And so we get to the great question of the novel: “Oh what makes a family not work?”Īnd then we skip backwards, all the way to 1959, where we meet Robin, the Grandfather (or is it Pop-Pop?) whose funeral was discussed by Serena and her cousin in the previous segment, as a youngish man, taking his small family on holiday for the first time. James can’t understand why she isn’t sure about whether it’s her cousin or not. They are having that chat we’ve probably all had at some point in our lives (what did they think of me / what did you think of them) when Serena thinks she spies her cousin Nicholas. We meet Serena, on her way home with boyfriend James having met his family for the first time. The novel opens in 2010 (“when the Philadelphia train station still had the kind of information board that clickety-clacked as the various gate assignments rolled up”). Superficially, the twenty-fourth novel by Anne Tyler is a family saga, set over many decades, a folksy, warm-hearted tale of relatively everyday Americans as they go about the business of living their lives, with all of the corresponding births, marriages, divorces and deaths you’d expect along the way.

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