Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Full disclosure: I’d call myself Anne Tyler’s “Number One Fan” if that line wasn’t so creepy (thanks a lot, Stephen King). So it’s no surprise that I adored “Clock Dance” and want everyone in the world to read it, and ALL of Tyler’s stellar oeuvre. I’m not the only fan who has called Tyler the “Jane Austen of our time”; the comparisons are obvious: beautiful writing, accessibility, colorful characters, perfectly pitched dialogue, and a focus on domestic stories. And woe be to anyone who considers “domestic stories” a lesser literary form, for it is in these stories of quotidian family life, punctuated by human drama, that we most recognize ourselves and develop empathy for others. If you never read a novel about the human condition, how would you learn to appreciate other people’s perspectives? Ok – to the review: “Clock Dance” is about Willa Drake who finally “wakes up” to her life. We first meet Willa in 1967 at age 11, on a day that her mother has “run away from home” yet again. Willa, Dad Melvin, and 6 year old sister Elaine, try to “act normal”. In 1967 you might describe Willa’s mom, Alice, as “tempestuous”, “high strung”, or “mercurial” – today you might diagnose Bi-polar Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. The first half of the novel describes the few life-changing moments/decisions in Willa’s life in 1977 and 1997 - short sections, to set the stage and establish Willa’s character. We root for Willa throughout but it’s clear that she is “sleep-walking” through her life. It is in the second half of the novel, set in the present (2017), that Willa makes a bold decision to help a young single mother. That decision becomes the “wake-up Willa, call” and provides her a door to a different future than the path she was on. Will she walk through that door? As in each and every Anne Tyler novel, there is a cast of characters that you will fall in love with and miss after you close the last page. Her characters are what make her novels SO “re-read-able” to me. I never read one just once.