Saint Maybe explores the ambivalences of family relationships, just as other Tyler novels do. In addition, it moves from sickness to health, emprisonment to freedom, and fragmentation to wholeness as other novels do.
Tyler also takes a new tack in this novel, treating sin and redemption for the first time in religious terms and, in addition, presenting a religious character sympathethically. Although characters in other novels commit acts one might consider sins — absuing one's children, for example — the characters themselves never express guilt or a need for forgiveness. And the focus is often on how the abused must make a life in any case and cannot play the victim. In this novel, the focus is on the person who creates the havoc by his unthinking words. He, too, must make a life for.....
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