When we were grown ups - Anne Tyler

I loved this book, about the Davitces, a big extended family in ... I can't even remember where... in a someplace USA small town, but big enough for race and class to play a part, and the widowed woman at the centre of the family in various ways. There are comments on the back about the unnoticeable elegance on the writing and I agree, the style is understated comic, the clarity of language reflects something more important - that Anne Tyler's heart is clear and with a worldview like Tove Jansson maybe, where there are social expectations and family symbolic gestures which are at once minor and deep. In bald terms the story is about a middle aged woman wondering what she has done with her life. The miscommunication within the family echoed with my situation when I read the book as I was surrounded by people not talking or talking across each other in mireille's family.

There was no mawkishness or reliance on misery here, there was an old man with alzheimers turning 100 who threw his party and a hint of new love at the end when Rebecca the central female character saw a man she might like better than both her dead husband and her remembered first love. All hopes were reasonable, the meaning given to events gave a weight to the lives that made me care about the characters, and that the characters lives could bear.