One of Frew's top ten books featuring the "messy intersection of the mother’s actual self with her role in the lives of her children," as shared at the Guardian:Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne TylerRead about the other books on the list.
Pearl Tull is the matriarch of this family drama, a marvellous character – full of pride and disappointment, tragically lonely yet so abrasive she’s hard to like. When abandoned by her husband she tells their children that he’s away on business, extending the deadline as months, then years, pass. She congratulates herself on successfully fooling everyone, but, as we later learn, she didn’t do at all. This folding back of the story from different angles – as she gives each child a voice – shines light on the missed connections of one family, at the centre of which Pearl remains slightly inscrutable, as a mother so often is to her children.
--Marshal Zeringue
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