SAINT MAYBE; by Anne Tyler; Alfred A. Knopf; 337 pages; $22.
Anne Tyler's books are so sad. Usually someone dies. There may be a divorce or two as well. The people left behind struggle with loss and guilt throughout the novel. Then they get old.And Anne Tyler's books are funny. She makes us laugh even as she describes funerals, weddings, car accidents.
Her books are also well-written. Her characters are odd but intriguing. They tend to drop out of college. Many of them never leave home until they're 40, and never leave Baltimore at all. Nonetheless, they know what is true. Beautifully, simply, Tyler tells us the truth of their lives.
She's written a dozen novels. Only in the past decade has she become famous. After "Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant," readers welcomed "Accidental Tourist" and then "Breathing Lessons," which won a Pulitzer Prize. The world would like to know more about this author, but Anne Tyler grants few interviews. She lives, like one of her characters, a kind of regular life in Baltimore. A Washington Post reporter (who didn't get an interview) says Anne Tyler has never even met her editor.
If her lack of participation in promotional book tours or TV talk shows gives her more time to write, we should all be glad.
Tyler has just produced a new novel. "Saint Maybe" is as sad, funny and well-written as any of her previous books.
The jewel of this book, her most difficult achievement, comes early on when she describes the world through the eyes of a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old child.
Thomas said Danny was probably their real father. Agatha knew he wasn't though. She told Thomas their real father was nicer. In fact Danny was the nicest man she had ever known - nicer than their father, who had never had much to do with them, and certainly a whole lot nicer than Mr. Belling, with his two fat diamond rings and his puckered eyes the color of new dungarees. But she wanted Thomas to feel jealous over what she could still remember.
Not that the rest of the book is a letdown. It isn't. "Saint Maybe" unfolds slowly as all good Anne Tyler novels do. We grow more and more fond of each character and occasionally we feel our hearts pierced by one of her insights.
Tyler's subject is, once again, human relationships - how we grieve, how we protect ourselves from pain. But in "Saint Maybe" she takes up religion, too.
Ian Bedloe, Tyler's main character, is confused by women. Women were the ones who held the reins, it emerged. Women were up close to things. Men stood off at one remove and were forced to accept women's reading of whatever happened.
His relationship with God troubles him even more than his relationship with women. "I've been atoning and atoning," he thinks, "and sometimes lately I've hated God for taking so long to forgive me. Some days I feel I'm speaking into a dead telephone." Ian does his duty with a faith more weary than fervent. He is a good man, but not perfect, not a saint. Or if he is a saint, Ian's the saint of uncertainty and doubt.
Yet his life is not without hope. Hope is Anne Tyler's greatest gift.
Happiness goes away, yes, in all her novels. With great finality. Like it does in "Gone With the Wind" when Rhett tells Scarlett he doesn't give a damn about her any more, and you just know he means it.
With Tyler, though, joy comes creeping back. Always. And it comes from the most unlikely sources: An awkward, ugly child. A shy and bumbling man. A woman who is totally lacking in style. Suddenly there's love again. Brothers and sisters come home for Christmas dinner. A new baby is born. Those old, painfully severed ties don't ache as much.
You'll be OK, that's the message of "Saint Maybe." It's a good enough message for imperfect people - especially when delivered by a gifted writer.