Books on Tap met virtually to discuss Clock Dance by Anne Tyler. A dramatic change in tone from last month’s title, this story of an old women’s examination of her life during an unexpected trip to Baltimore to care for her son’s ex-girlfriend was pleasant, but few of the book club members could remember the details a few weeks after reading it. As a wise librarian once said, these books are like muffins – nothing wrong with them and pleasant while you consume them, but not something you’d rave about.
So why did we like it? It was uplifting. The characters were vibrant and Tyler’s opening flashback grounds the main character Willa and her family and provides motivation for the decisions they make later in the book. Willa marries two overbearing husbands, mirroring the go-along attitude of her father. Her mother’s volatility teaches Willa to be small to avoid attention and conflict. She has a learned helplessness, barely able to handle travel logistics for planes or cars. But Tyler’s writing is so clear, kind and funny that Willa isn’t pathetic. We in the book club were rooting for her to upend her life. However, after 200 pages, we get two ambiguous paragraphs about her decision to stay in her old life in Arizona or to move to Baltimore to be with her new logical family who value her for herself and contributions and not for her looks or willingness to stay quiet.
We discussed this book during the protests and uprisings in all 50 states in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmad Abrey and police violence more generally. Tyler sets this book in Roland Park, a neighborhood in Baltimore that, according to data from the last census (and borne out by recent estimates), is dramatically more white than the rest of the city.Residents of Baltimore as a whole are 63% Black, while only 7.6% of residents of Roland Park are. The Baltimore that Tyler writes about in this book is 99% white as far as we could tell. The book was a brief respite from the real world but didn’t help us to discuss the issues of race and inequity that are at the front of our minds this week.
Books on Tap will meet again on July 2nd via Zoom. For information, please contact Krista Farrell (kfarrell at jmrl dot org). We’ll be reading Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. JMRL owns this book in print, CD, downloadable audiobook from RB Digital and downloadable book from Overdrive. Please contact Sarah Hamfeldt (shamfeldt at jmrl dot org) for help accessing these titles for curbside pickup or by download.
More Information:
Next Meeting:
- July 2nd Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
- August 6th The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker by Janet Groth