![]() ![]() ![]() It's an excellent compromise for a riddle that has been threaded throughout so much of this author's meaningful body of work. Mercy's living arrangement mostly goes unspoken amongst the family so she maintains her position while achieving a kind of independent freedom. She's developed a technique for painting a family's home by focusing on one aspect which is represented in high detail while the rest remains a bit of a blur. Once their youngest child has flown the coop she embarks on pursuing her passion for painting and gradually moves out of the family home into her artist's studio. But her natural domain isn't the domestic. Though in her younger days she fantasized about walking out on her life she has loyally loved and supported her husband and three children for decades. Mercy is the matriarch of the Garrett clan. ![]() In her latest novel “French Braid” we have an example of a character who, in a sense, has it both ways. There's a persistent tension for many characters between maintaining the life they've built and leaving it behind. Taking on responsibilities / ridding oneself of all responsibility.” This is certainly noticeable in many of Tyler's novels – most notably in “Ladder of Years”. In an entry from 1977 in “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates” she remarks that “Anne Tyler's imagination turns (instinctively?) toward her central theme of staying-in-one-place / running-away. ![]()
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