Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Margaret Wooten (Anderson University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1982

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

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Set in Baltimore, Maryland, in the 1960s,

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

opens with an aged Pearl musing upon her life and giving instructions to her younger son, Ezra, to invite everyone in her address book to her funeral. And who is in that book? Beck, of course. He never divorced Pearl, but he walked away from the family when their children, Cody, Ezra, and Jenny were fourteen, eleven, and nine years of age, respectively. When Cody graduates from high school, Pearl muses about her nearly-grown children: “Beck would not have known them, and they, perhaps, would not have known Beck. They never asked about him. Didn’t that show how little importance a father has? The invisible man. The absent presence. Pearl felt a tinge of angry joy.” Pearl continues to be proud of what she has…

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1194 words

Citation: Wooten, Margaret. "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 January 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5607, accessed 27 November 2024.]

Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

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