Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Tyler, Anne (Vol. 205) - Ellen Cronan Rose (review date July 2001)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Ellen Cronan Rose (review date July 2001)

SOURCE: Rose, Ellen Cronan. “A Fork in the Road.” Women's Review of Books 28, nos. 10-11 (July 2001): 30.

[In the following review, Rose offers a favorable assessment of Back When We Were Grownups.]

“Wasn't it strange how certain moments, now and then—certain turning points in a life—contained the curled and waiting seeds of everything, that would follow?” Rebecca Davitch asks herself forty pages into Anne Tyler's new novel [Back When We Were Grownups]. The moment she has in mind happened when she was nineteen years old, attending an engagement party for her college roommate in a Baltimore row house whose first floor—named The Open Arms—was rented out for parties. As she was laughing at the DJ's choice of a record, the eldest son of the family who owned The Open Arms came up to her and said “I see you're having a wonderful time.” A few months later she dropped out of...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Sanjukta Dasgupta (essay date winter 1997)
   2. Elizabeth Mahn Nollen (essay date 1997)
   3. James Grove (essay date 1997)
   4. Linda Simon (review date August 1998)
   5. Joyce R. Durham (essay date fall 1998)
   6. Cheryl Devon Coleman (essay date summer 2000)
   7. Nora Foster Stovel (review date January 2001)
   8. Heidi Slettedahl Macpherson (essay date spring 2001)
   9. Anita Brookner (review date 2 June 2001)
   10. Ellen Cronan Rose (review date July 2001)
   11. Rita D. Jacobs (review date spring 2002)
   12. Barbara Harrell Carson (essay date fall-winter 2002)
   13. Paul Christian Jones (essay date spring 2003)
   14. Publishers Weekly (review date 22 December 2003)
   15. Anita Brookner (review date 3 January 2004)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Anne Tyler