Anne Tyler goes at her work with as much gusto as Margaret Drabble, but on a smaller scale and in a style that is more tightly controlled. Miss Tyler has learned a great deal about her craft … since her first novel was published, but she has retained a kind of innocence in her view of life, a sense of wonder at all the crazy things in the world and an abiding affection for her own flaky characters. (p. 120)

Miss Tyler is concerned with the quality of human existence. She turns her characters loose to live as they will, and the choice that each makes is a testimony to life's infinite variety…. [In addition to profundities,] there is joy in the surface, the remarkable accuracy with which Miss Tyler depicts the world, the unobtrusiveness of her technical skill, and the wit and perception with which she creates her people and establishes her conflicts. Within the boundaries she has set for herself she is almost totally successful. (pp. 121-22)