Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Sometimes I comes across books on my To Read list that I’ve had on there for so long, I don’t remember why I added them in the first place. I probably saw them on someone’s recommended list, or maybe in the back of another book I’ve read. Maybe on a “Also By This Author” list on the one decent book that author wrote.

 

And because I have so freaking many books on my Goodreads list, it takes years to get to those obscure books by those authors that I don’t remember reading. Or sometimes, I remember the name, but I don’t remember if I liked them. I just remember that I’ve seen their name so many times, I must have liked them, right?

 

Anne Tyler is one of those authors. I’ve read a few of her books, so I keep adding her books to my list, because her name is so familiar to me. And every time I read her, I think, “Why in the world do I keep adding her books to my list?” There’s nothing so horribly wrong with her books that I can put a finger on, except that they just are extraordinarily dull. I always complete them. Because I want to find out what happens to the family, and I feel like maybe, just maybe, something interesting will happen. But of course, nothing interesting every happens to the family. Because that is the point, really.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is just one of those books that Anne Tyler writes. It’s a book about an ordinary, dull, dysfunctional family. Everyone is unhappy in their own sort of way. No one gets along but they all stick together because they are family and they are obligated. It’s all very bleak and sad and depressing. I definitely don’t feel good after reading this. I can’t exactly say I hated it, but I definitely can’t say I liked it either.

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