in her close friend Emmaline that her husband abandoned her, Pearl obviously won't let on to the neighbors. Further, she refuses to discuss the desertion with her children; hence, they are left with the temporary impression that their salesman-father is away on a trip. While Pearl takes pride in her psychology ("They never asked about him. Didn't that show how little importance a father has? ... Apparently, she had carried this off—made the transition so smoothly that not a single person guessed. It was the greatest triumph of her life."), the damage of not drawing out her children's true feelings is evident throughout the novel. While today a single-parent family is no longer unusual, it was rather atypical in suburban America in the 1940s and 1950s when the Tull children were growing up.

Pearl's standoffishness has this effect on her eldest son, Cody: "What he wouldn't give to have a mother who acted like other mothers! He longed to see her gossiping with a gang of women in the kitchen ... He wished he had some outside connection, something beyond this suffocating house." Despite being brought up in such an isolated home, Jenny and Ezra as adults are responsible, caring members of their communities. Ezra, in particular, conveys sincere affection for his neighbors and his business associates, never angling for personal gain in the manner of his older brother.

Growth and Development To what extent do the three Tull children reconcile with their troubled childhood? To what extent do they transcend it? Tyler addresses these rather complex questions in her novel but does not arrive at firm answers. First, Jenny, through the distance of time, realizes she has acquired some of her mother's good and bad character traits (e.g., her orderliness, intelligence, intensity, yet also her tendencies toward child abuse during stressful situations). She gradually but deliberately develops a more relaxed, humorous disposition, becoming a generally happier person in the process but also sacrificing some passion for members of her immediate family.

Ezra, on the other hand, remains something of a child well into middle age: Unmarried, childless, still living with his mother, and never having known real sexual passion (he courts his fiancee, Ruth, in a nearly platonic manner before Cody steals her away), he discerns something missing in his life. "Let it be" is the theme that dominates his existence. He sees himself as being "ruled by a dreamy mood of acceptance that was partly the source of all his happiness and partly his undoing." As Mary Ellis Gibson has written in Southern Literary Journal, "Ezra is the most thorough fatalist in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant." Even so, he develops some coping skills. Mrs. Scarlatti, a woman much more traditionally maternal than Pearl, comes to see Ezra as a surrogate son; Ezra also gives and reciprocates strong affection to many non-family members, including his nephew Luke and his misfit friend Josiah Payson. Perhaps most important, he channels a great deal of his energy and love into making his restaurant a friendly, homey environment—if not necessarily a financial success.

Finally, Cody, the most aggressive of the Tull children, remains as competitive in adulthood as in childhood; stealing his brother's girlfriend, working diligently to be financially successful, maneuvering to win the maternal warmth that he has already had for many years (Pearl feels affection toward him but does not show it often or well). None of the above brings much happiness to Cody, who remains guilt-ridden, angry, and confused about his motivations until the conclusion of the novel when he confronts the father who left him more than thirty years ago. In that scene, Cody achieves a sort of epiphany, at least partly understanding his actions and reactions in a troubled past.

Even Pearl, perhaps the least likely family candidate for transformation, undergoes some change. She redeems herself somewhat by becoming a much better grandparent than she was a mother and allowing her children as adults to make their own decisions and mistakes. She may not approve of Jenny making three less-than-satisfactory marriages, but she does not interfere to the extent she once did. Toward the end of her long life, she reminisces calmly—not consumed by her former rage—about her life and three children. While she still believes that "something was wrong with all of her children," and "wondered if her children blamed her for something," Pearl does not have the real desire to pursue the matter and quietly dies.