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Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Tyler (Breathing Lessons) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense if sometimes awkward friendship. Sami's mother, Maryam Yazdan, who carefully preserves her exotic "outsiderness" despite having emigrated from Iran almost 40 years earlier, is frequently perplexed by her son and daughter-in-law's ongoing relationship with the loud, opinionated, unapologetically American Donaldsons. When Bitsy's recently widowed father, Dave, endearingly falls in love with Maryam, she must come to terms with what it means to be part of a culture and a country. Stretching from the babies' arrival in 1997 until 2004, the novel is punctuated by each year's Arrival Party, a tradition manufactured and comically upheld by Bitsy; the annual festivities gradually reveal the families' evolving connections. Though the novel's perspective shifts among characters, Maryam is at the narrative and emotional heart of the touching, humorous story, as she reluctantly realizes that there may be a place in her heart for new friends, new loves and her new country after all. (May 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The finest novelists of psychologically acute domesticity purposefully linger over the preparation of meals and the furnishing of rooms, and often turn special occasions into crucibles for conflicts and epiphanies. A master at these time-honored techniques, Tyler extends her reach in her seventeenth novel and creates two very different households that serve as microcosms for twenty-first-century American society. The two families converge at the Baltimore airport, each nervously anticipating the arrival of an adopted Korean baby girl. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson appear to be stereotypical white middle-class Americans. The Yazdans--Ziba, Sami, and Sami's glamorous, long-widowed mother, Maryam--are Iranian Americans. Hoping that the families will stay in touch so that their daughters can grow up together, Bitsy invents Arrival Day, an annual celebration that grows increasingly elaborate each year. Ultimately, these amusingly awkward and contentious events become the gauge of their lives. Each of Tyler's endearing characters is authentically rendered, but Jin-Ho and Susan, the two diametrically opposed young girls, are standouts, as is Maryam. As the novel's reigning consciousness, she reveals what it feels like to be viewed as exotic or foreign in America before and after 9/11, and how one can become detrimentally attached to the role of outsider. Handling time with a light touch, Tyler creates many blissful moments of high emotion and keen humor while broaching hard truths about cultural differences, communication breakdowns, and family configurations. This deeply human tale of valiantly improvised lives is one of Tyler's best. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Two families arrive at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport in August 1997 to claim the Korean infants they have adopted. Strangers until that evening, they are destined to begin a friendship that will span their adoptive daughters' childhoods. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson are the quintessential middle-class, white American couple. Sami and Ziba Yazdan are Iranian Americans. From the beginning, the differences in the ways they will raise their daughters are obvious: Bitsy's well-meaning but overzealous efforts to retain her child's Korean heritage are evident in the chosen name-Jin-Ho-and in the Korean costumes that she dresses the girl in every year as they mark the anniversary of the adoption date. The Yazdans are comfortable with their daughter Susan's assimilation into their own Iranian-American culture. When Bitsy's widowed father begins to show romantic interest in Susan's grandmother, cultural differences are brought to a head. Tyler weaves a story that speaks to how we come to terms with our identity in multicultural America, and how we form friendships that move beyond the unease of differences. She does not dwell on the September 11 attacks, but subtly portrays the distrust that the Yazdans have to endure in the following months. Tyler's gift, as in her other novels, is her ability to infuse the commonplace with meaning and grace, and teens will appreciate her perceptiveness in exploring relationships within and between families across the cultural spectrum.-Kim Dare, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
Take two couples who adopt girls from Korea: one family dresses its daughter in Korean clothes; the other rushes to Americanise Sooki into Susan, and enrols her in preschool. Anne Tyler's well- polished observations of domestic America could go far with this comparison of adoptive-parenting methods as a premise, but she pushes the narrative into bigger territory through placing one child with the all-American Donaldsons and the other with the Yazdans, Iranians ionly one generation removed from the bazaari and as culturally jumpy as the Donaldsons are excruciatingly complacent. Each chapter follows one Arrival Day o the annual ceremony that Bitsy Donaldson invents, complete with a stars-and-stripes cake o and pivots on a set piece of ghastly social comedy. iIt's harder than you realise being American,i complains grandpa Dave. iIt takes a lot of work being foreign,i counters granny Maryam. It is through these two that Tyler, married until his death to an Iranian-born psychiatrist, quietly explores the notions of belonging and alienation that raise this novel above the merely entertaining. Caption: article-pbfic19.1 Take two couples who adopt girls from Korea: one family dresses its daughter in Korean clothes; the other rushes to Americanise Sooki into Susan, and enrols her in preschool. - Isobel Montgomery.
Kirkus Review
The veteran novelist (The Amateur Marriage, 2004, etc.) extends her range without losing her essence in this tale of two families drawn together by their adopted daughters despite the friction created by their very different personalities and ethnicities. On Aug. 15, 1997, two baby girls arrive at the Baltimore airport from Korea. Jin-Ho is swept into the exuberant arms of Bitsy and Brad Dickinson-Donaldson, who are throwing "what looked like a gigantic baby shower" in the waiting room with their extended family. Sooki is quietly handed over to the Yazdans--Sami and his wife, Ziba, accompanied by his mother, Iranian immigrant Maryam--who rename her Susan. Wanting to connect Jin-Ho with another Korean child, outgoing Bitsy pulls the Yazdans into her family's orbit and establishes the annual tradition of celebrating the girls' Arrival Day. The two couples become close, especially Bitsy and Ziba, but Maryam is dubious about these brash Americans, with their slightly tactless self-assurance and intrusive questions about Iranian traditions. The ensuing culture clash enriches Tyler's narrative without diminishing her skills as an engaging storyteller and delicate analyst of personality. She examines the insecurities underneath Bitsy's overbearing manner, American-born Sami's amused condescension toward both his natal home and the land of his ancestors and a host of other complex aspects of her well-developed characters, including Ziba's nouveau-riche parents and Bitsy's easygoing father, Dave. Maryam is the novel's central figure: a teenaged immigrant, widowed before she was 40, who has never felt quite at home anywhere and maintains a critical distance from Americans and Iranians alike. Only Dave breaches her defenses. After his beloved wife's death--Tyler's portrait of his grieving is sensitive and touching--he unabashedly declares his need for Maryam, who reciprocates and then panics. Readers will hope that these flawed, lovable people will find happiness, but they won't be sure until the final page, so deftly has the author balanced the forces that keep us apart against those that bring us together. Vintage Tyler, with enough fresh, new touches to earn her the next generation of fans. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
At a point when foreign adoptions are being contested and immigration continues to be problematic, Tyler seems to once again have her finger on the pulse of America. Two families meet at the airport as they await the arrival of their Korean-born daughters. The Iranian American Yazdans immediately set about Americanizing their daughter, while the Donaldsons do everything to help their child keep her Korean heritage. Leaning on each other for support as their daughters grow, these families have all the quirks one expects from Tyler's novels--including love to be found in the place one least expects it. When love becomes conflict, when a second adopted daughter fails to live up to the perfection of the first, we see mothers clinging even more tightly to roots that can only be severed and causing what in the hands of a lesser novelist would be an irrevocable rift. This might not be Tyler at her best (e.g. The Accidental Tourist or the more recent Breathing Lessons), but listening to even a subdued Tyler is just plain fun, and Blair Brown is the perfect reader. For all collections.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with Soho Weekly News, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
