Digging to America [Paperback]

I love Anne Tyler's work. She writes about the ordinary and every day events that we take so much for granted, but in a way that makes us really think about and question what is happening. This book is no exception. The main event is more unusual than in her other books, as it centres around the adoption of two Korean girls by two very different families. Although they apparently have little in common other than the adoptions, the families meet each year to celebrate the day that their daughters arrived in the USA and into their lives. This apparently simple storyline raises much bigger questions and makes the reader think about things such as how do we create our national identity? What is a family? And why had I never thought to hold a 'raking party' to clear my garden in the autumn (seriously, it's a great idea!) The characters are, as always in Tyler's books, well-drawn and each is given an opportunity to tell part of the story through their own eyes. A really charming book that will stay with you long after you finish it.

I am a great fan of Anne Tyler love her characterisation and her meandering story-lines. While I would not say this is her best novel, it is still worth reading, although frankly, nothing much happens in it. The novel follows the course over six or seven years of two families, both of whom adopt a Korean baby. The families meet once a year for an "Arrival Party" which celebrates the day they were united with their babies at Baltimore airport.

One of the families is typically American, with all its sentimentality and its big-hearted generosity. The other family is Iranian and keeps alive the traditions of their home-land through many extended family feasts and celebrations. In typical Tyler-fashion, we see the changes brought to both families by their encounters at various social gatherings, and we see how changes over the years affect them both deeply. I appreciated the depiction of Maryam and Dave, bereaved grand-parents who dance around each other despite their obvious incompatibilities. Strangely, the Korean infants are not the most important part of the story-line, but more a catalyst for other encounters among the adults.

As always, Tyler hits the emotional buttons, and some scenes are touching beyond the reach of other authors. I particularly enjoyed the attempts of one mother to wean her second adopted child away from a baby's dummy (pacifiers), by setting up an elaborate party during which the dummies were to be launched off into the blue tied to helium balloons, with a hilarious outcome, also rich with pathos.

Tyler's characters breathe humanity, whether the good sides or the bad, and it is her non-judgemental acceptance of people's failings and foibles which characterise this and all her novels. I suppose after her previous novel, The Amateur Marriage, this book is a little more light-weight, but for Tyler's fans, it still delivers the home-spun Baltimore family experience which beguiled so many readers of her previous books.

One day a plane brings two baby Korean girls to Baltimore, to be adopted by two families, Brad and Bitsy Donaldsons and the Iranian-Americans Sami and Ziba Yazdan. The two families become friends and meet on a regular basis, especially on the anniversary of the babies' arrival, when the families take it in turn to host each other. The Donaldsons think of themselves as progressive Americans who want to respect their little girl's Korean ancestry, keep her Korean name of Jin-Ho and dress her in Korean-style clothes, and they think it is not quite right that the Yazdans should have given their little girl an English name, Susan. They regard the Yazdans as Iranians. The women in the Yazdan family, timid Ziba and her characterful mother-in-law Maryam, have certainly kept some Iranian ways of thinking, but find it tiresome that the Donaldsons constantly allude to or enquire about their Iranian traditions. As for Sami, he was born in the United States; he has a thoroughly American life-style, but is also quite capable of mocking Americans ways from an outsider's point of view. So there is always a little tension on the Yazdan side whenever the two families meet.

The Donaldsons also adopt a second little baby girl, this time from China, and there is a drawn-out account of how Bitsy is trying to wean her from her pacifiers. I don't think the novel really needed Xiu-Mei and it would have been more organic without her. I also expected that the two little Korean girls might have some identity problems; but at the end of the book they are only about six or seven years old, too young perhaps to have any such problems (except that Jin-Ho now calls herself Jo). Instead, the novel centres increasingly on Bitsy's widowed father Dave (a touching portrait) and on Maryam, the most subtly drawn character in the book. The Donaldsons, though tactless (especially Bitsy) are so well-meaning, so warm and so sociable that Ziba and Sami feel increasingly more comfortable in their world; but Maryam always feels more of an outsider, resists being drawn in, and puzzles the Donaldsons.

As always, it is a delight to read a book by Anne Tyler: she is humorous, compassionate, has an observant eye for the details of daily life and an acute ear for dialogue. She portrays the Donaldson type of American to perfection; and one suspects that her insight into Iranian-Americans must come from personal knowledge.