Novel approach

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Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler's lucid, understated novels portray people caught unawares by their lives. Rebecca happily married Joe years ago, then took on his party-giving business and ready-made family after his death; but really, does she recognise this sociable party organiser she has become? A skilled, readable story of a woman calmly taking stock.

I laid myself down as a woman
And woke as a child.
Sleep buried me up to my chin,
But my brain cut wild.

Anne Stevenson, Granny Scarecrow

This is the book of a poet looking back with tenderness and wry humour. Anne Stevenson loves the sound of language – she trained as a musician – she knows poetic form inside out, and her poems reveal a brilliance and imagination which serves the poems, not the poet. But over the years this Anglo-American writer has pared down her style, so that the compassion and experience of her observation make the little things in life unfold.

Granny Scarecrow by Anne Stevenson

Or try… Elizabeth Bishop, Anna Crowe, Eavan Boland

The poems in Granny Scarecrow are now included in Poems 1955-2005 (Bloodaxe 2005).

Pairings & synopses

	High Fidelity | Zoom!
	The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency | The Good Neighbour
	The Family Way | Newborn
	The Algebraist | Spirit Machines
	The God Of Small Things | Postcards From God
	The Night Watch | The Book Of Blood
	Fleshmarket Close | Dead Redhead
	Bridget Jones's Diary | Leaving And Leaving You
	Quite Ugly One Morning | Bad Shaman Blues
	The Shipping News | The Tree House
	Shadow Of The Wind | The Eyes
	Back When We Were Grownups | Granny Scarecrow