Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - (Ballantine Reader's Circle) by Anne Tyler (Paperback)

About the Book

First published in 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Book Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a "funny, heart-hammering, wise" (The New York Times) portrait of a family that will remind you why "to read a novel by Anne Tyler is to fall in love" (PEOPLE).

Abandoned by her wanderlusting husband, stoic Pearl raised her three children on her own. Now grown, the siblings are inextricably linked by their memories--some painful--which hold them together despite their differences.

Hardened by life's disappointments, wealthy, charismatic Cody has turned cruel and envious. Thrice-married Jenny is errant and passionate. And Ezra, the flawed saint of the family, who stayed at home to look after his mother, runs a restaurant where he cooks what other people are homesick for, stubbornly yearning for the perfect family he never had.

Now gathered during a time of loss, they will reluctantly unlock the shared secrets of their past and discover if what binds them together is stronger than what tears them apart.

"[In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Tyler] has arrived at a new level of power." --John Updike, The New Yorker

"Marvelous, astringent, hilarious, [and] strewn with the banana peels of love." --Cosmopolitan

Review Quotes

"Beautiful . . . funny, heart-hammering, wise . . . superb entertainment."--The New York Times

"A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read."--The Boston Globe

"A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well."--Newsweek

"Anne Tyler is surely one of the most satisfying novelists working in America today."--Chicago Tribune

"In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power."--John Updike, The New Yorker

"Marvelous, astringent, hilarious, [and] strewn with the banana peels of love."--Cosmopolitan

About the Author

ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.