Ladder of Years

By Anne Tyler

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons

BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION.

The headlines are all the same: Beloved mother and wife Delia Grinstead was last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing only a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To the best of her family's knowledge, she has disappeared without a trace. But Delia didn't disappear. She ran.

Exhausted with her routine and everyone else's plans for her, Delia needed an out, a chance to make a new life for herself and to become a different person. The new Delia can let go of all the hurt and resentment that left her stuck in her past. As she eagerly sheds the pieces of herself she no longer needs, Delia discovers feelings of passion and wonder she'd long since forgotten. The thrill of walking away from it all leads to a newfound sense of self and the feeling that she is, finally, the star of her own life story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449910571
• ISBN13: 9780449910573
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

How many women can relate? Lots and lots, I betcha

Delia Grinstead married young, had kids and lived a self-effacing life. She woke up one day to discover she'd pretty much disappeared as a person who counted for anything in the eyes of her husband, her children, her friends - and even herself. So she did something I'll wager lots and lots of women have been tempted to do at some time or another: she walked away, took a bus to wherever it was going, settled in a small town in Nowhere, USA, and rediscovered/recreated herself.This book is one of Anne Tyler's best. Spot-on characterization, situations, dialogue, effortless prose, hilarity and pathos on the same page. Satisfying and enlightening, endearing and emotional. A lesson in understanding and forgiveness, Ladder of Years bears up under reading and rereading.

Ever Want to Walk Away???

Delia does what we all wish we could do at some point in our lives. She walks out on her life. Not because it's terrible or too hard, but because you feel like it. Who knows what the reason is? You need a change. You want to see what else is out there. The question of why will eat away at your mind while reading this novel and you'll never find a suitable answer. What Anne Tyler does in this novel is build a fictional story within a story. This woman creates a little world within her own world in which she feels space to breathe. A small apartment with a local library: what a perfect little escape. Every small action she performs within this world has something tremendously sacred attached to it because it belongs wholly to her. It is a chance for her to find out who she is again. After so many years of living in the role of a mother and having that image dominate the way in which people look at her, she is able to stand in the mirror and see herself as an independent woman. We should all be allowed small opportunities of selfishness from time to time. Delia is simply making up for lost time with the time she takes away from her family. You might think that it is inevitable she would return to her old life, but it isn't. It is her decision if she wants to go back or not and it is a hard one. This is the thrilling thing about this novel and it is why it is one of my favorite. Along with Delia, you are in completely unfamiliar territory where you feel the central character is empowered to direct her own destiny rather than the author or any of the other characters in the novel. You discover that we all have the choice to plunge into a well of potential and remerge as someone completely new. Each person is first and always in charge of whom he or she wants to be and if he or she needs to take dramatic measures to reclaim his or her identity than he or she should.

Delia's Midlife Crisis

Delia feels profoundly the diametrically opposed emotions many of us have as we reach the midpoint of our lives. Middle age is a time of retrospection-we wonder if the choices we made were good ones. We question our choice of spouse, our choice of career, our future without children in the house, our achievements (or lack thereof), even our very purpose in life. Delia acts on her doubts-pushed along by a grossly inattentive husband and acrimonious children. Without her unpleasant home life, Delia might have stayed forever, never knowing the answers to her questions. Tyler provides all of us going through the pangs of middle age an alter ego through whom we experience what we might never actually do ourselves. She demonstrates her great talent by creating a sympathetic character in Delia. We feel for Delia, even though, in leaving her family, she commits an act generally condemned by society. As other readers have expressed, at one time or another everyone with a spouse and children has felt like walking away. However, Delia doesn't "abandon" her family, she is emotionally shoved out the door.