![]() ![]() And while all families like to believe they are special, round that kitchen table over all those years we also see played out own hopes and fears, rivalries and tensions – the essential nature of family life. They’ve all come, even Denny, who can usually be relied on only to please himself.įrom that porch we spool back through three generations of the Whitshanks, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define who and what they are. ![]() Abby and Red are getting older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them and their beloved family home. They were getting ready for bed at the time. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.Īnd yet this gathering is different. Late one July evening in 1994, Red and Abby Whitshank had a phone call from their son Denny. This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that day in July 1959. ‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’ You will shiver with recognition.” Helen Dunmore, Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015 judge. The Whitshank family is tragic, comic, absurd, absorbing – and lives on its illusions, as every family must. “Anne Tyler writes with an apparent effortlessness which conceals great art. ![]()
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