![]() ![]() We need to get inside their heads, because the Garretts seldom discuss what’s really on their minds, the primary example being the fact that once David goes to college, Mercy gets a studio and eventually stops living with Robin altogether. As usual, Tyler deftly sets the scene and broadly outlines characters who will change and deepen over time as the Garretts traverse 60 years individual chapters offer the perspective of each parent and sibling (plus three members of the third generation). Seven-year-old David rejects Robin’s attempts to get him in the water in favor of inventing elaborate storylines for the plastic GIs he’s recast as veterinarians. ![]() ![]() Fifteen-year-old Lily is also not around much deprived of her Baltimore boyfriend, she’s taken up with an older boy who bossy, judgmental older sister Alice is pleased to opine is only using her. Robin talks a lot about what everything costs, and Mercy is frequently absent painting the local landscape. ![]() Robin and Mercy Garrett and their three children seem oddly distanced from each other when we meet them during a 1959 summer vacation. This familiar subject always seems fresh in her hands because Tyler draws her characters and their interactions in such specific and revealing detail. In her 24th novel, Tyler once again unravels the tangled threads of family life. ![]()
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