"Clock Dance," by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite writers; I have read almost every novel she has written. I know that, although she is very popular, there are some readers who don’t quite “get” her appeal. Which is fine, of course. But to me she is gifted at portraying the details of daily life, and the accretion of those details over time, and then gradually drawing readers into the larger meanings of those everyday events. If you will forgive my quoting myself, this is what I posted here about one of her more recent novels: “Her novels always seem deceptively plain and straightforward, with little in the way of embellishments, experimentation, or flash. But they are rich with real life, down-to-earth life, the life that we readers can relate to. Her recent novels have tended to feature mature (middle-aged or older) characters), and as a 'mature' person myself, I appreciate this perspective.” The main character in Tyler’s most recent novel, “Clock Dance” (Knopf, 2018), is also an “older” (late middle-aged) female. We read about -- in snapshots, really -- certain influential times in Willa Drake’s life: her mother’s instability, her college years, her first marriage, her being a mother, and her second marriage. Sadly, although she keeps up her spirits and on the surface has a very traditional life, there are large gaps in that life. Both of her husbands are traditional, bossy, and insensitive. Her two sons are not particularly close to her, and as young adults don’t keep in close touch or tell her much about their lives; in fact, when she sees them, they are offhandedly dismissive of her ideas and choices. Suddenly, and this is where the current and main story begins, Willa gets a call about one son’s former girlfriend who, along with her young daughter, need taking care of after the girlfriend’s leg is wounded in a shooting. Willa somehow, uncharacteristically, decides to fly across the country from her retirement home in Arizona to Baltimore, and ends up becoming very fond of the young woman, her daughter, and the neighbors in this tightly knit working class neighborhood. Willa finds purpose in helping out, and finds herself enmeshed in the doings of the neighborhood, which is a true community, albeit with its own odd characters and behaviors. She allows herself to question her current life. I like the way Tyler portrays a woman who has always done the expected thing, and who has always been the caregiver, the one who gives time and energy to others, but now realizes that this way of being is not always good for herself. The scenes in which her husbands casually and with entitlement tell her what to do, scold her, expect her to listen and address their needs, but don’t do the same for her, are masterpieces. Neither of the husbands are bad or even unusually thoughtless men, and she loves them both, but she is never really seen or heard for herself. Her sons in turn treat her with careless affection and minimal attention, when it is convenient; they have unconsciously learned these male roles from their father and from society. (Of course I don’t want to generalize about all men, all husbands, or all sons! But the ones represented here certainly exist, more commonly than we would like to acknowledge.) Tyler never hits us over the head with her interpretations of what life is like for her characters, and for – in recent novels – “older” women, but we gradually absorb her subtle portrayals of what those women’s lives are like, and of the indignities that almost pass unnoticed, until they do become evident, at which time there is a sort of re-evaluation and reckoning.