Ladder of Years (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Tyler
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The early 1990’s
- Setting: Bethany Beach, Delaware; Baltimore and Bay Borough, Maryland
- Principal Characters: Delia Grinstead, Sam Grinstead, Carroll, Ramsay, Susie, Driscoll Avery, Eliza Felson, Linda Felson, Eleanor Grinstead, Adrian Bly-Brice, Joel Miller, Nathaniel A. Moffat, Binky, Ezekiel Pomfret
- Genres: Long fiction, Family literature
- Subjects: Family or family life, Self-discovery, Wives, Mothers, Parents and children, Love or romance, Marriage, Alienation
- Locales: Baltimore, MD, Bay Borough, MD, Bethany Beach, DE
For much of Ladder of Years, Anne Tyler escapes Baltimore, her usual locale, but she never strays far from familiar territory. As always, families both strengthen and suffocate, children writhe with neediness and resentment, possessions and routine weigh people down but give continuity, and love flourishes amid irreconcilable differences. The author’s fans will relish the novel’s prose, lucid and restrained but delightfully well observed. Given Tyler’s mastery of dialogue and detail, distinctive characters abound, sprung on the reader with rapid-fire inventiveness, while...
[The entire page is 1950 words long]
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