Back When We Were Grownups

Back When We Were Grownups PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143196340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s? On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms. Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

Back When We Were Grownups

Back When We Were Grownups PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143196340
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel. The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else’s? On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation—something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family’s crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms. Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it—how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been—is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel. As always with Anne Tyler’s novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

Back When We Were Grown-ups

Back When We Were Grown-ups PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 140904386X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
One morning, Rebecca wakes up and realises she has turned into the wrong person. Is she really this joyous and outgoing organiser of parties, the put-upon heart of her dead husband's extended family? What happened to her quiet and serious nineteen-year-old self, and what would have happened if she'd married her college sweetheart? Can someone ever recover the person they've left behind? **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** 'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce 'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks 'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson

The Amateur Marriage

The Amateur Marriage PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400042984
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author—a rich and compelling novel about a mismatched marriage and its consequences, spanning three generations They seemed like the perfect couple—young, good-looking, made for each other. The moment Pauline, a stranger to the Polish Eastern Avenue neighborhood of Baltimore (though she lived only twenty minutes away), walked into his mother’s grocery store, Michael was smitten. And in the heat of World War II fervor, they are propelled into a hasty wedding. But they never should have married. Pauline, impulsive, impractical, tumbles hit-or-miss through life; Michael, plodding, cautious, judgmental, proceeds deliberately. While other young marrieds, equally ignorant at the start, seemed to grow more seasoned, Pauline and Michael remain amateurs. In time their foolish quarrels take their toll. Even when they find themselves, almost thirty years later, loving, instant parents to a little grandson named Pagan, whom they rescue from Haight-Ashbury, they still cannot bridge their deep-rooted differences. Flighty Pauline clings to the notion that the rifts can always be patched. To the unyielding Michael, they become unbearable. From the sound of the cash register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts to the multilayered apparel of later years, Anne Tyler captures the evocative nuances of everyday life during these decades with such telling precision that every page brings smiles of recognition. Throughout, as each of the competing voices bears witness, we are drawn ever more fully into the complex entanglements of family life in this wise, embracing, and deeply perceptive novel.

Becoming Better Grownups

Becoming Better Grownups PDF Author: Brad Montague
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525537856
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A New York Times-bestselling author looks for the meaning of a good life by seeking advice from the very young and the very old. When his first book tour ended, Brad Montague missed hearing other people's stories so much that he launched what he dubbed a Listening Tour. First visiting elementary schools and later also nursing homes and retirement communities, he hoped to glean new wisdom as to how he might become a better grownup. Now, in this playful and buoyant book, he shares those insights with rest of us --timeless, often surprising lessons that bypass the head we're always stuck in, and go straight to the heart we sometimes forget. Each of the book's three sections begins with the illustrated story of "The Incredible Floating Girl." Brad weaves this story together with lessons of success, fear, regret, gratitude, love, happiness, and dreams to reveal the true reason we are here: to fly, and to help others fly. Beautifully designed and featuring Montague's own whimsical 4-color illustrations that appeal to the kid in all of us, Becoming Better Grownups shares the purpose and meaning we can all discover merely by listening, and reveals that--in a world that seems increasingly childish--the secret to joy is in fact to become more childlike.

The Beginner's Goodbye

The Beginner's Goodbye PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307958221
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
The beloved bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving novel about loss and recovery, pierced throughout with her humor, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles. Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron grew up fending off a sister who constantly wanted to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, an outspoken, independent young woman, she’s like a breath of fresh air. He marries her without hesitation, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. Aaron works at his family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life. But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Only Dorothy’s unexpected appearances from the dead—in their house, on the roadway, in the market—help him to live in the moment and to find some peace. Gradually, Aaron discovers that maybe for this beginner there is indeed a way to say goodbye.

How to Survive Without Grown-Ups

How to Survive Without Grown-Ups PDF Author: Larry Hayes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471198359
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Get set for the new hilarious out-of-this-world adventure series for readers aged 8+ – this is the perfect new series for fans of Tom Gates, David Solomons and Star Wars! Highly illustrated throughout by the brilliantly funny Katie Abey. Mum and Dad have left – gone to Mars, and they’re never coming back . . . FREEDOM AT LAST! But this isn’t one of Dad’s weird jokes; it’s REAL. It’s up to ten-year-old Eliza and her genius little brother, Johnnie, to find out what’s going on, and launch a rescue . . . Can they handle vampire squids, a suspicious villain, a secret island full of traps and a trip into space? And – more importantly – will they ever get their parents back? The funniest, zaniest, most out-of-this-world adventure you’ll read all year! Look out for Eliza and Johnnie's second adventure, How to Survive Time Travel. Out now!

The Accidental Tourist

The Accidental Tourist PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307416836
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author—an irresistible novel exploring the slippery alchemy of attracting opposites, and the struggle to rebuild one’s life after unspeakable tragedy Travel writer Macon Leary hates travel, adventure, surprises, and anything outside of his routine. Immobilized by grief, Macon is becoming increasingly prickly and alone, anchored by his solitude and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts. Then he meets Muriel, an eccentric dog trainer too optimistic to let Macon disappear into himself. Despite Macon’s best efforts to remain insulated, Muriel up-ends his solitary, systemized life, catapulting him into the center of a messy, beautiful love story he never imagined. A fresh and timeless tale of unexpected bliss, The Accidental Tourist showcases Tyler’s talents for making characters—and their relationships—feel both real and magical. “Incandescent, heartbreaking, exhilarating…One cannot reasonably expect fiction to be much better than this.” —The Washington Post

What the Dormouse Said

What the Dormouse Said PDF Author:
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 9781565124516
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
A collection of words of wisdom features incisive quotations from children's books--including Charlotte's Web, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Sounder, and Goodnight Moon--all arranged by topic, including faith, imagination, character, acceptance, sadness, goodness, greed, wisdom, and growing old. Reprint.

Celestial Navigation

Celestial Navigation PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030778827X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
A poignant, uplifting, heartbreaking love story from the beloved bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author: "To read a novel by Anne Tyler is to fall in love" (PEOPLE). Thirty-eight-year-old Jeremy Pauling has never left home. He lives on the top floor of a Baltimore row house where he creates collages of little people snipped from wrapping paper. His elderly mother putters in the rooms below, until her death. And it is then that Jeremy is forced to take in Mary Tell and her child as boarders. Mary is unaware of how much courage it takes Jeremy to look her in the eye. For Jeremy, like one of his paper creations, is fragile and easily torn—especially when he's falling in love....

The Clock Winder

The Clock Winder PDF Author: Anne Tyler
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446419002
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
'Her brilliance in capturing the ripples on the surface of family life gives her a claim to be the Jane Austen of our age' Daily Mail Having sacked her handyman, newly-widowed Mrs Emerson finds a replacement in Elizabeth, a lanky, awkward girl. The Emersons, with their seven adult children, have a reputation for craziness, and Elizabeth finds herself drawn into their disorderly lives against her will. But in the end it is hard to tell whether she is a victim of the needy Emersons, or the de facto ruler of the family. **ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 8 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE** 'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce 'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali 'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks 'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson