex-girlfriend, as Cheryl’s mom, Denise, recovers from a mysterious shot in the leg. There, Willa settles amiably in a neighborhood of misfits, hooligans, and steely survivors—and explores her own family miseries. The cast of sharply drawn characters dominates in ways both reflective and raucous across a series of emotional events, such as Willa’s baffling encounter with a would-be hijacker, a heartbreaking moment with her elderly dad, and the jolting advice she receives from a kindhearted doctor. It’s a stellar addition to Tyler’s prodigious catalogue. 250,000-copy announced first printing. -
May 1, 2018
After a lightweight foray into rewriting Shakespeare (Vinegar Girl, 2016, etc.), Tyler returns to her tried-and-true theme of family life's emotionally charged complexities.Eleven-year-old Willa Drake doesn't really understand the fraught interchanges between her volatile mother and maddeningly mild-mannered father that roil the novel's opening chapter, set in Pennsylvania in 1967. But as the action leapfrogs to 1977 and she impulsively decides to marry college boyfriend Derek after he stands up to her mother on their first meeting, we see that, in a world of self-dramatizers and placaters, Willa has unconsciously decided to be a placater. The chapter detailing Derek's death in a California road-rage incident in 1997 suggests that Willa's placatory pattern is firmly set, an impression buttressed as Part II begins with 61-year-old Willa now married to Peter, another man who patronizes her and expects her to cater to his every whim. But then comes a phone call from Baltimore, where her son's ex-girlfriend Denise has been hospitalized with a broken leg after a mysterious shooting incident by a neighbor under the mistaken impression that Denise's daughter is Willa's granddaughter. This brazenly schematic setup for Willa's late-life regeneration is redeemed by the fact that it's utterly characteristic of our maddeningly mild-mannered heroine that she not only doesn't correct the misunderstanding, but gets on a plane to Baltimore, with Peter in tow complaining all the way. Power dynamics are never simple in Tyler's portraits of marriage, and when Willa needs to, she quietly gets what she wants. As she gets to know Denise's prematurely mature daughter, Cheryl, and the array of eccentric folks on their slightly seedy block--all vibrantly portrayed with Tyler's usual low-key gusto and bracingly dark humor--readers will want Willa to see that others appreciate her sly wit and tolerant acceptance of people's foibles as whiny Peter does not. But will she? Tyler drags out the suspense a tad longer than the slight plot merits.More predictable and less profound than her most recent full-scale work (the magical A Spool of Blue Thread, 2015), but Tyler's characteristic warmth and affection for her characters are as engaging as ever.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from May 15, 2018
Tyler, a master of homey enchantment and sly social evisceration whose storytelling finesse has propelled more than 20 novels?including A Spool of Blue Thread (2015) and her clever contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series, Vinegar Girl (2016)?now delivers an especially lithe and enlivening tale. Willa Drake is a sensitive, patient, and determined 11-year-old in 1967, with a gentle father and a mercurial and wounding mother. In this ensnaring novel's first half, Tyler ticktocks through Willa's life as she becomes a college student, a wife and mother of two sons in California, a young widow, and a new wife to a golf-loving, semiretired executive in Arizona. Willa is neat, sweet, pretty, and gracefully acquiescent, until she receives a phone call from Baltimore, where Denise, a betrayed ex-girlfriend of Willa's older son, is in the hospital after an accidental shooting, leaving her young daughter and dog alone in their humble home. There is no tie between them, yet Willa feels summoned, and then, as she makes herself useful on a funky city block among motley, struggling, warmhearted neighbors, she feels needed. And liberated. Tyler's bedazzling yet fathoms-deep feel-good novel is wrought with nimble humor, intricate understanding of emotions and family, place and community?and bounteous pleasure in quirkiness, discovery, and renewal.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Quintessential Tyler, this brilliant, charming, and book-club-ready novel of quiet transformation will be heralded with a major promotional campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.) -
Starred review from June 1, 2018
Having survived an abusive mother and a father she compares to Gandhi, Willa Drake struggles to find meaning in a life without direction or purpose. She marries before finishing college and raises two sons before finally completing her degree. Her first husband is killed in a road rage accident just as her boys begin to exit into their own adult lives, and after marrying a second time, she ends up a golf widow in Arizona. Out of the blue, she receives a phone call about the ex-girlfriend of her older son, who has been shot and needs childcare for her nine-year-old daughter (not Willa's granddaughter). Soon, Willa finds herself in a closely knit, blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood. Welcomed by the people there, she discovers a little girl aching for a grandmother, a crying need in the community for her time and talents, and, finally, what's missing in her life. Pulitzer Prize winner Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread) does not disappoint. Her characters are distinctly drawn and their stories layered like a Venn diagram over the central character. The result is a compelling look at the need for relevance, being offered a second chance, and deciding whether to take it. VERDICT Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 2/26/18.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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June 1, 2018
From her mother's early-on disappearance to widowhood at a young age, Willa Drake has known tragedy; now she just wants to become a grandmother. But when her son's ex-girlfriend is shot, Willa rushes cross-country to tend to her and her nine-year-old daughter. There she learns how a community can bond as closely as family, how solace can be found in small, unexpected places, and how rebirth can come from pain. With a 250,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
