Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Read for IRL bookclub. Would not have finished except that Tyler makes a reader care about even despicable people, at least a little. I hope we have a good discussion about Ruth. And what's with one sentence about Jenny's daughter having anorexia? ... that's important! I'm frustrated and disappointed, as I have enjoyed some of Tyler's other works.

I wonder what the movie *A Taste of Honey* is, that gets much more page time. I prolly don't want to know, though.

Such a good writer of engaging characters!

"Homesick Restaurant" is the name of Ezra's restaurant, and it is Ezra's fervent wish to bring his family together for a dinner at the restaurant. He never succeeded when his mother, Pearl, was alive. It's only at her death that the family managed to have a meal together, with the estranged father. How ironic that is. It should not be taken as an indictment of Pearl's parenting, which left scars on each of the three children. Rather, it represents closure to the children, who never knew why their father left. Another family portrait gem by Anne Tyler.

Anne can certainly write, and she understands the psychology of her characters. But this sad saga of an abandoned family, forever carrying their wounds with them, which unintentionally then hurt others, was just too bleak for me.

Reason Read: Pulitzer prize nominee, Pulitzer group read June 2023. ROOT
This is probably my least favorite Tyler. The family story is so messed up, pure dysfunction. I couldn't really like any of the characters. Ezra and Luke are probably the best of the lot. Had this on my shelf since 2014 and it was time to get it read.

People felt real. Good and bad moments. Sometimes, not all people are likeable.

Another good quirky novel about lonely people.

My first Anne Tyler but one of my favourite genres, the drama of the ordinary family. Plot is secondary in this genre, it's character, character,character and matriarch Pearl is a doozie.

This is an older novel of Anne Tyler's which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1983. It deals with family life and is set in Baltimore during the 1950's and 1960's. Pearl is a young mother with three children and a husband, Beck, who is not home much because he is a travelling salesman. One day he comes home and tells her he is leaving her and the family. She is stunned but does not tell her children he is gone. When they ask, she tells them that he is travelling and they accept that for a very long time. She gets a job at a local grocery store to help make ends meet and, through the years, Beck occasionally sends money along with notes to Pearl about his latest job.

There are alternating points-of-view which I liked since this has become a dysfunctional family and I liked the children's viewpoints as they matured. The oldest, Cody, was insecure and had antisocial behavior; Ezra was a peacemaker and wanted a normal family; and Jenny, the youngest, was very determined, yet cautious. Pearl became complicated and used verbal abuse, mostly at Jenny.

I was curious about the title: Ezra owned a restaurant and featured a varied menu so if a diner felt hungry for a specific food, he would try to make it. He was always trying to get his family to eat together but something always happened and they never finished a meal at his restaurant. I felt sorry for Ezra through most of this novel because he was so easy going and put up with Cody's terrible behavior toward him.

I felt love existed in this family even though the fractures in their relationships were evident. Tyler creates and develops characters in a way that, for me, brings them to life. She writes about world-wide subjects: forgiving and loving each other, being kind and accepting, and the moral obligation of parents to their children and children to their parents.

Meeting at the Nostalgia restaurant. Ann Tyler.
10th of my annual personal challenge

Reviewed already for the challenge. My opinion: a story with very good ingredients...a family and the gears that connect and separate throughout life.
There have been moments when I felt things that reminded me of my childhood...I mean the fights between siblings that occur in all families.
A story with a very uneven narration...at times it captivated me, and at other times it seemed tedious. (Translated from Spanish)

The novel opens with Pearl Tull on her deathbed, attended by her son, Ezra. She fades in and out, lost in memories of years gone by. Born in the early 20th century, Pearl married and had three children. Her husband Beck earned his living as a salesman; frequent transfers required the young family to relocate on short notice. Pearl’s life was focused on her children and she had no social connections to speak of. When Beck up and left them all, she had no one to fall back on. But she managed.

Or so it seemed. In fact, Pearl’s end-of-life reverie was highly unreliable. While Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant initially appears to be the story of a quirky family, its dark side soon becomes apparent. Eldest son Cody is charming on the outside but inside is calculating and cruel, especially towards his brother Ezra. Jenny, the youngest, becomes a doctor but her personal life is a mess. And Ezra, the peace-keeping middle child, remains in Baltimore with his mother while working at the restaurant he eventually comes to own. Ezra repeatedly attempts to bring the family together by hosting elaborate dinners at the restaurant, which suffer under the weight of his perfectionism, shared family trauma, and the dysfunctional behaviors of every other family member.

The lives of each sibling unfold in alternating chapters, each a brilliant character study that also moves the plot along. I despised Cody and found Ezra and Jenny likeable, if flawed. The novel ends with Pearl’s funeral, where one particular loose end is resolved but much of the family’s future remains uncertain. I was actually glad Tyler didn’t fall back on a neat and tidy ending. There was no way this family was going to reverse the damage done to them, but they can move forward step by step, day by day.

I went into this novel with dread. I was expecting this book to hit a bit too close to home and maybe a little hard to swallow (mother death is always a hard one for me). To be honest, I have never read a novel by Anne Tyler and did not expect such incredible prose and vivid storytelling. This was a heartbreaking portrait of a flailing, damaged, and toxic American family doing their best (and as in life sometimes someone’s best just simply falls short). The heartbreaking, sad, and devastating moments of this novel felt both necessary and vital to the meaning of the story Tyler weaves in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (and weren’t the entire Tull family both homesick and in dire need of nourishment? Some of them literally starving?)

This is my first but certainly not my last Tyler novel.

A simple yet profound narrative.
The characters are perfectly outlined; deeply human and in need of affection.
But it is a sad story, very sad. Of a bitter and raw sadness. Of maternal love and fraternal jealousy.
One phrase: "Ruth was like certain supermarket vegetables that go from green to wilted without ever reaching maturity."
In short: a gem. (Translated from Spanish)

Family relationships are complicated and Anne Tyler has a marvelous way of demonstrating that. Sometimes, things don't get resolved—at least not in the way we'd like.

This isn't an action book or a mystery. It's a story about a family and how the various members see things differently throughout their lives. The reader becomes familiar with each character the author has astutely rendered. It's a study of people in the same situation having different reactions and remembering different things, for one thing. It's much more than that. Well worth the read.

The Tull family of Baltimore is dysfunctional. The father leaves the mother Pearl to rear the children alone. Only the son Ezra remains at home. He takes over management of a somewhat successful restaurant but manages to make it into one which struggles. The other children move on, rarely coming home, and interacting infrequently with the rest of the family. The book is well-written, but the narrative is slow and seems to have little point except the exploration of the dysfunctional family. Near the end of the book, I began to think this is the type of book that I'd probably enjoy more as a movie than as a book.

This novel is like a collection of old photographs, sorting through the Tull family history. There is Pearl, left abruptly by her husband with three children to raise; Pearl who is the master of denial and the queen of bitterness, but, really, just wants to live a life in which some happiness occurred. Cody, her oldest son, carries the family's jealousy and sense of being an outsider; he embodies that human tendency to look at other houses, where the living room light escapes into the darkening evening, and assume the people within are deeply connected and unthinkingly happy. Jenny is the hard-shelled daughter, the pediatrician who never lets anyone get too close, including the reader. And there is Ezra, the youngest child who is goodness personified. He is patient and kind, motivated by simple desires and an unshakeable optimism. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is not plotless, but its narrative arc is propelled by the unremarkable substance of everyday family life. In this, Tyler finds and exposes beauty, meaning, and drama. She skirts tiresomeness (just) and leaves the reader pleased to have known her characters.

Another leisurely but penetrating and witty dissection of the relationships within an eccentric Baltimore family, this time looking at the way people's lives are distorted by stubborn resentments. Very rewarding.

I started out writing that I thought Anne Tyler was an under-appreciated writer, and then I remember that she won a Pulitzer, so perhaps that's not exactly the correct term.

I think people don't realize the skill it takes to write her novels. While I haven't read all her work, the common thread, for me, is that she writes about ordinary people in ordinary situations. She doesn't write Jodi Picoult novels - these are the "headline-of-the-month" type stories; they also aren't thrillers, or mysteries, or any of those other types of books that sell a bajilion copies. This is just an ordinary family, doing ordinary things, with ordinary conflicts and troubles. And somehow in Tyler's hands, their story becomes utterly fascinating. She has a way of taking characters that are not the most likable - sometimes even pretty distasteful - and teasing out the bit of humanity that allows her readers to sympathize with even the hardest cases.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant isn't really about anything - and yet somehow, it's about everything. Recommended.

Plot summary: As 85 year old Pearl Tull lies on her deathbed, she thinks back over her life. The defining moment for Pearl was 35 years before, when her husband walked out on her and her three young children. Pearl struggled to raise her children and provide for them, always searching for the reasons why she was abandoned.
Her children, Ezra, Cody and Jenny reflect on their upbringing, the decisions they made and the events that shaped their lives forever. With shifting perspectives, their memories all combine to paint a fuller picture of the Tulls, their lives and their relationships with each other.

In spite of having read other works by this author, none of which I ever liked, I keep reading her books because they are set in my hometown. In spite of the fact that her portrayal of my hometown Baltimore is often spot on, the characters in her books are always, always, always such down in the dumps, dreary, depressing, discouraging, and miserable human beings that I finish the book and immediately want to burn it.

This one continues the string of misery. It is the story of a woman raising children in the 1950s without the assistance (either physical or financial) of the father of those children. The different attitudes and aptitudes of the three children are sharply drawn, but still depressing. I know there are many who find these well written worthwhile stories. I'm not one of them.

If you're into family tragedy, this one's for you. If you're looking for lighter summer reading this time of year, I'd look elsewhere.

Tyler's humor, her sense of place, her eccentric characters, her use of language, and her lyrical descriptions are magnificent. Anne Tyler says that Eudora Welty has been the most influential on her writing and the admiration is mutual, as shown by Welty's comment about this novel: "If I could have written the last sentence in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant I'd have been happy for the rest of my life" (Welty in Salwak, p. 11)

Tolstoy famously wrote that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." That is certainly true of the Tull family that we meet in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

"Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things--even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos--ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once."

Read it couple of yrs and I didn't just enjoy it, I LOVED it, such an amazing brilliant truthful heartbreaking novel, can't remember details but remember how I felt...

I read the Arabic translation and it was really good, and just realized that this novel makes me wannna read it again althou I'm not a fan of reading books more than once, but I'll defiantly read it again..

It would be really interesting 2 find out how I'm gonna feel abt it this time, since 'm older now and might be different so it'd be reaaaaally interesting 2 know wat would I think abt it now...

Highly recommended, will be back 2 review it again 4 the 2nd time ;)

Not bad. I really did not connect with any of the characters though. Everyone was basically broken, or annoying, or just puzzling. Still it was well written.

The Tull family, led by demanding matriarch Pearl, is made up of a mishmash of three very different siblings. There’s the competitive and insecure eldest, Cody; the eternal optimist and quiet-natured Ezra, and Jenny, determined but cautious. The story is told in such compassionate detail from the perspective of each person in the family in turn. The rotating narrative takes us through their lives giving us a peak into the way each one thinks.

I wasn’t a fan of Tyler’s after The Accidental Tourist, but this has changed my mind. It’s reminiscent of other novels about dysfunctional families (As I Lay Dying and This is Where I Leave You), but it’s also wholly its own story. The father figure is absent and the lonely life they lead is rarely intruded upon by others. Tyler’s skill as a writer makes even the unsympathetic characters become relatable. You may not like them or what they’re doing, but you can somehow understand why they’re doing it.

BOTTOM LINE: A beautifully written story of a family that both desperately needs each other and can hardly function together. Just beneath the surface there is so much hurt, jealousy and resentment, but there is also a cord of similarity and shared experience that holds them all together. A wonderful book with characters that felt achingly real.

“Everything else - the cold dark of the streets, the picture of her own bustling mother - seemed brittle by comparison, lacking the smoothly rounded completeness of Josiah's life.”

“Pearl thought, how people displayed their characters in every little thing they undertook.”

“Wasn't that what a marriage ought to be? Like one of those movie-style disasters-shipwrecks or earthquakes or enemy prisons-where strangers, trapped in close quarters by circumstance, show their real strengths and weaknesses.” 

Pearl..very human mother who makes many mistakes...
An unforgettable character...

A revealing book about a very dysfunctional family. Emotionally searing, exposing raw, ugly feelings family members have for each other and explores the birth of those emotions from earliest childhood. Amusing in parts, Anne Tyler writes like a person with a deep understanding of psychology and family relationships. Pearl as a single mother bringing up three very different children, makes many, many mistakes that these children will later pay for. A really excellent read.

I found this to be a well written novel of family stress and interaction. Character development is excellent and the novel contains the complexity that makes it an excellent book discussion group pick. Three children and a parental separation make up the basis of this story which leads to some endearing and frustrating characters.

A family story, packed full with emotions, things gone wrong, regrets and troubles. The characters seem quite real and their mistakes are, after all, only human.

Family drama that borrows the springboard and to an extent the structure from Faulkner's As I Lay Dying - the mother of the family lies on her deathbed, prompting the telling of the family story from the point of view of each of the family members. Very well written and observed, it feels very real. This could be a family you knew and did not consider particularly remarkable, but would be intrigued once you got under their skin. They see the same events differently, come closer and drift apart in very ordinary and human ways. Not the most exciting, but it aims for something different. I'd read more by her.