Before she is done, Anne Tyler will have populated an entire imaginary state of Maryland with odd people about whom you are obliged to care because their oddities are what we see at an angle in the mirror in the middle of a bad night—what we might have been, what we want to be, what we should have refrained from becoming. She is a witch. (p. 206)
Miss Tyler, witty, civilized, curious, with her radar ears and her quill pen dipped on one page in acid and on the next in orange liqueur, is asking whether art is adequate to the impersonations life insists on, death absolves. She is a wonderful writer. (p. 207)
John Leonard, "'Morgan's Passing'," in The New York Times, Section 111 (© 1980 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), March 17, 1980 (and reprinted in Books of the Times, Vol. 111, No. 5, 1980, pp. 206-07).
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Tyler, Anne 1941–: Critical Essay by John Leonard Access Pass.
