Anne Tyler

Baltimore author Anne Tyler granted a rare interview to NPR , and it was aired today -- giving fans a look at her writing life. (It also included a charming map and photographs that dovetail with her writing.) Tyler's novels often evoke scenes of Roland Park, where she lived for years. Her 20th, "The Beginner's Goodbye," scheduled for release Tuesday, also is set among the neighborhood's Victorian homes and leafy streets. It's described by publisher Random House as "a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances - in their house, on the roadway, in the market.

Local authors share the titles they're enjoying right now. Madison Smartt Bell, whose most recent novel is "The Color of Night": "Noble Savages," by Napoleon Chagnon, back to back with "Triste Tropiques" by Claude Levi-Strauss. Sort of a bookend pair of anthropology texts, both fascinating. "Les Cloches de la Bresilienne," a magical mystery by Haitian author Gary Victor. I have a project with some other people to publish this book in the U.S. Jessica Anya Blau, author of the forthcoming "The Wonder Bread Summer": I'm reading "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter.

Sometimes the Amazon robots get a little wacky with their book recommendations for readers. The bots must get rusty from all of the rain out in Seattle. Read Street reader Eileen O'Brien recently got some weird suggestions for mysteries and thrillers, when the bots listed several books by Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler. Among them: "Breathing Lessons" and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. " Maybe the bots confused Tyler's "The Beginner's Goodbye" with Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye," but I'm flummoxed about the others.

Sometimes the Amazon robots get a little wacky with their book recommendations for readers. The bots must get rusty from all of the rain out in Seattle. Read Street reader Eileen O'Brien recently got some weird suggestions for mysteries and thrillers, when the bots listed several books by Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler. Among them: "Breathing Lessons" and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. " Maybe the bots confused Tyler's "The Beginner's Goodbye" with Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye," but I'm flummoxed about the others.

You don't so much read a book by Anne Tyler as you read through it. Her 18th novel, "Noah's Compass" hits bookstores today, and like its predecessors, it is masterful at exposing the mental evasions and compromises that underlie daily conversation. The author delves beneath the "what" "where" and "when" of even the most seemingly banal utterances to reveal half-articulated wishes and resentments, withdrawals and reconciliations. The main character in "Noah's Compass" is a retired schoolteacher named Liam Pennywell, who looks back at a life that has been under-lived.

With her 20th novel, "The Beginner's Goodbye," about to be released, Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler is already hard at work on her 21st — a "sprawling family saga that goes on and on and on" that she'll be writing backward, beginning with the ending. That way, Tyler explained in an interview broadcast on NPR on Friday morning, should she die before the book is finished, it could still be published. "Backwards, nobody would ever know whether you had reached the end you had planned," she told NPR's Lynn Neary.

"Back When We Were Grownups," by Anne Tyler. Alfred A. Knopf. 274 pages. $25. "People have always seemed funny and strange to me, and touching in unexpected ways," Anne Tyler wrote in the marvelous essay "Still Just Writing," some 20 years ago. "I can't shake off a sort of mist of irony that hangs over whatever I see. And I'm always hurt when a reader says that I choose only bizarre or eccentric people to write about. It's not a matter of choice; it just seems to me that even the most ordinary person, in real life, will turn out to have something unusual at his center."

The Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler. Knopf. 306 pages. $24.95. When you open an Anne Tyler novel, you know that you are putting yourself into the strong and seasoned hands of a Pulitzer Prize-winning professional. Since 1964, Tyler has written 16 novels, the majority of them set in Baltimore, where she has lived for many years. Her love for and knowledge of her adopted hometown are obvious, her affection for her characters palpable and her skill and charm as a writer undeniable. In fact, the only quibble one can have with her new novel, The Amateur Marriage, is that maybe it goes down a little too easy, carries a gleam that's a little too bright.

The unwritten compact is: Anne Tyler writes novel after novel with today's Baltimore as its setting; Baltimore, for its part, leaves her alone. This arrangement has been in effect for a dozen books (her first two were written elsewhere) and 28 years.Along the way, Ms. Tyler has acquired a national following, won a Pulitzer Prize for "Breathing Lessons," seen "The Accidental Tourist" become a three-star movie and, of equal importance, done her full share alongside her physician husband in the raising of two daughters.

"Ladder of Years," by Anne Tyler. 325 pages. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $24"Ladder of Years" is Ms. Tyler's 13th novel. It is not as ambitiously tragic as "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant," which clinched Ms. Tyler's fame. Neither is it as exhilaratingly readable as "The Accidental Tourist," which was made into a movie almost pleasing as the book. But, for the most part, "Ladder of Years" is a "page-turner" in the best sense.One wants to lightly caress the pages of the story because one cares for Ms. Tyler's touchingly flawed characters, for her forgiving way of looking at Baltimore, at human fate, at family love and family failure to love.

Baltimore author Anne Tyler granted a rare interview to NPR , and it was aired today -- giving fans a look at her writing life. (It also included a charming map and photographs that dovetail with her writing.) Tyler's novels often evoke scenes of Roland Park, where she lived for years. Her 20th, "The Beginner's Goodbye," scheduled for release Tuesday, also is set among the neighborhood's Victorian homes and leafy streets. It's described by publisher Random House as "a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances - in their house, on the roadway, in the market.

With her 20th novel, "The Beginner's Goodbye," about to be released, Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler is already hard at work on her 21st — a "sprawling family saga that goes on and on and on" that she'll be writing backward, beginning with the ending. That way, Tyler explained in an interview broadcast on NPR on Friday morning, should she die before the book is finished, it could still be published. "Backwards, nobody would ever know whether you had reached the end you had planned," she told NPR's Lynn Neary.

Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler has been named a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, a biennial literary award that carries with it a cash prize of more than $96,000. Tyler, 69, is one of 13 finalists for the prize, which is awarded every other year by the Australia-based Man Group. The prize of 60,000 British pounds is given for an author's body of work and continuing contributions to world fiction. Others on this year's nominees' list include Americans Marilynne Robinson and Philip Roth.

You don't so much read a book by Anne Tyler as you read through it. Her 18th novel, "Noah's Compass" hits bookstores today, and like its predecessors, it is masterful at exposing the mental evasions and compromises that underlie daily conversation. The author delves beneath the "what" "where" and "when" of even the most seemingly banal utterances to reveal half-articulated wishes and resentments, withdrawals and reconciliations. The main character in "Noah's Compass" is a retired schoolteacher named Liam Pennywell, who looks back at a life that has been under-lived.

You don't so much read a book by Anne Tyler as you read through it. Her 18th novel, "Noah's Compass" hits bookstores today, and like its predecessors, it is masterful at exposing the mental evasions and compromises that underlie daily conversation. The author delves beneath the "what" "where" and "when" of even the most seemingly banal utterances to reveal half-articulated wishes and resentments, withdrawals and reconciliations. The main character in "Noah's Compass" is a retired schoolteacher named Liam Pennywell, who looks back at a life that has been under-lived.

Rosalie Anne Tyler A memorial service in her honor will be held at the Maple View Baptist Church, 1600 Singer Road, Joppa, Md. 21085 on Saturday, August 30 at 11:00A.M. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Upper Chesapeake Hospital Foundation Pulmonary Program, 500 Upper Chesapeake Drive, Bel Air, MD., 21014

The Mount Washington Octagon is the showpiece of the USF&G corporation, with its pink brick exterior, gingerbread verandas, and lovely interior. It was the setting for a party to honor Susan Gauvey, chairman of the Marion House Board and one of its most treasured volunteers. The Octagon was built in 1855 as a girl's finishing school and until USF&G bought the complex in 1982, it always housed young women -- even the director of Marion House, Sister Augusta Reilly, lived there when it was the home to novice Sisters of Mercy.

Gazing out the window in what once was Anne Tyler's writing room - the second-floor room next to the master bedroom and a small enclosed porch - it's easy to imagine her characters on the lawn below, beckoning her to follow. There's Jeremy Pauling, the painfully shy collage artist from Celestial Navigation. He's gathered all his courage and is waiting on the sidewalk outside the handsome French Country house built in 1933 at 222 Tunbridge Road, blinking in the sunlight. Standing next to him is Macon Leary from The Accidental Tourist.

Gazing out the window in what once was Anne Tyler's writing room - the second-floor room next to the master bedroom and a small enclosed porch - it's easy to imagine her characters on the lawn below, beckoning her to follow. There's Jeremy Pauling, the painfully shy collage artist from Celestial Navigation. He's gathered all his courage and is waiting on the sidewalk outside the handsome French Country house built in 1933 at 222 Tunbridge Road, blinking in the sunlight. Standing next to him is Macon Leary from The Accidental Tourist.

Digging to America Anne Tyler Alfred A. Knopf / 277 pages / $24.95 Is there a child in America who hasn't heard the myth that if you start digging a hole in the back yard, and you dig deep enough, you'll end up in China? Anne Tyler turns this image on its head for her touching new novel, and writes about what it's like to come from somewhere else and end up in the United States, as a child or as an adult. Digging to America revolves around the adoption - from South Korea - of two infant girls.