A note to the reader from Anne Tyler
Back in 1975 or so, while I was on a family beach trip, I went to the local produce stand in a T-shirt that said One Hundred Years of Solitude--the title of my favorite book. I was waiting in the cashier's line when a woman told me, "I would love that."Considering she was surrounded by children, all of them clamoring for different flavors of sno-cones, I knew right away what she was referring to. It wasn't my cantaloupe, or even the book; it was the hundred years of solitude. And I also knew that if I'd said, "Fine, then just hand your children to me," she would have been horrified.
Who hasn't had an urge to up and leave at some point, packing no more than a toothbrush? I have been fascinated all my life by the tension between the wish to fly and the resolve to stay earthbound. It seems to me that the proper choice varies from one person to the next, and even from one moment to the next.
That woman at the produce stand has been leaving ever since, in my mind. Wouldn't she be surprised to know that! And meanwhile, I suppose, her children have grown up and left her, and she has no idea how far she has traveled--in the parallel universe I have so much enjoyed imagining for her.
About the Author
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941. She grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Duke University, where she won prizes for her fiction. She went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. Tyler wrote her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, at the age of twenty-two. Ladder of Years is her thirteenth novel.
Tyler is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the recipient of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for her novel Breathing Lessons. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, Taghi Modarressi.
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