Change disarms character’s apathy

Few writers capture the characters of ordinary people so fully, yet so economically, as Anne Tyler.

Through a long roster of novels, most set in contemporary Baltimore, Tyler has exposed the flaws, generosity, relationships, inner thoughts and hopes of men and women who seem so much like the rest of us and yet, are so fascinating.

Following acclaimed works such as “The Accidental Tourist,” “Breathing Lessons” and “A Spool of Blue Thread” comes her newest, “Clock Dance.”

During a period of 50 years, from 1967 to 2017, Tyler follows the life of Willa Drake, separating her story into decades and supplying increasing detail as she ages. The most significant moments and changes in Willa’s life occur in 2017, when Willa is in her 60s.

At the start, she is an 11-year-old, going door to • “Clock Dance” (Knopf, 304 pages, $26.95) by Anne Tyler

door with her friend, Sonya, to sell candy to help fund their elementary school orchestra trip. At home, Willa has a younger sister; a kindly, ever patient father; and a dramatic, mercurial mother who regularly abuses and abandons her family.

Willa takes it in stride, beginning the passivity she applies to her life decade after decade. In her junior year of college, she abandons her keen interest in linguistics to marry her sweetheart, the captain of the tennis team. They have two sons who grow up rather distant from their mother.

Later, as a widow, she remarries a snooty attorney and lives an upscale if unsatisfactory life in Arizona.

Then comes a call from Baltimore: her son’s former girlfriend, Denise, has been hospitalized after an accidental shooting. Her 9-year-old daughter can’t be left alone and could Willa come and help?

Against reason and the wishes of her husband, Willa decides to go, dragging her husband with her and getting to know Denise and young Cheryl as well as their quirky neighbors.

In spite of her husband — and herself — Willa begins to bond with the prickly Denise and the pudgy Cheryl who’s hungry for the love of a grandparent. The pace of Willa’s evolution is rhythmic and steady.

As she carries a basket of laundry upstairs, Willa glances into Cheryl’s room to see what she and her two friends are up to: “Patty stood facing her, both arms extended from her sides, with Laurie and Cheryl directly behind her. All that showed of Laurie and Cheryl were their own arms, extended too so that Patty seemed to posses six arms, all six moving in stiff, stop-andstart arcs in time to the clicking sounds that Willa could hear now punctuating the music. ‘It’s a clock dance!’ Cheryl shouted, briefly peeking out from the tail end. ‘Can you tell?’ … Willa smiled at the girls and said, ‘Yes I can.’”

Tyler’s prose is so matterof-fact that the heart of the story, like the characters, sneaks up on a reader. Willa’s late-in-life entrance into a new family gives her a charge and causes her to rethink her relationships with own family.

Tyler has invented a character who proves that change can happen regardless of where the hands of the clock are pointing.