Clock Dance

When Willa receives a phone call from a stranger, telling her that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot, she flies across the country to Baltimore. The impulsive decision to look after this woman and her nine-year-old daughter will lead Willa into uncharted territory--surrounded by eccentric neighbors and rituals that make a community a family, and forced to find solace in unexpected places.

Zusatztext 72452578 Informationen zum Autor ANNE TYLER is the author of more than twenty novels. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Klappentext NATIONAL BEST SELLER • TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR USA TODAY • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: O Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Times (London) A charming new novel of self-discovery and second chances from the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread. Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother but isn't sure she ever will be. Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to look after a young woman she's never met, her nine-year-old daughter, and their dog, Airplane. This impulsive decision will lead Willa into uncharted territory--surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places. A bewitching novel of hope and transformation, Clock Dance gives us Anne Tyler at the height of her powers. 2017 The phone call came on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-July. Willa happened to be sorting her headbands. She had laid them out across the bed in clumps of different colors, and now she was pressing them flat with her fingers and aligning them in the compartments of a fabric-covered storage box she'd bought especially for the purpose. Then all at once, ring! She crossed to the phone and checked the caller ID: a Baltimore area code. Sean had a Baltimore area code. This wasn't Sean's number, though, so of course a little claw of anxiety clutched her chest. She lifted the receiver and said, Hello? Mrs. MacIntyre? a woman asked. Willa had not been Mrs. MacIntyre in over a decade, but she said, Yes? You don't know me, the woman said. (Not a reassuring beginning.) She had a flat-toned, carrying voicean overweight voice, Willa thoughtand a Baltimore accent that turned know me into Naomi, very nearly. My name is Callie Montgomery, she said. I'm a neighbor of Denise's. Denise? Denise, your daughter-in-law. Willa didn't have any daughters-in-law, sad to say. However, Sean used to live with a Denise, so she went along with it. Oh , yes, she said. And yesterday, she got shot. She what? Got shot in the leg. Who did that? Now, that I couldn't tell you, Callie said. She let out a breath of air that Willa mistook at first for laughter, till she realized Callie must be smoking. She had forgotten those whooshing pauses that happened during phone conversations with smokers. It was just random, I guess, Callie said. You know. Ah. So off she goes in the ambulance and out of the goodness of my heart I take her daughter back to my house, even though I don't know the kid from Adam, to tell the truth. I hardly even know Denise! I just moved here last Thanksgiving when I left my sorry excuse for a husband and had to rent a place in a hurry. Well, that's a whole nother story which wouldn't interest you , I don't suppose, but anyhow, I figured I'd be stuck with Cheryl for just a couple of hours, right? Since a bullet in the leg didn't sound all that serious. But then lo and behold, Denise had to have an operation, so a couple of hours turns into overnight and then this morning she calls and tells me they're keeping her...

ldquo;Anne Tyler is one of this country’s great artists . . . She has lost none of the inspired grace of her prose, nor her sad, frank humor, nor her limitless sympathy for women who ask for little and get less . . . Beautiful, understated, humane.” —USA Today

“Tyler writes with enormous warmth about all her characters.” —Baltimore Sun

“Tyler’s stirring story celebrates the joys of self-discovery and the essential truth that family is ours to define.” —People
 
“Anne Tyler is the most dependably rewarding novelist now at work in our country.” —*Wall Street Journal

“A psychologically astute study of an intelligent, curious woman . . . A triumph.” —Boston Globe*

"Feels as comforting as coming home.” —*Minneapolis Star-Tribune

*“Clock Dance pulls you right in and keeps on ticking . . . Tyler’s novels reassure us that the possibilities for meaningful connection—which so often seem lost in our hectic world—are still out there.” —Newsday

“A gorgeous gem of a novel about family and second chances.” —Bustle
 
“What’s so amazing about Tyler’s novels is the way she makes ordinary people and ordinary things so fascinating . . . In Tyler’s hands, life’s mundane activities feel vital . . . Revelatory . . . Unwrapping the story is a delight.” —Chicago Tribune
 
“Full of wisdom about relationships, delivered in gorgeous language and with considerable charm.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Delightfully zany . . . Charming . . . Tender." —Washington Post

“She is one of our greatest living fiction writers and if I were in charge, she’d have a Nobel by now.” —The Observer (UK)
 
“Clock Dance is Anne Tyler at her best . . . An entertaining, heartwarming story about second chances and the real meaning of family . . . Full of the sorts of eccentric yet totally believable characters that Anne Tyler is a genius at creating . . . Captivating . . . A delight.” —Greensboro News & Record (NC)

“If you want to understand the everyday life of Americans, read Anne Tyler . . . There is no one better at taking the ordinary person—the one we don’t even notice in the supermarket queue—and showing us what lies beneath . . . Clock Dance is a marvelous frog-leap of a book . . . Sequel please!” *—The Times *(UK)

“A joy to read . . . These characters come to life off the page.” —Baltimore Magazine
 
“Anne Tyler's Baltimore has become a sort of urban Yoknapatawpha.” —Charles McGrath, New York Times
 
“If Anne Tyler isn’t the best writer in the world, who is?" —Jane Garvey, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4

“Tenderly devastating . . . Affecting . . . A quiet but sharply feminist statement.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Anne Tyler is one of America’s very best living novelists and one of the world’s most loved . . . Her stories about family life—beautifully written, forensically insightful, sometimes laugh out loud funny—are cherished by all ages . . . She sheds light on the secret bits of yourself, the parts no one knows about, and her skill is writing compassionately about our so-called ordinary lives with an apparent effortlessness that conce…