Noah's Compass

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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Meet the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
Foreword
Interviews & Essays
Reading Group Guide

Overview

"Noah's Compass is a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life." "Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn't bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged." His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is - well, something quite different.

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Editorial Reviews

Ron Charles

…a small story that provides an interesting variation on those dismal tales of aging by [Philip] Roth & Co…"Just trying to stay afloat"—neither sinking into Roth's existential despair nor ascending into Oprah's blinding self-delight—that's the difficult, totally unhip theme that Tyler takes clear to the end of this understated novel. In fact, Noah's Compass is likely to dissatisfy many of the author's fans, who have come to count on her for more fully resolved tragedies or more satisfying personal insights. Instead, with Liam, she has articulated the melancholy stasis of many older people's lives.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Like Tyler's previous protagonists, Liam Pennywell is a man of unexceptional talents, plain demeanor, modest means and curtailed ambition. At age 60, he's been fired from his teaching job at a “second-rate private boys' school” in Baltimore, a job below his academic training and original expectations. An unsentimental, noncontemplative survivor of two failed marriages and the emotionally detached father of three grown daughters, Liam is jolted into alarm after he's attacked in his apartment and loses all memory of the experience. His search to recover those lost hours leads him into an uneasy exploration of his disappointing life and into an unlikely new relationship with Eunice, a socially inept walking fashion disaster who is half his age. She is also spontaneous and enthusiastic, and Liam longs to cast off his inertia and embrace the “joyous recklessness” that he feels in her company. Tyler's gift is to make the reader empathize with this flawed but decent man, and to marvel at how this determinedly low-key, plainspoken novelist achieves miracles of insight and understanding. (Jan.)

Library Journal

"In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job." Echoing loudly the cadences of biblical prose, Tyler's opening sentence portends Liam's ominous downward spiral. Soon after he's forced into early retirement from a second-rate private boy's school, Liam moves to a smaller apartment. Once unpacked, he lies down to sleep and wakes up the next morning, head sore and bandaged, in the hospital. With no recollection about how he ended up there, Liam wanders through his days searching, much like Noah scanning the desolate waters for land. Along the way, he meets Eunice, who cannot prod his memory of that night but does stir some of Liam's other long-forgotten feelings. Working at her characteristically leisurely pace, Tyler poignantly portrays one man's search for wholeness and redemption as he picks up the shards of a life shattered by the crashing waves of aging. Unlike similar Updike and Roth characters, who worry more about their inability to perform sexual athletics any longer, Tyler's character struggles with the visceral loss of identity brought on by forced retirement and the indignities of memory loss. VERDICT Another winning effort by Tyler; for readers of Reynolds Price's The Promise of Rest and early Tyler novels such as Dinner at Homesick Restaurant. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/09.]—Henry Carrigan, Evanston, IL

Kirkus Reviews

Instead of the measured critical commentary typically found here, let's consider this column a mash note. For the converted, the publication of a new Anne Tyler novel is like holy communion, a ritual return to the altar of the Homesick Restaurant, another opportunity to explore the muddles of the human condition in language as clear as a mountain spring. Noah's Compass, her 18th novel, is one of Tyler's more deceptively rich and enigmatically titled (there is no character named Noah, and the evocation of the Bible story lasts less than a page). Set as usual in her native Baltimore, the novel concerns a fifth-grade, private-school teacher named Liam Pennywell, who has been "downsized" from his employment at the age of 60 and who subsequently suffers a traumatic injury that causes him to lose a bit of his memory. His life had seemed pretty empty before he left the job he disliked, and now it seems emptier. His first wife committed suicide (he still appears numb to this tragedy), and his second divorced him in exasperation. His three daughters don't know him as well as does his one sister, whom he sees maybe once per year. He has one friend but has no idea how that relationship has sustained itself. "I'm not unhappy, but I don't see any particular reason to go on living," admits Liam. Not the most promising protagonist, but Tyler remains the most extraordinary chronicler of everyday wonders, the author who best understands how our flaws define us, yet how difficult it is for us to absolve others until we are able to absolve ourselves. Life never goes as planned, but the surprises it offers to those who are receptive to them can provide redemption beyond expectation. Through some combinationof initiative, fate and chance, Liam discovers in his search for his missing memory just how much he has repressed, and he finds himself open-to love and to hurt-at an age when he thought he'd left such emotions behind. "It's as if I've never been entirely present in my own life," he says. Such a discovery doesn't inevitably lead to a happily-ever-after conclusion. Beneath the comedy on the surface of any Tyler novel lies an undercurrent of existential melancholy. His feelings renewed, Liam sees himself "ambushed by complexities . . . It struck him that life in general was heartbreaking-a word he didn't toss off lightly."In Tyler's novels (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, 1982; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons, 1988), to understand is to forgive. We are formed by our past but need not be imprisoned by it. Some families thrown together through happenstance can forge stronger bonds than those related by blood. Small epiphanies can awaken us to possibilities we had never anticipated. By the end of the novel, the particulars of Liam's life really haven't changed that much, but he is utterly transformed. And so will be the reader. First printing of 300,000

The Barnes & Noble Review

My mother used to have an expression she trotted out whenever she saw a particularly geekish or unattractive couple: "I know there's a god." She wasn't religious, and clearly didn't mean it that way. What she meant was, "Isn't it nice that there's someone for everyone and even so-called losers find their match?"

I thought of this while reading Anne Tyler's 18th novel, Noah's Compass, an offbeat, bittersweet love story about life's missed opportunities, because Tyler is a champion of the so-called loser. With the notable exception of her last novel, Digging to America, which dealt with issues of immigration and American identity, Tyler's focus has been on awkward, shy, lonely, often mismatched people, mostly residents of Baltimore, who all become remarkable and uncommonly sympathetic under her wry but gentle scrutiny.

Whether she's considering the conflict between domesticity and freedom or tracking a single day in the life of a couple who love each other through 28 years of basic incompatibility -- as she did in her 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner, Breathing Lessons -- a central element of many Tyler novels is her characters' unsettling realization that their life hasn't gone the way they had hoped. It is not uncommon for a Tyler character to not just think about the road not taken but to veer off track and take it. In her ninth novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, (1982) Beck Tull deserts his wife and three children. In her 13th, Ladder of Years, (1995), Tyler's 40-year-old heroine walks away from her husband and three children while on vacation. Back When We Were Grownups opens with the line, "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

Noah's Compass is about a man who has somehow lived the wrong life because he never fully engaged with anything or anyone. When Liam Pennywell, a schoolteacher, is forced into early retirement at 60, it propels him in new, not altogether comfortable directions. Look how easy it is to slip into an Anne Tyler novel:

In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job.

It wasn't such a good job, anyhow. He'd been teaching fifth grade in a second-rate private boys' school. Fifth grade wasn't even what he'd been trained for. Teaching wasn't what he'd been trained for. His degree was in philosophy. Oh, don't ask.

Note that colloquial, good-natured, tone-setting "anyhow" and "Oh, don't ask." They alert us that this guy, Liam Pennywell, is not a fighter but rather iseasily resigned, passive, even fatalistic -- a characterization Tyler reinforces in all that follows. He's a man with "a fondness for routine" whose "policy [is] not to argue. (An infuriating policy, his daughters always claimed.)"

After getting the axe at work, Liam enthusiastically takes a hatchet to his expenses, downsizing his very existence: "It could be just the nudge he needed to push him on to the next stage -- the final stage, the summing-up stage." His new apartment, across the highway from a mall, is barebones and charmless, but he settles in contentedly for the first night of the rest of his life there. When he wakes up in a hospital "with a helmet of gauze on his head," he's as mystified as we are, and Tyler has us totally hooked.

Liam has no recollection of how he landed in the hospital, and this memory gap -- more than the loss of his job, more than the loss of his first wife to postpartum depression and his second to divorce, more than the loss of connection with his three daughters -- is what finally makes him feel out of control. It also leads to a harsh reassessment of his past:

How could he have ended up so alone? Two failed marriages (for he had to count Millie's death as a failure), three daughters who led their own lives, and a sister he seldom spoke to. The merest handful of friends -- more like acquaintances, really. A promising youth that had somehow trailed off in a series of low-paying jobs far beneath his qualifications. Why, that last job had used about 10 percent of his brain!

Note how the exclamation point deftly expresses Liam's exasperation but lack of real anger.

Gradually, we watch his narrowly circumscribed life expand -- though with minimal encouragement or effort on his part. His flaky 17-year-old daughter, Kitty, comes to live with him to escape her overly restrictive mother, Barbara, whom she describes as "this, like rule-monger. Nit-picker." His fundamentalist Christian middle daughter periodically drops off his somber grandson, Jonah, with a coloring book of Bible stories. Discussing Noah and his Ark, Liam explains that Noah didn't need sails or a compass because he wasn't going anywhere but was just trying to stay afloat. The parallel with Liam, bobbing rudderless in the sea of his life, is beautifully implied.

An unlikely life preserver and soul mate surfaces in the form of Eunice Dunstead. Obsessed with his missing memory, Liam is first drawn to Eunice because of her job as a personal assistant who serves as a sort of "hired rememberer" or "external hard drive" for a successful developer who's losing his power of recall. Despite being "plump and frizzy-haired and bespectacled, dumpily dressed, bizarrely jeweled, too young for him and too earnest," Eunice is increasingly beguiling to him as they connect.

With delightful, comic precision that is reminiscent of an Alan Ayckbourn farce, Tyler orchestrates the giddy comings and goings of Liam's outspokenly critical daughters, ex-wife, and sister, all of whom think he's a hopeless loser, as they repeatedly interrupt his improbable budding romance. Even in less antic, more somber moments, she maintains a light touch and captures the texture of family interactions with vivid details.

Yet just when we're cueing in my mother's "I know there's a god," Tyler pulls a fast one on us. It turns out she's more interested in the ramifications of broken marriages -- Liam's, and his parents' -- than in the happily-ever-after. Are we surprised? We shouldn't be. The absent parent and the question of whether one person's happiness justifies hurting another have been recurrent themes in her fiction. Noah's Compass is yet another reminder that we should never, ever underestimate Anne Tyler: she's nimble, she's wise, and she's as deep as those biblical floodwaters. --Heller McAlpin

Heller McAlpin is a New Yorkbased book critic whose reviews appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor, among other publications.

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780345516596
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 1/25/2011
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 365,103
Product dimensions: 5.28 (w) x 7.94 (h) x 0.67 (d)

Meet the Author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her eighteenth novel. Breathing Lessons was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Tyler is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Biography

Anne Tyler has had a very active imagination all her life. When she was a young girl, she would spend an hour or two after being put to bed every night fantasizing that she was a doctor. She imagined conversations with patients, and pictured their lives as she did so, considering both their illnesses and the intricacies of their backgrounds. She constructed little mental plays around these characters that she would whisper to herself in the dark -- much to the chagrin of her brother, with whom she shared a room. "[H]e used to call out to our parents, ‘Anne's whispering again!'" she once told Barnes & Noble.com. As much as she may have vexed her brother, she also believes that these fantasies helped her to develop into the beloved, award-winning novelist she is today.

Tyler's work is characterized by a meticulous attention to detail, a genuine love of her characters, and a quirky sense of humor. Her public persona is characterized by its own quirks, as well. She refuses to grant face-to-face interviews. She has never publicly read from any of her books. She does not do book signings or tours. All of this has lent a certain mystique to her novels, although Tyler has said that her reluctance to become a public figure status is actually the result of simple shyness, not to mention her desire for her writing to speak for itself. Fortunately, Anne Tyler's work speaks with a clear, fully-realized voice that does not require unnecessary elucidation by the writer.

Tyler published her first novel If Morning Ever Comes in 1964, and that singular voice was already in place. This astute debut that tracks the self-realization of a young man named Ben Joe Hawkins displayed Tyler's characteristic wit and gentle eccentricity right off the bat. Harper's declared the novel "a triumph," and Tyler was on her way to creating an impressive catalog of novels chronicling the every day hopes, fears, dreams, failures, and victories of small-town Americans. Having come of age, herself, in rural North Carolina, Tyler had particular insight into the lives of her characters. Each novel was a little shimmering gem, winning her a devoted following and public accolades that more than compensated for her refusal to appear in public. Her novel Earthly Possessions, the story of a housewife who is taken hostage by a young man during a bank robbery, was released the same year she won an award for "literary excellence and promise of important work to come" from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The book also went on to become a television movie starring Susan Sarandon and Stephen Dorff in 1999.

However, the most well-known adaptation of one of Tyler's novels arrived more than a decade earlier when The Accidental Tourist was made into an Academy Award winning film starring Geena Davis and William Hurt. Consequently, The Accidental Tourist is viewed by some as Tyler's signature novel, covering many of the writer's favorite themes: the push and pull of marriage, the appearance of a romantic eccentric, personal tragedy, and the quest to escape from the drudgery of routine. The Accidental Tourist won the National Book Critics Circle Award and hit number one on The New York Times Bestseller list.

Three years later, Tyler received the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons, which further explored themes of marriage and self-examination. Despite having won the prestigious Pulitzer, Tyler still refused to allow herself to be drawn into the spotlight. Quietly, contemplatively, she chose to continue publishing a sequence of uniformly fine novels, including Saint Maybe, Ladder of Years, and The Amateur Marriage.

Anne Tyler's novel Digging to America reexamines many of her chief obsessions, while also possibly drawing upon a personal triumph -- her marriage to Iranian psychiatrist and novelist Taghi Mohammad Modarressi -- and the tragedy of his death in 1997. Digging to America follows the relationship between two families, the Iranian Yazdans and the all-American Donaldsons, as they become closer and closer and affect each other deeper and deeper over a succession of years. Digging to America is arguably Tyler's deepest and most profound work to date. It also delivers more of her peculiar brand of humor, which will surely please her longtime fans, thrilled that she continues spinning tales with the trademark attention to character that has distinguished her stories ever since she was a little girl, whispering to herself in the dark. Tyler may have decided to remain in the dark and out of the public eye, but the stories she has to tell have shed more than their share of light on the lives of her readers.

Good To Know

Tyler first began writing stories at the innocent age of seven. At the time, most of her yarns involved, as she has said, "lucky, lucky girls who got to go west in covered wagons."

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1. Hometown:
  
  Baltimore, Maryland
1. Date of Birth:
  
  October 25, 1941
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Minneapolis, Minnesota
1. Education:
  
  B.A., Duke University, 1961

Read an Excerpt

Noah's Compass

A Novel

By Anne Tyler

Ballantine Books

Copyright © 2010 Anne Tyler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780345516596

In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job. It wasn’t such a good job, anyhow. He’d been teaching fifth grade in a second-rate private boys’ school. Fifth grade wasn’t even what he’d been trained for. Teaching wasn’t what he’d been trained for. His degree was in philosophy. Oh, don’t ask. Things seemed to have taken a downward turn a long, long time ago, and perhaps it was just as well that he had seen the last of St. Dyfrig’s dusty, scuffed corridors and those interminable after-school meetings and the reams of niggling paperwork.

In fact, this might be a sign. It could be just the nudge he needed to push him on to the next stage—the final stage, the summing-up stage. The stage where he sat in his rocking chair and reflected on what it all meant, in the end.

He had a respectable savings account and the promise of a pension, so his money situation wasn’t out-and-out desperate. Still, he would have to economize. The prospect of economizing interested him. He plunged into it with more enthusiasm than he’d felt in years—gave up his big old-fashioned apartment within the week and signed a lease on a smaller place, a one-bedroom-plus-den in a modern complex out toward the Baltimore Beltway. Of course this meant paring down his possessions, but so much the better. Simplify, simplify! Somehow he had accumulated far too many encumbrances. He tossed out bales of old magazines and manila envelopes stuffed with letters and three shoe boxes of index cards for the dissertation that he had never gotten around to writing. He tried to palm off his extra furniture on his daughters, two of whom were grown-ups with places of their own, but they said it was too shabby. He had to donate it to Goodwill. Even Goodwill refused his couch, and he ended up paying 1-800-GOT-JUNK to truck it away. What was left, finally, was compact enough that he could reserve the next-smallest-size U-Haul, a fourteen-footer, for moving day.

On a breezy, bright Saturday morning in June, he and his friend Bundy and his youngest daughter’s boyfriend lugged everything out of his old apartment and set it along the curb. (Bundy had decreed that they should develop a strategy before they started loading.) Liam was reminded of a photographic series that he’d seen in one of those magazines he had just thrown away. National Geographic? Life? Different people from different parts of the world had posed among their belongings in various outdoor settings. There was a progression from the contents of the most primitive tribesman’s hut (a cooking pot and a blanket, in Africa or some such) to a suburban American family’s football-field-sized assemblage of furniture and automobiles, multiple TVs and sound systems, wheeled racks of clothing, everyday china and company china, on and on and on. His own collection, which had seemed so scanty in the gradually emptying rooms of his apartment, occupied an embarrassingly large space alongside the curb. He felt eager to whisk it away from public view. He snatched up the nearest box even before Bundy had given them the go-ahead.

Bundy taught phys ed at St. Dyfrig. He was a skeletal, blue-black giraffe of a man, frail by the looks of him, but he could lift astonishing weights. And Damian—a limp, wilted seventeen-year-old—was getting paid for this. So Liam let the two of them tackle the heavy stuff while he himself, short and stocky and out of shape, saw to the lamps and the pots and pans and other light objects. He had packed his books in small cartons and so those he carried too, stacking them lovingly and precisely against the left inner wall of the van while Bundy singlehandedly wrestled with a desk and Damian tottered beneath an upside-down Windsor chair balanced on top of his head. Damian had the posture of a consumptive—narrow, curved back and buckling knees. He resembled a walking comma.

The new apartment was some five miles from the old one, a short jaunt up North Charles Street. Once the van was loaded, Liam led the way in his car. He had assumed that Damian, who was below the legal age for driving a rental, would ride shotgun in the van with Bundy, but instead he slid in next to Liam and sat in a jittery silence, chewing on a thumbnail and lurking behind a mane of lank black hair. Liam couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him. When they stopped for the light at Wyndhurst he contemplated asking how Kitty was, but he decided it might sound odd to inquire about his own daughter. Not until they were turning off Charles did either of them speak, and then it was Damian. “Swingin’ bumper sticker,” he said.

Since there were no cars ahead of them, Liam knew it had to be his own bumper sticker Damian meant. (BUMPER STICKER, it read—a witticism that no one before had ever seemed to appreciate.) “Why, thanks,” he said. And then, feeling encouraged: “I also have a T-shirt that says T-SHIRT.” Damian stopped chewing his thumbnail and gaped at him. Liam said, “Heh, heh,” in a helpful tone of voice, but still it seemed that Damian didn’t get it.

The complex Liam was moving to sat opposite a small shopping mall. It consisted of several two-story buildings, flat-faced and beige and bland, placed at angles to each other under tall, spindly pines. Liam had worried about privacy, seeing the network of paths between buildings and the flanks of wide, staring windows, but during the whole unloading process they didn’t run into a single neighbor. The carpeting of brown pine needles muffled their voices, and the wind in the trees above them made an eerily steady whispering sound. “Cool,” Damian said, presumably meaning the sound, since he had his face tipped upward as he spoke. He was under the Windsor chair again. It loomed like an oversized bonnet above his forehead.

Liam’s unit was on the ground floor. Unfortunately, it had a shared entrance—a heavy brown steel door, opening into a dank-smelling cinderblock foyer with his own door to the left and a flight of steep concrete steps directly ahead. Second-floor units cost less to rent, but Liam would have found it depressing to climb those stairs every day.

He hadn’t given much thought beforehand to the placement of his furniture. Bundy set things down any old where but Damian proved unexpectedly finicky, shoving Liam’s bed first one way and then another in search of the best view. “Like, you’ve got to see out the window first thing when you open your eyes,” he said, “or how will you know what kind of weather it is?” The bed was digging tracks across the carpet, and Liam just wanted to leave it where it stood. What did he care what kind of weather it was? When Damian started in on the desk—it had to be positioned where sunlight wouldn’t reflect off the computer screen, he said—Liam told him, “Well, since I don’t own a computer, where the desk is now will be fine. That about wraps things up, I guess.”

“Don’t own a computer!” Damian echoed.

“So let me just get you your money, and you can be on your way.”

“But how do you, like, communicate with the outside world?”

Liam was about to say that he communicated by fountain pen, but Bundy said, chuckling, “He doesn’t.” Then he clapped a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “Okay, Liam, good luck, man.”

Liam hadn’t meant to dismiss Bundy along with Damian. He had envisioned the two of them sharing the traditional moving-day beer and pizza. But of course, Bundy was providing Damian’s ride back. (It was Bundy who’d picked up the U-Haul, bless him, and now he’d be returning it.) So Liam said, “Well, thank you, Bundy. I’ll have to have you over once I’m settled in.” Then he handed Damian a hundred and twenty dollars in cash. The extra twenty was a tip, but since Damian pocketed the bills without counting them, the gesture felt like a waste. “See you around,” was all he said. Then he and Bundy left. The inner door latched gently behind them but the outer door, the brown steel one, shook the whole building when it slammed shut, setting up a shocked silence for several moments afterward and emphasizing, somehow, Liam’s sudden solitude.

Well. So. Here he was.

He took a little tour. There wasn’t a lot to look at. A medium-sized living room, with his two armchairs and the rocking chair facing in random directions and filling not quite enough space. A dining area at the far end (Formica-topped table from his first marriage and three folding chairs), with a kitchen alcove just beyond. The den and the bathroom opened off the hall that led back to the bedroom. All the floors were carpeted with the same beige synthetic substance, all the walls were refrigerator white, and there were no moldings whatsoever, no baseboards or window frames or door frames, none of those gradations that had softened the angles of his old place. He found this a satisfaction. Oh, his life was growing purer, all right! He poked his head into the tiny den (daybed, desk, Windsor chair) and admired the built-in shelves. They had been a big selling point when he was apartment hunting: two tall white bookshelves on either side of the patio door. Finally, finally he’d been able to get rid of those glass-fronted walnut monstrosities he had inherited from his mother. It was true that these shelves were less spacious. He’d had to consolidate a bit, discarding the fiction and biographies and some of his older dictionaries. But he had kept his beloved philosophers, and now he looked forward to arranging them. He bent over a carton and opened the flaps. Epictetus. Arrian. The larger volumes would go on the lower shelves, he decided, even though they didn’t need to, since all the shelves were exactly, mathematically the same height. It was a matter of aesthetics, really—the visual effect. He hummed tunelessly to himself, padding back and forth between the shelves and the cartons. The sunlight streaming through the glass door brought a fine sweat to his upper lip, but he postponed rolling up his shirtsleeves because he was too absorbed in his task.

After the study came the kitchen, less interesting but still necessary, and so he moved on to the boxes of foods and utensils. This was the most basic of kitchens, with a single bank of cabinets, but that was all right; he’d never been much of a cook. In fact here it was, late afternoon, and he was only now realizing that he’d better fix himself some lunch. He made a jelly sandwich and ate it as he worked, swigging milk straight from the carton to wash it down. The sight of the six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, brought over the day before along with his perishables, gave him a pang of regret that took a moment to explain. Ah, yes: Bundy. He must remember to phone Bundy tomorrow and thank him at greater length. Invite him to supper, even. He wondered what carry-out establishments delivered within his new radius.

In the living room he arranged the chairs in what he hoped was a friendly conversational grouping. He placed a lamp table between the two armchairs and the coffee table in front of them, and the other lamp table he set next to the rocker, which was where he imagined sitting to read at the end of every day. Or all day, for that matter. How else would he fill the hours?

Even in the summers, he had been accustomed to working. St. Dyfrig students could be counted on to require an abundance of remedial courses. He had taken almost no vacation—just one week in early June and two in August.

Well, think of this as one of those weeks. Just proceed a day at a time, is all.

On the kitchen wall, the telephone rang. He had a new number but he had kept his existing plan, which included caller ID (one of the few modern inventions he approved of), and he checked the screen before he lifted the receiver. ROYALL J S. His sister. “Hello?” he said.

“How’s it going, Liam?”

“Oh, fine. I think I’m just about settled.”

“Have you made up your bed yet?”

“Well, no.”

“Do it. Now. You should have done it first thing. Pretty soon you’re going to notice you’re exhausted, and you don’t want to be hunting for sheets then.”

“Okay,” he said.

Julia was four years his senior. He was used to receiving orders from her.

“Later in the week I may stop by and visit. I’ll bring you a pot of beef stew,” she said.

“Well, that’s very nice of you, Julia,” he said.

He hadn’t eaten red meat in thirty-some years, but it would have been useless to remind her.

After he hung up he obediently made his bed, which was easily navigated since Damian had positioned it so there was walking space on either side. Then he tackled the closet, where clothes had been dumped every which way. He nailed his shoe bag to the closet door and fitted in his shoes; he draped his ties on the tie rack that he found already installed. He’d never owned a tie rack before. Then, since he had the hammer out, he decided to go ahead and hang his pictures. Oh, he was way ahead of the game! Picture hanging was a finishing touch, something that took most people days. But he might as well see this through.

His pictures were unexceptional—van Gogh prints, French bistro posters, whatever he’d chosen haphazardly years and years ago just to save his walls from total blankness. Even so, it took him a while to find the appropriate spot for each one and get it properly centered. By the time he’d finished it was after eight and he’d had to turn all the lights on. The ceiling globe in the living room had a burnt-out bulb, he discovered. Well, never mind; he’d see to that tomorrow. All at once, enough was enough.

He wasn’t the slightest bit hungry, but he heated a bowl of vegetable soup in his miniature microwave and sat down at the table to eat it. First he sat facing the kitchen alcove, with his back to the living room. The view was uninspiring, though, so he switched to the end chair that faced the window. Not that he had much to see even there—just a sheet of glossy blackness and a vague, transparent reflection of his own round gray head—but it would be nice in the daytime. He would automatically settle in that chair from now on, he supposed. He had a fondness for routine.

When he stood up to take his empty bowl to the kitchen, he was ambushed by sudden aches in several parts of his body. His shoulders hurt, and his lower back, and his calves and the soles of his feet. Early though it was, he locked his door and turned off the lights and went into the bedroom. His made-up bed was a welcome sight. As usual, Julia had known what she was talking about.

He skipped his shower. Getting into his pajamas and brushing his teeth took his last ounce of energy. When he sank onto the bed, it was almost beyond his willpower to reach over and turn off the lamp, but he forced himself to do it. Then he slid down flat, with a long, deep, groaning sigh.

His mattress was comfortably firm, and the top sheet was tucked in tightly on either side of him as he liked. His pillow had just enough bounce to it. The window, a couple of feet away, was cranked open to let the breeze blow in, and it offered a view of a pale night sky with a few stars visible behind the sparse black pine boughs—just a scattering of pinpricks. He was glad now that Damian had taken such trouble to situate the bed right.

Most probably, he reflected, this would be the final dwelling place of his life. What reason would he have to move again? No new prospects were likely for him. He had accomplished all the conventional tasks—grown up, found work, gotten married, had children—and now he was winding down.

This is it, he thought. The very end of the line. And he felt a mild stirring of curiosity.

Then he woke up in a hospital room with a helmet of gauze on his head.

From the Hardcover edition.

Continues...

Excerpted from Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler Copyright © 2010 by Anne Tyler. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Introduction

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Noah’s Compass, Anne Tyler’s subtle, deeply empathetic, and richly rewarding new novel.

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Foreword

1. When Anne Tyler was just starting to write Noah’s Compass, a journalist asked her what it was about. She replied, “I’d like to write about a man who feels he has nothing more to expect from his life; but it’s anybody’s guess what the real subject will turn out to be in the end.” Did that turn out to be the real subject of the book?

2. What does the title mean?

3. After reading the first chapter, did you have any idea where the story would lead?

4. On page 26, Tyler writes, “The distressing thing about losing a memory, he thought, was that it felt like losing control.” Why is Liam so interested in control?

5. Is this really the first memory he’s lost?

6. At the top of page 49, Liam thinks about his true self, and how it seemed to have disappeared after the incident. What does Liam consider to be his “true self”? Is he right?

7. Why does Liam become so obsessed with Ishmael Cope?

8. Discuss Liam’s attitude toward women. Does he treat his blood relatives differently from Barbara and Eunice? Why or why not?

9. Why does Liam’s initial impression of Eunice transform into something completely different? Why does he keep their relationship a secret from his daughters?

10. What does religion represent in the novel?

11. On page 186, Eunice insists, “I’m not . . . devious, Liam!” What does she mean by this? Does she actually believe it?

12. What does the palm-reading scene on page 204–5 tell us about Liam? What point is Tyler making?

13. Reread Barbara’s description of Liam on page 224. Is it accurate? Whyor why not?

14. Ultimately, why does Liam turn Eunice away, soon after telling her, “You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you!” (page 230)?

15. When does Liam stop wishing he could remember the break-in? Why?

16. On page 243 Liam wonders, “Why was it that he had known so many sad women?” How would you answer this question?

17. What is the meaning of the Epictetus quote on page 266? What does Liam intend by reciting it?

18. Discuss the ending. Is Liam happy?

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Interviews & Essays

Barnes & Noble Review Interview with Anne Tyler
By her own admission, Anne Tyler's no longer a writer ambitiously looking forward to literary "milestones" -- many of them can be glimpsed in the rearview mirror. Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for 1988's Breathing Lessons, the 68-year-old author of deceptively graceful fiction has also been honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award (for The Accidental Tourist, 1985), and was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1983 for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Like most of her novels, that work was set in her hometown of Baltimore -- also the setting for Noah's Compass, which relates the story of 60-year-old Liam Pennywell, a philosopher by training who spent the better part of his career teaching history to fifth-graders, and who now finds himself "downsized" from a prestigious boys' school and facing no new milestones himself.

In a set of email conversations that took place in December 2009, Tyler discussed her fear of memory loss (a theme in her new book), her labor-intensive style of writing -- it includes a tape recorder and multiple handwritten drafts -- and why she wishes you wouldn't read her first four novels. --Cameron Martin

Barnes & Noble Review: In the beginning of Noah's Compass, the protagonist, Liam Pennywell, is assaultedduring a home break-in and loses his memory of the event. For a time, he'sconsumed by this gap in his life. What was the inspiration for this conceit and forthe focus on memory? Do you think you'd be more or less concerned aboutlosing a memory such as this? Or is Liam's experience the relative equivalent ofhow you think you'd handle that?

Anne Tyler: One night after I'd gone to bedI heard the house creaking downstairs, but I was too sleepy to investigate. Then I started thinking about how if it were a burglar intent on beaning me, I wouldn't know anyway till I woke up the next morning. And so: no psychological trauma! Except I'd probably try for days to figure out what had happened. (Though perhaps not for as many days as Liam.)

Why that thought gave birth to a whole novel,I'm not sure. I do know thatI have been fascinated by the subject of memory all my life. Now that I'm in my sixties, with instances of Alzheimer's disease on both sides of my family, my biggest fear is that I'll end up with no memory whatsoever. Yet I agree with Liam that there is such a thing as remembering too much, and I half admire his resolute refusal to dwell on his past.

BNR: Before he became a school teacher, Liam had trained to be a philosopher, andit's mentioned that he's fond of Epictetus and Arrian. If you had to boil it downto a few key tenets, what's Liam's philosophy on life? And how successful is heat adhering to his beliefs?

AT: I suspect that Liam would be uncomfortable at the thought of spelling out his specific philosophy of life. I chose Epictetus and Arrian as his favorites for a most literal reason: they were Stoics, and Liam is, in another sense of the word, a stoic himself.

I do think he is an honorable man-as shown by his decision toward the end of the book. The "compass" of the title is a moral one, as well as a physical one.

BNR: The book is told from the third-person point of view, hewing closely to Liam's perspective. Atwhat stage of the writing did you settle on this POV -- as opposed to the first person, which you've employed in other works? Isit more fun to write from a male angle? More taxing?

AT: Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.

There's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.

BNR: Has this attitude toward point of view -- that it comes part and parcel with the character -- always been thecase, even with your earliest novels? Or was it an observation you arrived atonly after a lot of hand-wringing with a particular work?

AT: Yes, as far as I can remember that has always been the case.

I have to work doggedly for my plots, but then a few days after I've figured one out, the first sentence will simply float into my hearing. ForA Patchwork Planet:"I am a man you can trust." Or for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant:"While Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her." That's how I learn what the viewpoint should be.

BNR: The title of the book, Noah's Compass, refers to the Biblical character whobuilt the ark and survived thegreat flood. At one point in the creative process did you settle on the title? Wereother titles considered? In your experience (18 novels), how much influencedoes the title of a book (and when you pick it) have on the finished product?

AT: Thetitle evolved organically. Liam and his small grandson were discussing the Bible story and they just grabbed the conversation away from me, as characters sometimes do, and came up with the reference to Noah's lack of a clear destination. It seemed appropriate to Liam's own situation; so that was it, and I didn't look any further.

Titles are hugely important to me, but they arrive in all sorts of ways. Celestial Navigation existedbefore the book did, and the book was cooked up to go with it. I was dissatisfied withThe Accidental Tourist as a title-itseemed to me too obvious-soI offered a $100 prize to my daughters' schoolmates if they could invent something better. And a number of my titles have been vetoed by my editor, Judith Jones, which means I've had to scramble for a new one long after the book was finished. That's no fun at all.

BNR: The private boy's school in the book, St. Dyfrig's, does not actually exist inBaltimore, and St. Dyfrig is a rather obscure Christian saint from the mid-6thcentury. Is there a particular significance to the name in the context of this novel?

AT: None whatsoever. I just leafed through a book of saints for a name, and when I came across "Dyfrig," it made me laugh. Words that use Y as a vowel often strike me as funny.

BNR: How many drafts did you make of Noah's Compass? Was that more or lesson par with the number of drafts you've made for other novels? Did any of your books come relatively easy, from beginningconceit to finished product?

AT: It all depends on how you count, but I'd say the book took four drafts. That's three longhand drafts before I entered it in the computer, and then I copied the computer version into longhand again. I read that fourth version into a tape recorder and then listened to the tape recorder while I followed along on the computer screen to pick up any minor changes I had made.

Ridiculous, I know. But it's more or less the way I've always done it, except for the three or four earliest books which I wrote without revising, under the mistaken impression that revising was a form of cheating. Nowadays, I love revising. I think of Draft One as work and the revisions as play.

My easiest book was Searching for Caleb, which felt like attending one long, merry party. My hardest was Noah's Compass.I didn't know why at the time, but now I think it was because it reminded me too much of my own current stage of life: no new milestones to look forward to.

BNR: Your 2004 novel The Amateur Marriage was 60 years presented in 10chapters. Noah's Compass covers a single summer, from the end of oneschool year to the beginning of the other. In your experience, which type ofcanvas is easier to work with and why?

AT: Longer periods are easier for me. That's because when you don't have an action-filled plot, the mere passage of time can provide one. People get born, they marry, they die: there you go.

I felt very confined with Breathing Lessons, which covered only a single day. The one after that, Saint Maybe, took place over years and years-deliberately.

BNR: You've written numerous short stories, though none have been collected forpublication. Do you plan to publish a collected works? When was the last timeyou wrote a short story for publication? And how has your attitude towards themedium perhaps evolved since you began writing?

AT: I think my short stories shirk a little bit, as if I'd told myself while I was writing them that they don't matter as much as novels. There are only five or six that I feel like claiming now, and that's not enough to form a collection.

I haven't written a short story in decades. I can imagine, though, that I may eventually have to go back to them, because writing novels requires a good memory. You have to keep so many balls in the air. I'm not sure that I'll be able to do that endlessly.

BNR: Do you have similar reservations about any ofyour novels? Are there particular works that, if given the option, you'dchange? I've read that you consider Dinner at theHomesick Restaurant to be the favorite of your works. Which novel stands outas your least favorite, and why?

AT: I would like to buy up the rights to my first four novels (If Morning Ever Comes, The Tin Can Tree, A Slipping Down Life, and The Clock Winder) and remove them from circulation. Those are the books I wrote in the days when I thought it would be cheating to rewrite. They feel blurry to me now-not well enough defined. I think it was only with Celestial Navigationthat I began to know what I was doing.

BNR: You've been the guesteditor for several short story collections, including the most recent Best of theSouth, published in 2005. Who are some contemporary short story writerswhose work strikes you as particularly strong or inventive?

AT: I believe that the owner of the short story form nowadays is William Trevor. A relatively brief story of his accomplishes more than most people's novels. It was William Trevor's writing that made me realize that my own stories gave short shrift to the reader.

BNR: Reading your manuscripts into a tape recorder would seem to give you an earfor the rhythm of your prose. Among other writers, whose work stands out foryou as rhythmically beautiful?

AT: I used to read aloud to my husband in the evenings, and I learned from that to appreciate the work of William Faulkner-someone I'd never much liked until then. Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were other writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.

BNR: What are you working on now? What can you tell us about the plot, settingand characters of your next novel?

AT: I'm writing a novel about a man whose wife returns from the dead. The setting will be Baltimore, as always.

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Reading Group Guide

2. What does the title mean?

3. After reading the first chapter, did you have any idea where the story would lead?

4. On page 26, Tyler writes, “The distressing thing about losing a memory, he thought, was that it felt like losing control.” Why is Liam so interested in control?

5. Is this really the first memory he’s lost?

6. At the top of page 49, Liam thinks about his true self, and how it seemed to have disappeared after the incident. What does Liam consider to be his “true self”? Is he right?

7. Why does Liam become so obsessed with Ishmael Cope?

8. Discuss Liam’s attitude toward women. Does he treat his blood relatives differently from Barbara and Eunice? Why or why not?

9. Why does Liam’s initial impression of Eunice transform into something completely different? Why does he keep their relationship a secret from his daughters?

10. What does religion represent in the novel?

11. On page 186, Eunice insists, “I’m not . . . devious, Liam!” What does she mean by this? Does she actually believe it?

12. What does the palm-reading scene on page 204–5 tell us about Liam? What point is Tyler making?

13. Reread Barbara’s description of Liam on page 224. Is it accurate? Why or why not?

14. Ultimately, why does Liam turn Eunice away, soon after telling her, “You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you!” (page 230)?

15. When does Liam stop wishing he could remember the break-in? Why?

16. On page 243 Liam wonders, “Why was it that he had known so many sad women?” How would you answer this question?

17. What is the meaning of the Epictetus quote on page 266? What does Liam intend by reciting it?

18. Discuss the ending. Is Liam happy?

Read More Show Less

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Noah's Compass

Overview

Pick Up In Store

Available on NOOK devices and apps Nook Devices NOOK HD/HD+ Tablet NOOK NOOK Color NOOK Tablet Tablet/Phone NOOK for Windows 8 Tablet NOOK for iOS NOOK for Android NOOK Kids for iPad PC/Mac NOOK for Windows 8 NOOK for PC NOOK for Mac NOOK Study NOOK for Web

All Available Formats & Editions

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Ron Charles

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review

Product Details

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Biography

Good To Know

Read an Excerpt

Noah's Compass

Ballantine Books

Introduction

Foreword

Interviews & Essays

Reading Group Guide

Customer Reviews

5 Star

4 Star

3 Star

2 Star

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This is a terrific character study

Another Ann Tyler Novel to Treasure!

As always, it is a book worth waiting for1

What in the world?

Wonderful read

A BEAUTY OF A BOOK

A must for students of life.

Ugh

Don't Recommend - Boring, hard to finish

Too everyday life depressing

Great, easy read

Ann Tyler Fan

Anne Tyler- Noah's Compass

Didn't Disappoint

STUNNING NARRATIVE BY ARTHUR MOREY

GIRLS DORM

A real sleeper

Anne tyler too sedate even for her

A Great Book

Interesting

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