Essay Database

Anne Tyler American novelist and short-story writer, whose keen ear for dialogue and life-like characters have won critical acclaim. Several of Tyler's novels focus on loneliness, isolation, human interactions of eccentric middle-class people living in disunited families. Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in North Carolina, as the daughter of an industrial chemist and social worker. The family lived among various Quaker communities in the rural south before settling in Raleigh, …

…shell after meeting a dog trainer and her young son. As is many Tyler's novels, the characters are trapped by the past and are unable to see their selves or to feel alive, but Tyler also ponders the possibility of a happy accident, which could change one's life and open new ways of personal development. In 1989 Tyler won Pulitzer Price for Breathing Lessons . Among her other works are Saint Maybe (1991) and Ladder of the Year.