The author of the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Accidental Tourist pens another delightful tale of an ordinary couple. The Morans are just ave rage--she is scatterbrained and he whistles. Just when they think they've learned all there is to know about each other, they find out how extraordinary they really are. "More powerful than anything she has done!"--New York Times. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

In perhaps her most mainstream, accessible novel so far, Tyler spins a tale of marriage and middle-class lives, in an age when social standards and life expectations have gone askew. While she remains a brilliant observer of human nature, there is a subtle change here in Tyler's focus. Where before her protagonists were eccentric, sometimes slightly fantastical characters who came at the end to a sense of peace, if not happiness, Maggie Moran and her husband Ira are average, unexceptional, even somewhat drab; and outside of some small epiphanies, little is changed between them at the story's close. It's this very realism that makes the story so effective and moving. Taking place on one summer day, when Maggie and Ira drive from Baltimore to Pennsylvania to a funeral, with an accidental detour involving an old black man they pass on the road and a side trip to see their former daughter-in-law and their seven-year-old grandchild, the novel reveals the basic incompatibility of their 28-year marriage and the love that binds them together nonetheless. This is another typical Tyler union of opposites: Maggie is impetuous, scatterbrained, klutzy, accident prone and garrulous; Ira is self-contained, precise, dignified, aloof with, however, an irritating (or endearing ) habit of whistling tunes that betray his inner thoughts. Both feel that their children are strangers, that the generations are ``sliding downhill,'' and that somehow they have gone wrong in a society whose values they no longer recognize. With irresistibly funny passages you want to read out loud and poignant insights that illuminate the serious business of sharing lives in an unsettling world, this is Tyler's best novel yet. 175,000 first printing ; BOMC main selection; Franklin Library signed first edition. (September) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Every reader knows a couple like the Morans. Maggie is a compassionate flibbertigibbet whose best intentions always backfire. Dour and sensible Ira, ``born competent,'' Maggie thinks, ``should have married Ann Landers.'' As they drive inexorably (with a few detours) toward the most comical funeral in recent fiction, Ira ponders his wasted life and the traffic. Maggie, meanwhile, is hatching a plot she thinks could reunite their son with his long-estrangeed wife and child, based on the evidence she has fabricated. Tyler's most entertaining novel yet, a love story in praise of marriage; essential for all fiction collections. Maurice Taylor, Brunswick Cty. Lib., Southport, N.C. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Novelist and short story writer Anne Tyler was born in Minnesota, grew up in North Carolina, and was educated at Duke University.

Since 1965 she has lived in Baltimore, the setting for much of her work. With wry humor and sympathy, Tyler writes about the ambivalence of family relations, focusing on ordinary characters, most of whom live in Baltimore or in small Southern towns. Her concerns are with the human need to belong and to be loved, the necessity of making imperfect choices, and the acceptance of mortality.

Beginning with her ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), which won the PEN Faulkner Award, Tyler has gained the wider audience she deserves. This novel shows Tyler's development as a writer: here, she is able to delineate family tensions over several generations. Tyler's feel for the oddities of families and the strange configurations of which they are made comes through vividly in The Accidental Tourist (1985). In 1988 She won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Breathing Lessons. Her latest novel is entitled, Noah's Compass.

Tyler lives in Baltimore, Maryland. (Bowker Author Biography) Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Back When We Were Grownups" is her 15th novel; her 11th, "Breathing Lessons", won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

(Publisher Provided) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.