In her first novel, "If Morning Ever Comes," 22-year-old Anne Tyler has written a subtle and surprisingly mature story about the lack of communication between human beings, of a man's essential isolation from the world—and especially and more poignantly from his own family.

Ben Joe Hawkes returns to his North Carolina hometown from New York—where, as a law student at Columbia University, he has been suffering the chills of the city's loneliness. Not Anne Tyler 1941– © Helen Marcusthat the emotional climate in Carolina is much warmer. Though he enjoys feeling responsible for his family, a widowed mother, a grandmother, six sisters (one of whom, the bright and flirtatious Joanne, has left her husband and returned home), they are astonishingly self-contained. From Susannah, who works in the library, to 10-year-old Tessie, the Hawkes women are as cool and crisp as starched petticoats and as able to stand...