Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Of course I am reading Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler...again! I read it about twice a year along with my other favorite of hers, A Patchwork Planet. Maybe once a year each for Back When We Were Grownups and Morgan's Passing.

Every time I read Dinner...I truly believe I will be able to watch Tyler crafting it; I will look behind the curtain and see how she does it. About two paragraphs in I fall into the story and that is all she wrote (or all she noticed how she wrote) until the end of the book.

The good news is that some day I may accidentally write a novel using some of her methods as they are now part of my DNA.

The things I know:

Multiple characters tell the story.

Each chapter is from the point of view of one of four main characters, Pearl and her three children, Cody, Ezra and Jenny.

Each chapter travels from present to recent past to deep past and back to present seamlessly.

The story is fueled entirely by character. The lesson here is to make reams of lists of character traits for each: character's thoughts, their memories, their failures, their needs and desires, their gestures, their friends.

The center around which the whole thing spins is each character's response to food and nourishment, one of the most basic things about any human being and therefore an effective way to reveal character at its deepest point. So, think basic human need for depth.

I think I read somewhere Anne Tyler saying she writes many legal pads worth of character traits and may rely on only the thinnest of plots.

If you have read the book, you will understand when I say this: it really is A Taste of Honey.