Now that the proverbial dust — if not the chill factor — has settled from the holidays, there's still some good books making their way to the bookstores... if you can make your way to the bookstore. So grab those gift cards...
Noah's Compass
by Anne Tyler
"It's as if I've never been entirely present in my own life," contends 61-year-old Liam Pennywell, the main character of Noah’s Compass, the unparalleled Anne Tyler’s 18th novel. It’s not like it’s been much of a life, or rather it’s not like Liam’s made much of it. And now he’s been terminated from his job as a second-rate fifth-grade teacher at a second-rate private boys' school in (where else?) Baltimore, where he’s muddled away his existence, squandered his academic aspirations. Survivor of two failed marriages, and the emotionally detached father of three grown daughters, Liam becomes even further disengaged from his rarely-present life when, in moving into a small apartment, he’s attacked and loses all memory of the experience, waking up the next morning, head bandaged, in the hospital. With no recollection about how he ended up there, Liam wanders seeking answers and meets – in true Tyler form – the eccentric Eunice, who may not nudge his recollection of that night but does revive some of his "joyous recklessness.” Quite a change from a man who once admitted that "I'm not unhappy, but I don't see any particular reason to go on living." The best part is that we’re allowed to go along for the reading ride as Tyler subtly chronicles, with humanity, wit, and sometimes appropriate poignancy, such trajectories of antic-less and unexpected transformations.
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