At 53, Rebecca Davitch--mistress of the Open Arms, a crumbling 19th-century row house in Baltimore where giving parties is the family business--suddenly asks herself whether she has turned into the wrong person. But can she really recover the woman she has left behind?
Read More
At 53, Rebecca Davitch--mistress of the Open Arms, a crumbling 19th-century row house in Baltimore where giving parties is the family business--suddenly asks herself whether she has turned into the wrong person. But can she really recover the woman she has left behind?
Read Less
Add this copy of Back When We Were Grownups to cart. $11.32, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2002 by Vintage.
This book, Anne Tyler's 15th novel, takes place in an old rowhouse in Baltimore in 1999. Its hero is Rebecca Davitch, a 53 year-old widow and grandmother. She rents portions of the row house, which is known as the "Open Arms" out for large parties and catered affairs, a business she inherited from her husband and operates with his relatives. Rebecca is dissatisfied with the apparent clutter and confusion of her life as one of her stepdaughters prepares to be married. The reader embarks with Rebecca on her voyage of self-discovery, where she is, where she has been, where she wants to be. Perhaps it is important that the adjacent rowhouse to the Open Arms is a meditation center.
Rebecca had dumped her college and high school sweetheart, Will, and dropped out of college to marry Joe Davitch, 13 years her senior and the proprietor of the Open Arms. At the time of the marriage, Joe had three young daughters from a failed earlier marriage. Joe and Rebecca have a daughter of their own before Joe's untimely death leaves Rebecca to raise the three step-daughters and her own daughter.
The book shows the bric-a-brac of life in the old rowhouse and in the family which is Rebecca's. Each of the grown daughters and their sometimes multiple spouses or partners are highly eccentric, from their nicknames to their characters. The children are as well. The Davitch's are indeed blended in that the family and their spouses and others represent a variety of races, ethnic groups, religions, level of education, interests, what have you. They are an interesting but confusing group and their various peculiarities made the story difficult to follow at times.
Rebecca, is harried by the everydayness of her life. She remembers Will, the young man she dumped in college in favor of Joe, and is bothered by the possibility that she made the wrong choice. Much of the book describes how Rebecca makes contact with Will again. In one of the best, because one of the simplest and most obviously felt passages of the book, Will tells Rebecca upon their first new meeting that "you broke my heart." By finding Will again, and trying to see if a relationship with him is possible in mid-life, Rebecca comes to terms with her life.
There is the touch of family in this book with its estrangements, its clutter, its loves, and its daily tasks. Rebecca questions at times whether there is more to life. Her college hero was Robert E. Lee whom she sees, both in her college days and when we meet her, as a heroic figure who tried to act beyond the chores and trials of everyday to make a principled decision to stand with the South. Robert E. Lee is something of a foil to the actions in the book, (as is, in a different way, the meditation center next door.)
The book is effective as a whole because Anne Tyler has a light, deft touch and doesn't take herself too seriously. The book is funny and generally reads well. Unfortunately the book (and virtually every character) is far too mannered. The mannerisms and eccentricities pale quickly and they mask a certain sameness and triteness in the story. There is too much attention paid to the quirkiness of each character. This distracts from the story to me and makes Rebecca's search shallower than it should be. It adds undue sentimentality to the book.
Life is lived in moments and we need to cherish and understand the everyday. The sentimentality, the peeling plaster and spasmodic electricity in the rowhouse, the adventures and misadventures of Rebecca, her children and grandchildren all have a touch of the down-to-earth. It is not the sort of spiritual journey in which the protagonist seeks solitude or some inner source of wisdom. Think again of the kind of spirituality sought by those at the meditation center next door and of the ways in which it probably differs and probably resembles Rebecca's search. The book teaches a spirituality of the common life.