A Patchwork Planet (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Anne Tyler
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Parents and children, Love or romance, Marriage, Friendship, Quilts or quilting, Loneliness, Old age or elderly people
- Locales: Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore, MD
Although Anne Tyler had previously used male protagonists in her fiction, until A Patchwork Planet she had never had a male first-person narrator. However, since the novel is about Barnaby Gaitlin's discovery of his own identity, the author's decision to let Barnaby tell his own story was a wise one.
A Patchwork Planet begins on New Year's Eve and ends on the following Christmas. Whenever the socially prominent Gaitlins have one of their ceremonial gatherings, they make it clear that they are ashamed of Barnaby. In his youth, he was arrested for housebreaking and...
[The entire page is 625 words long]
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