A Patchwork Planet

Tyler, Anne

ISBN 10: 1856867110 ISBN 13: 9781856867115

Publisher: Audiobooks, 1999

Synopsis

Barnaby Gaitlin is a loser - just short of thirty he's the black sheep of a philanthropic Baltimore family. Once upon a time he had a home, a loving wife, a little family of his own; now he has an ex-wife, a 9-year-old daughter with attitude, a Corvette Sting Ray that's a collector's item but unreliable, and he works as hired muscle for Rent-a-Back, doing heavy chores for old folks. He has an almost pathological curiosity about other people's lives, which has got him into serious trouble in the past, and a hopeless charm which attracts the kind of angelic woman who wants to save him from himself. Tyler's observation is more acute and more delicious than ever; her humour slyer and more irresistible; her characters so vividly realised that you feel you've known this quirky collection - of no-hopers and eternal optimists, mad old ladies, sad old men, and unusual young women - for ever. A genius at uncovering the shallow grave into which most family messes have been hastily shovelled, she brings the novel to a head in the glorious black comedy of the Thanksgiving Dinner from hell! With perfect pitch and poise, humour and humanity, Anne Tyler chronicles, better than any writer today, the sublime and the ridiculous of everyday living, the foibles and frailties of the ordinary human heart.

About this title

Review

Barnaby Gaitlin is one of Anne Tyler's most promising unpromising characters. At 30, he has yet to graduate from college, is already divorced and is used to defeat. His mother thrives on reminding him of his adolescent delinquency and debt to his family, and even his daughter is fed up with his fecklessness. Still, attuned as he is to "the normal quota for misfortune," Barney is one of the star employees of Baltimore's Rent-a-Back, Inc., which pays him an hourly wage to help old people (and one young agoraphobe) run errands and sort out their basements and attics. Anne Tyler makes you admire most of these mothball eccentrics (though they're far from idealised) and hope that they can stave off nursing homes and death. There is, for example, "the unstoppable little black grandma whose children phoned us on an emergency basis whenever she threatened to overdo." And then there's Barnaby's new girlfriend's aunt, who will eventually accuse him of theft--"Over her forearm she carried a Yorkshire terrier, neatly folded like a waiter's napkin. "This is my doorbell," she said, thrusting him toward me. "I'd never have known you were out here if not for Tatters." These people are wonderful creations, but their lives are more brittle than cuddly; Barnaby knows better than to think of them as friends, because they'll only die on him. Yet his job offers at least glimpses of roots and affection. Helping an old lady set up her Christmas tree (on New Year's Eve!) gives him the chance to hang a singular ornament--a snowflake "pancake-sized, slightly crumpled, snipped from giftwrap so old that the Santas were smoking cigarettes." And Barnaby himself is sharp and impatient at painful--and painfully funny--family dinners, apparently unable to keep his finger off the auto-self-destruct button every time his life improves. As much as his superb creator, he is a poet of disappointment, resignation, and minute transformation. --Kerry Fried

Review

"Tyler is a masterly writer whose love stories make you think as well as feel." (Sebastian Faulks)

"I was bowled over...I finished the book wishing it had been twice as long" (Jeremy Paxman)

"I can think of no other writer whose novels I look forward to with such gleeful anticipation. A Patchwork Planet is her fourteenth book, but were it for fortieth, it would not be enough for me... A delight from beginning to end" (Observer)

"Anne Tyler is inventive, funny and wise. Her fiction is magically alive to the quirks and coincidences of fate... [A Patchwork Planet] is charming, readable, and more full of touching and humane observations than many other novels you will read this year" (Guardian)

"A Patchwork Planet is thoroughly enjoyable...from this most responsive novel" (Sunday Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Audiobooks
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1856867110
• ISBN 13: 9781856867115
• Binding: Audio Cassette