Dinner im Heimweh-Restaurant (1982)

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. ( )

This is a review.

In my opinion, just as the Beginner's Goodbye is Tyler's worst, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is her best!!

Pearl Tull married late in life. When her husband leaves her to raise their three children alone, she denies his abandonment. To Cody, Jenny and Ezra, their father left; they wait for him to return, and he never does.

It would be easy to say Pearl did the best she could, but, each of her children would deny that platitude. Pearl receives a minimum amount in a check each month. She finds a job at a local grocery store as a check out clerk. Moving through life troubled, sad and angry, she takes her emotions out on every child.

Tyler is best at character study and she does an excellent job at profiling each child and Pearl. Cody becomes a successful business man, his sister Jenny becomes a peditrician, and Ezra inherits a restaurant and changes the menu and name to The Homesick Restaurant.

Ezra goes through life as the magical child who does not try, but seems to have a successful aura around him. Cody, always jealous of Ezra, steals and marries Ezra's one and only love. Jenny experiences a string of failed marriages, then finds and marries a man with a large amount of children. They are added to her little girl whose husband left Jenny when her child was a baby.

When adults, though they make many attempts to get together as adults, someone always storms away from the dinner table, angry and frustrated. Each adult carries memories of a mother who screams, hits, and flies off at the least little thing.

The book begins with Pearl's last days with son Ezra by her side as she relives memories of days gone by.

65. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
published: 1982
format: 303-page paperback
acquired: 2020
read: Dec 23-29
time reading: 10:29, 2.1 mpp
rating: 4
locations: Baltimore 1930s to 1970s
about the author: Baltimore-based author. Born in Minneapolis, 1941. Grew up Quaker communities in North Carolina.

This was my second novel by Anne Tyler, both read this year, and this was so much more interesting than my first - [Redhead by the Side of the Road].

Pearl Tull tells a lot in the opening paragraph, on her death bed, when she tells her son, "Get...You should have got..." Pearl is hard, willful, and she made a tough mom, having three kids, because after one, she thought, "I want some extra." Fiercely confident, "She felt that going to college would be an admission of defeat." The novel, is, in a sense, the fallout of this kind of mother.

The novel is the story of Pearl Tull and her three children after her husband runs off in the 1940‘s. Her kids are each different. Tyler here captures an atmosphere and personality by showering the reader with details. Maximalist, wordy, slow and yet she creates an impression.

One son, grown ponders on time and happiness: "Everything come 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 happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn't sadness wishing time back again?"

And that‘s maybe the theme of this novel. I enjoyed it.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7697286 ( )

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. ( )