The Clock Winder

1972, 1992 Ivy Books edition
Anne Tyler
The Clock Winder
Probably purchased new, for $5.99
Worn paperback with lower corners torn off
B-

Tyler continues to improve in this, her fourth novel.  The setting is now mostly Baltimore, although there is a section in which the title character, Elizabeth "the handyman," goes home to North Carolina.  She feels overwhelmed by the problems of the eccentric Emerson family, particularly when Timothy Emerson commits suicide right in front of her.  But the family, matriarch Mrs. Emerson especially, can't live without her, and she decides she needs them to need her.  Some of the issues from the earlier books, like unappealing brothers interfering with the main romance, and a feeling that some of the characters are underdeveloped, are still a problem, but less so.  Even that main romance, between Elizabeth and Matthew Emerson, is a vast improvement over anything in the first three books, although the story does show more reasons why they should be apart than why they should be together.

Most importantly, the dry, gentle Anne Tyler style has finally appeared, now that she's in her 30s, so that this is the first of her books that's recognizably hers.  Before, she showed the flaws of her characters, but she didn't give us reasons to like them.  Here, everyone is essentially likable, even when they're irritating. 

I keep wanting to say something about the way she portrays blacks, because I feel like it's stereotypical, in the first two books in particular, but the white characters were so cardboard, it didn't seem like an important criticism.  Here, as in Slipping-Down Life, the only black characters we see are servants (including the previous handyman, who "waters the roses" on the first page).  Alvareen the cook misspells words in her letters to Elizabeth, but she's not stupid, probably just not well-educated.  I don't think Anne Tyler is racist exactly, but she's not un-racist either.  (Sort of like some of the male writers I've been reading, who are neither feminist nor anti-feminist.)  As a white woman, I'm not the best judge, but it is something I think about.  We're not talking obvious Silver Princess of Oz level racism, or even that in some of the Little House series.  It's just a maybe-ish racism.  And I'll come back to this, for Breathing Lessons (1988) at least.

Oh, and only 40 years left of this project!  We just got through a long, crazy decade, and it's only going to get longer and crazier in the decade ahead.