Cat hair can be dangerous, especially before weddings
Photo: dpa
In the 1980s I started reading Anne Tyler’s books. Before that, I didn’t even know that novelists are allowed to write what Tyler does – with spirit, wit and heart about family life. Anne Tyler has changed my life, «Nick Hornby wrote about his now 83-year-old colleague from the USA. In 1989 Anne Tyler received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Breath Exercises”, which, in contrast to her new novel “Three Days in June”, only played on a single day.
This, her twenty-five novel, is once again about a US medium-sized family from Baltimore, the place of residence in Tyler. However, this small family was blown up for eternal times by an employee affair by the first-person narrator Gail. At that time, her husband, the conflict shy Max pretended that nothing had happened until this condition became unbearable for her and she separated from him. But now twenty years have passed and the 61-year-old teacher and ex-husband, who is also a teacher, meet again at the wedding of her daughter Debbie. Taylor divides her very finely observing short novel into three parts: “Beauty Day”, “Day X” and “The day after”.
Nd.Diewoche – Our weekly newsletter
With our weekly newsletter . We’re Doing Look at the most important topics of the week and read them Highlights our Saturday edition on Friday. Get the free subscription here.
The brittle gail is not invited to the “beauty day”, the Sophie, the mother of the groom, as well as the wedding. (“What should Gail contribute!, Sophie had probably thought.”) Instead, the school principal Gail opened her through the flower that day that the school wants to separate from it – because of a lack of social skills. And then her extensive ex Max also appears with an old foster cat from the animal shelter on her arm and asks her to be able to stay with her. Originally he wanted to sleep with her daughter, but her future husband unfortunately suffers from a life -threatening cat hair allergy!
Gail is still annoyed by some properties of her ex, he tends to “get out in the middle of a project as if his life were an experiment, the result of which is unimportant”. Nevertheless, she feels again and again, with the trusted snack in her kitchen or in the rehearsal for the wedding the next day that she both connects a lot. For this, Anne Tyler does not need big words or analytical descriptions, but only a few subtle dialogues, because this author knows how to subsequently staged the normal confusion of emotions of the American middle class.
First and foremost, Gail and Max combine the concern for the common daughter, who learns the day before her wedding that her future husband Kenneth may have recently cheated on her. Of course, that rummages memories of Gail’s misstep again. Nevertheless, one begins to ask yourself more and more whether a new beginning between Max and Gail, which know and understand each other so well, might be possible. In any case, Debbie and Kenneth ultimately marry as planned.
On “Day X”, at the wedding in the church, the always reserved gail wants to remember “how annoying debbie was in teenage age” in order not to break out in tears. With the food organized by Sophie in a noble club, Gail also has to rumble around with an ex-boyfriend who happens to be uncle and best man of the groom and places cheeky path right next to her. The secondary characters, such as the bridal mother, which were very much on etiquette, are only hinted at, and yet a few, apparently irrelevant observations of Tyler are sufficient that you have the feeling of knowing this type exactly. Just as you can understand Gail’s fear that Debbie could possibly like her active, future mother -in -law than her reserved mother.
On the “day after” Gail thinks about her long -lasting affair and decides to keep the old cat. She sneaked into her heart as well as the love for her ex-husband. It is astonishing how Tyler always succeeds in let the universally valid knowledge of normal people flash in apparently insignificant gestures and moments. With Gail and Max, you worry whether they will raise the courage to finally leave the old story behind.
“When someone tells me his thoughts, I honestly have the feeling that everyone lives on their own planet,” says Gail once. Anne Tyler has been helping us to understand this other planet and ourselves a little better for impressive 60 years.
Anne Tyler: Three days in June. A. d. Engl. V. Michaela Grabinger. No & but, 240 pages, born € 23.
sbobet judi bola online demo slot link sbobet