‘A Patchwork Planet’ by Anne Tyler

Like no other author I know, Tyler is a master of the emotional sandbag. She blindsides you, saps you in the skull when you don't see it coming (even if you've already read the book!), and you need to take a brief time-out to recover from being a blubbering fool. In this paperback edition, if you don't experience an epiphany by page sixty-one, you must be reading so fast you're missing what's in the white space.

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler

Now, delivering a show-stopping apotheosis not even a quarter-way through a story might seem a bit odd, structurally speaking. Your veteran movie scribe will save that kind of moment for well into the third act. Or, if you follow William Goldman’s advice, you should give the audience a half-dozen of these choke-up take-aways, but not more. It’s the devastating zinger, the tune you’ll be humming, the two cigarettes on a match -- the usual suspects -- you know what I mean.

Here’s a parallel for opera lovers, of which I am also one. Anne Tyler writes like Puccini. She gives you a score that’s artful and interesting, but at some point -- and it’s unpredictable where it will occur -- she delivers a show-stopping aria that brings the tears and makes you rediscover once more why you love opera in the first place. In Puccini’s case, perhaps the most remarkable example is the one-act Gianni Schicchi. The score is masterful enough but it’s not all that engaging. He’s experimenting with musical themes, some of them atonal and not all that glorious in my opinion (I’m not accusing Tyler of the same -- this is not a perfect analogy). But then the soprano belts out “O mio babbino caro,” which is like pure sunlight flooding into a damp room.

I’m a student of literary style and of structure, and frankly I can’t tell you how she does it. If you have an explanation, please post!

Christmas Karma is my Book 3 in Prize-Winning Literary Fiction. Buy the discount paperback here.

Deep-discount paperbacks - all 15 novels in our booklist