- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Vintage (15 Nov 1990)
- ISBN-10: 0099800101
- ISBN-13: 978-0099800101
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
A Tin Can Tree
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More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
Reissued with a contemporary new jacket
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
When Janie Pike dies in an accident she leaves behind a family numbed with grief and torn with guilt and recrimination. In this novel, the author explores how the family learns to face the future. The author also wrote "The Accidental Tourist" and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant'.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
42 of 44 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My first Anne Tyler novel and from the first pages, I was a convert. I had no idea there were writers around nowadays able to draw such convincing characters in such economy of language. On a simple but compelling plot that begins with the funeral of a child, Anne Tyler draws a clever and sympathetic portrait of her various characters and their interactions as they live through their grief. The dialogue is scant and yet conveys so very much. An insightful story about the communication that happens both within words and without, and also about the other communication - the type that can never happen. A story about connection and isolation. Anne Tyler's is a unique voice and she tells a beautiful tale.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was only ths second of Anne Tyler's so far seventeen novels (1965), and, though I don't think it is one of her best, it is still one that carried me along. It is set in an unnamed tobacco-growing state, perhaps North Carolina. The most dramatic event happened before the novel opened and is not described - the death in an accident of a little girl called Janie Rose Pike; and nothing much - let alone anything dramatic - happens until very near the end of the book. Janey's mother is almost catatonic with grief and hardly speaks to anyone. Not that the other characters (except Ansell - see below) are ever very articulate. They communicate with each other in a laconic, often monosyllabic way, leave short sentences unfinished, and sometimes scarcely listen to each other, following their own trains of thought. Janey's little brother Simon - his age is never given, but I guess he is about eight - must be affected both by his sister's death and by his mother being totally withdrawn and paying no attention to him; but really this is our interpretation: there are lots of little boys who behave the way he does without being bereft. He is fond of his 26 year old cousin Joan who has been living with the family for some years and has helped looking after him and Janey Rose. Joan, too, must be affected by Janey Rose's death, but again this is something we must assume, since what seems to upset her most is having to cope with her aunt's withdrawal. Joan also has another problem: she is in love with James, a close neighbour and friend of the Pike family; but James feels he has to look after his weird brother Ansell, who may actually have something wrong with his health but is certainly a demanding hypochondriac with a torrent of talk - which Joan and the other members of that laconic community find hard to cope with. No wonder that Ansell feels aggrieved that nobody is listening to him.
This is an understated book and we have to get below its surface, and it is understandable that some readers will have found the surface too humdrum to hold their attention.
This is an understated book and we have to get below its surface, and it is understandable that some readers will have found the surface too humdrum to hold their attention.
Format:Paperback
I am a long-time fan of Anne Tyler's having read all but three of her books, but I have to say this is not one of her best. It's about people coming to terms with their lives and with death. It begins with a funeral, the funeral of a child so doubly poignant, and proceeds to unfold the lives of a small community - their hopes (usually disappointed), their fears (usually unfounded), and the daily business of just getting on with life.
As with all Anne Tyler's novels, these are somewhat dysfunctional families but in a gentle, sad sort of way. Although well written it doesn't have those marvellous turns of phrase that are a hallmark of her later works, but the dialogue is spot-on.
This would not be my recommendation to a first-time reader of Anne Tyler's works. Instead try The Patchwork Planet or Saint Maybe.
As with all Anne Tyler's novels, these are somewhat dysfunctional families but in a gentle, sad sort of way. Although well written it doesn't have those marvellous turns of phrase that are a hallmark of her later works, but the dialogue is spot-on.
This would not be my recommendation to a first-time reader of Anne Tyler's works. Instead try The Patchwork Planet or Saint Maybe.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Tin Can Tree
I was sooo disappointed in 'The Tin Can Tree.' I just found it so boring and samey. It has put me off reading any more books by Anne Tyler.
Published on 15 Oct 2009 by Heather Taylor
The thickness of her consistency
Anne Tyler is a consistently good writer but it seems to me there is something unexciting sometimes about the thickness of this consistency. Read more
Published on 17 Sep 2009 by Eileen Shaw
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