by Anne Tyler, 1982
I got this book from a Little Free Library and it was on my stack for a long time. I finally read it and it was GOOD! The main characters are Mom (Pearl), Cody (oldest son), Jenny (daughter), Ezra (youngest son). Mom is a mean, terrifying, abusive woman but filled with love for these children. The youngest boy, Ezra, loves her and each of them completely and unconditionally. He chooses to see the good, not the bad. Cody sees only the bad and he is mean and cruel, especially to Ezra. When they grow up and Ezra finally has met the woman of his dreams (Ruth) and they are about to get married, Cody steals her away and marries her. Mom knew Cody was just doing it out of spite and tells him so. Their father, Beck, up and leaves the family when the children are little. He writes letters and sends checks. Pearl never tells the children that he left, just that he was on a business trip, which was not unusual as he was a traveling salesman. But the weeks turned into months and then years and he never returns. But he always keeps in touch with Pearl and she writes down his addresses in her address book.
Jenny has trouble in love and may be anorexic. She’s a beauty. She becomes a doctor, but is going through residency and is 8 months pregnant when her husband leaves her. It turns out she is starting to be abusive to her baby girl, when her mother comes to the rescue and takes care of everything so Jenny can finish her training and become a pediatrician. Jenny eventually marries a man with 6 kids whose wife left them, and she is an energetic, fun-loving, optimistic, hard-working, tireless, loving wife and mom and doctor.
Ezra is the loving child who Cody picks on his entire childhood, and steals his one and only love (Ruth). Ruth and Ezra were going to be married and live over the restaurant Ezra owns (the Homesick Restaurant). They love food and cooking food. Cody steals Ruth away, he doesn’t even like her type (red-head, not glamorous, small). But he steals her away and makes her fall in love with him. Cody is terrible. Yet Ezra never, never, never hates. He still wants the family to come to the restaurant for family dinners at Thanksgiving, Christmas. He invites them and they come but it never works – someone always gets mad and leaves before anything can be served.
Ezra takes care of his mom until she dies. He lives with her, still sleeping in his childhood bedroom. She told him to invite everyone in her address book to her funeral. There aren’t very many people – she had no friends or family except for the children and their families. But Beck, the husband and father who abandoned her and the children, is in there, and Ezra writes to him and he comes.
Ezra has, once again, planned a family dinner, this time including Beck. Cody tries to destroy it and Beck does leave the restaurant in a rush, but Ezra demands everyone go and find him. Cody finds him sitting on a stoop and has a heart-to-heart with him, finds out why he left them (Pearl was a witch to him, he couldn’t do anything right, it was misery). He never divorced her though, and he did come back once and watch Cody from afar and determined they were happy, so left again.
But it seems that, in the end, Beck is going to stay with them. He really has nothing to return to. So that is how it ends – they all go back to the restaurant.
The writing was EXCELLENT. I loved this book but it was pretty alarming the abuse handed out by Pearl and then Jenny. Those passages were few, and slipped in here and then there. Ezra is the shining light – forgiving and loving all. And Pearl gave the children a gift in the end – their father – he really didn’t want to abandon them, he just couldn’t take life with her.