SOURCE: "Trying on a New Life," in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 7, 1995, p. 3.

In the following review, Eder complains that Tyler's Ladder of Years fails to sustain its momentum.

Why does Delia Grinstead run away from her overbearing physician husband, her three sulky children and her depressive suburban life? With any of our realistic chroniclers of American middle-class life the answer would He in the question. With Anne Tyler it lies there too, but the really interesting answer is: because her cat's name is Vernon.

Tyler only seems to be a realist. It is true that in such novels as The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Breathing Lessons, her characters stumble out of the pages of the book, hang around, have supper with us, stay the night and never quite leave. Their lives are set on a prosaic chessboard: families, marriages, growing up...