Ladder of Years

While on a beach vacation, the forty-year-old mother/protagonist of this book, Delia Grinstead, walks away from her distant husband and three surly children – seemingly on a whim – to try out a new life.

Anne Tyler’s characters are unfailingly quirky, and Delia can be both frustrating and charming, but the book engagingly details the mid-life crisis of a woman eager to learn who she is.

I could choose almost any novel by Anne Tyler because she’s such a reliable writer: you pick up one of her books and you know what you’re getting, yet each has its own unique cleverness. There are rarely big thriller-esque dramas, but ordinary people do slightly less than ordinary things, and the way she develops her characters and helps us understand them is masterful. Ladder of Years is about Delia Grinstead, who spontaneously walks out on her family while they’re on a beach holiday. It’s a simple premise, but a great starting point for a novel. 

Anne Tyler is one of my favorite authors. I am always drawn to her portraits of family dynamics through the lens of her quirky characters. She presents them in a way that moves beyond their quirks and negative qualities; we see them with their contradictions and failings amid the texture of their daily lives. We follow her characters through their difficulties and hard-won unexpected discoveries about themselves.

In this novel, a woman simply walks away from her family, leaving them on a beach in Delaware. We follow her life as she chooses a new identity and an independent life —… show more.