Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982) by Anne Tyler

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)

by Anne Tyler

Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland: 9/9

  Maryland, complete.  So easy! New York with its 100 books for the state and 80 for the city is way beyond the average number of books per state.  That number is more like 10.  Maryland with its 9 titles is just under that average, but you could also give it credit for most of the books in the DC chapter, since many of those characters go back and forth between DC and the Maryland suburbs.   There are no Maryland books representing the panhandle, nor are any cities discussed outside of Baltimore.  I thought editor Susan Straight did do a good job representing weird rural Maryland.  In terms of the Baltimore titles, it seems like the TV show, The Wire would be the best pick but that would require changing the name of the project to something besides 1,001 Novels.  That's the second state in a row (New Jersey, The Sopranos) where I felt like the best novel to represent a place wasn't a novel at all.

   Anne Tyler is one of those authors that I've consciously avoided because of her subject matter (sad families, or so I gather.)  If you want me to read a novel about a sad family or a wealthy, well-educated white couple whose marriage falls apart it had better be either a) foreign or b)a major prize winner or preferably both, otherwise... I've heard it already.  Sure enough, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant has a moment in the publisher provided auxiliary materials (Book club questions,  interview with the author), where she is asked a question like, "Most of your books deal with marriage and family, but this book is just about family, why is that?" It reminds me of the scene in the Blues Brothers film where they show up to a gig and are told that the bar has both types of music, "Country AND western."   

   Tyler has flirted with the major awards- she's got three books, including this one, that were Pulitzer Finalists and she's got two books that were Booker nominated- a shortlist and a longlist.  This book is about a sad family:  Mom, abandoned by her husband to raise three kids on her own.  Ezra, the oldest, a sad-sack restaurant owner, single, Jenny, a doctor going on her third husband and Cody, an efficiency expert who steals Ezra's girlfriend and marries her.   There wasn't anything "Baltimore" about Dinner except it's actual physical location.  As I've mentioned before, a characteristic of family-centered fiction is that the characters don't talk to anyone else, don't go anywhere (unless it is off camera, so to speak) and don't do anything of note.   Certainly that is the case here- it's simply true of this whole category of fiction, prize winning or not, domestic or foreign.