Noah's Compass - Hardcover

Tyler, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 070118423X ISBN 13: 9780701184230

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2009

Synopsis

Quintessential Tyler, yet full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes gently, heartbreakingly with our times.

With the humour and poignancy of her classic The Accidental Tourist (though with a protagonist who doesn't venture far from home) Anne Tyler's new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he's just been 'let go' from his schoolteaching job and downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on his first night.

Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems. His ex-wife (sensible Barbara) and daughters worry about him but Liam blunders on, His teenage daughter Kitty is sent to stay - though it's not clear who is minding whom. His middle daughter, Louise, is a born-again Christian with a son called Jonah, but her certainties leave Liam still more perplexed.

Noah's Compass is about memory and its loss, about incidents and relationships which open up sight lines into a painful past long dead for a man who becomes aware that merely trying to stay afloat may not be enough.

About this title

Review:

‘her novels have a grace and an emotional depth that few romances can match’ - Sunday Times, Nick Rennison

‘Compassionate and funny dissection of the workings of the human heart’ - Woman & Home, Fanny Blake

Book Description:

Quintessential Tyler but full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes subtly, heartbreakingly with our times.

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 070118423X
• ISBN 13: 9780701184230
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288