3 Reviews from the web:
The Typical Dysfunctional Family
Dinner at the Homesick Resaurant engages the reader by sharing a slightly altering story as it is told by each member of the family. Pearly Tull is the initial character of the novel and begins by describing the chain of events, such as her husband leaving, which lead her into single-handedly raising her children. Like a typical family of the 1930's, the Tulls are struggling to financially and emotionally make it. One by one, the children eventually grow up and begin lives of their own: Cody becomes a businessman like his father, Jenny goes to college and marries Harley Baines, and Ezra stays in town to run Mrs. Scarlatti's restaurant. Ezra's dream is to, just once, have his entirely family seated at the restaurant for a content family dinner. However, his mother, Pearl, seems to enjoy a little conflict and constantly instigates one. Once Ezra inherits the restaurant, he decides to slightly alter the menu, by switching to a homestyle variety of foods. He figures that this "home-cooked" meal can ease his homesick customers, but honestly, what does he know about home?
A Real Family
Anne Tyler does it again with her extraordinary ability to create offbeat characters that the reader comes to care deeply about. In this book, there are individual characters and there is the character of the Tull Family - an icon each of the family members sees in a different way. Tyler writes of the sometimes tragic life circumstances of each of the three Tull children with her usual eye for both the dramatic and humorous. This book is a must-read for anyone who loves home-cooking and their own lovable, dysfunctional family.
Dinner table conflict as a metaphor for life
Anne Tyler uses multiple points of view in this, one of her best loved books, tale to flesh out all the relationships and conflicts in the Tull family. As we hear each character's story in his or her own voice, another piece of the puzzle falls into place until we are left with a more or less intact understanding of how things came to be the way they are. Like all of Tyler's books, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is peopled with eccentric oddballs who are borderline social misfits, just working at trying to get through the day and make sense of their lives - but it always seems to degenerate into dinner table conflict.

This book has already been requested by two fellow BookCrossers, it may well become a bookring.
I'm registering this one for the "BookCrossing Convention Race to a Million" Challenge, book #37.

This book is now officially a bookring!

I'll leave it open, if others want to add on later.
It's a paperback, it weighs 170grams, and fits in a normal size letterbox.

The reader list in order:

1. Jehanne (Zuiddorpe, NL)
2. powerhouse (Culemborg, NL)
3. Plinius (Rotterdam, NL)
4. kriskras (Boxtel, NL)
5. amaradevinmom (?, Germany)
6. Leighspeak (Bromley, UK)
7. Fire-Dragon (London, UK)
8. LeighBCD (London, UK)skipped
9. Elefteria (NL/NL)
10. Wilmar (NL/NL)
11. wollie (Utrecht, NL)
12. dutch-flybaby (Ede, NL)<--- Here now!
13. Silvertje (Diemen, NL)
14. RubyBlue (Nunspeet, NL)
15. Erbie (Back home! Amsterdam, NL)

Released on Friday, March 19, 2004 at ... by mail :) in Sent to a fellow BookCrosser, Bookring Controlled Releases.

Today the Ring has started. The book is on it's way to Jehanne, the first on the list.
I'm quite proud that this (my first) bookring will have 11 readers besides me.
The ring is officially still open. Anyone wishing to join, please send me a PM.

Dear book, I wish you a fond farewell, and hope for a safe return, with stories to tell!

Just landed, found in the mail. After I've finished Marlene-TC's book (just 4 pages left) I'm starting this one! Thanks Erbie!

I started reading this book with enthousiasm but it appeared to be a little dissapointing. I'm sorry to say, I didn't finish. I'm sending it of to powerhouse, hopefully she likes it better..... Thanks for sharing, Erbie!

Plonk, bonk, mailbox, doormat. Looking forward to this one, and it's a ring so it goes on top. The first book for my reading-weekend that starts next Friday!

I liked this book a lot though all this dysfunctioning does wear me out. Off to Plinius!

My third BX-book in two days! But it looks very interesting, also because the journal-entries vary. I'll start reading asap...

I like this story; the multiple points of view make a good patchwork and also call up the sense of isolation and loneliness I remember from the dysfunctional family in which I grew up. The first half of the book makes good reading. But I think the story leaves a lot unfinished; I can barely see what makes Ezra tick, Jenny is only sketched, only Cody is drawn well. But you might say that a good book deserves a good reader, and you don't know what I am.

This goes to kriskras when the postoffice opens.

Thanks Plinius, the book arrived this morning and goes on top of the pile.

Finishing a book often feels like parting from a good friend. This time, however, I'm happy to pick something else from the shelf. I guess this story was just a bit too predictable to me, I didn't feel that urge to read on to find out how it all would end. In spite of this, I did arrive at the last page, simply because I liked Anne Tyler's style of writing too well to put the book aside. Maybe I should give it another try and read one of her other books...

Erbie, thanks for sharing the Homesick Restaurant with us, tomorrow the book will leave for Germany.
Sent to amaradevinmom on May 25.

I really enjoyed this book. This family was messed up but you could tell they did care for each other.

Received yesterday, thank-you. I look forward to reading it soon :-)

Well, I can't say that I thought the book was excellent. In fact, I was a touch upset, I was expecting more. Although I can appreciate Ann Tylers style of writing. I'll be sending this off to the next person in the next couple of days :-)


the book is now traveling! 11th July 2004

This arrived a couple of days ago and is now right at the top of my to-be-read pile. I'm looking forward to it!

I've just been reading the comments of other readers and it's all fair enough but I do wonder why not everyone gave it a rating out of 10. It appears that only people who liked it gave it a rating, whereas I think it's more valid if everyone does.

Anne Tyler writes beautifully about ordinary people and the minutiae of life. I always enjoy reading her novels - my favourite so far is The Accidental Tourist. I have to admit though that Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant got me down a bit because the family is so utterly dysfunctional. I admire how Tyler has created believable characters and developed her themes, but I didn't actively enjoy it as much as I have her other books.

Thank you, Erbie, for sharing. LeighBCD has requested that I skip her so this is now on the way to Riemke.

bookrings are always a surprise for me, because I never make a note if I sign in for one. For this one,I even forgot that I gave my adress a few weeks ago to Caitlin. Thanks for sending it.

And Erbie: beautiful participants-list that you included! (is there a copy available on the bookcrossing.tk site?
also there's a lot of empty space between me and Wollie who is next. someone else to be inserted???

Just finished another bookring this morning, so Tyler is the next one to read.

RELEASE NOTES:

sending to Wilmar: enjoy this book!

I like to read Tyler. her style of writing, her characters. it's not too difficult and always entertaining.
the next reader can still smell the forest in this book now, because I took it on two short camping-breaks. and read it under the trees, on the grass, beneath the water, in the tent, shivering in my sleepingbag. It was a perfect book for these occasions.
Erbie, thanks for this ring.

Received the book today (thanks Riemke!). A memorable event as this is my first bookring ever.

Finished! And what a wonderful read!

Until now I only read If Morning Ever Comes, Tyler’s first novel. Which was also good, but nothing compared to this one.
When reading If Morning Ever Comes I already found it remarkably how Tyler draws the people in her books, they really come to live. In Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant she did it again. When I finished the first chapter, I was angry and sad. Poor Pearl, I thought, having such a hard life and these terrible children. But then I read the story of her children… Only in the end you get a full view of the way this family works. In a way you see the history repeating itself, and I find that very interesting. I often think about how that has happened in my own family’s history. (Small example according Dinner: Pearl is always fidgeting with food, so is her daughter Jenny, who’s own daughter later on will be diagnosed anorectic.)
Also interesting I find the way Tyler puts absolutist people (Beck, Cody) together with relativist people, like Ezra and Luke. In that way you as a reader can make out yourself what’s true and what’s not. And in this case it’s, as they say, probably somewhere in the middle.
Maybe it’s because I have worked in a restaurant for a long time, and every once in a while I’m still thinking of starting a place myself, but I really liked Ezra’s idea of a ‘Homesick Restaurant’, a place where you can order something that will cheer you up, something that reminds you of home.
I expected a very saddening story. But it came out to be a lot happier then I thought. And in the end there’s even something of hope shimmering through.

In a way this book really did something for me. It made me once again realize that life is short, and that it’s important to act with that knowledge in mind. (Maybe you think I’m sentimental… you’re right: I am ;-). But seriously: I’m not a religious person, maybe that’s why I tend to look what I can learn from the novels I read.)


I’ve just now read what everybody before me wrote about this BookRing. Surprising that the reactions defer so much! Like Riemke I immediately wondered if it’s possible to get hold of the very nice list you included, Erbie. Can I find it somewhere on the WWW, or is it possible that you send me a copy of your own file?

I’m going to reward this book with a nine. One of the reviews that Erbie included in his first journal does it for me: “This book is a must-read for anyone who loves home-cooking and their own lovable, dysfunctional family.”

Some parts I marked to remember:

[…], it had seemed a good idea once upon a time: spare children, like spare tires, or those extra lisle stockings they used to package free with each pair.

***

She tipped her head back and recollected cousins, aunts, uncles, a grandpa whose breath had smelled of mothballs. It was peculiar how her memory seemed to be going blind with the rest of her. She didn’t so much see their faces as hear their fluid voices, feel the crisp ruching of the ladies’ shirtwaists, smell their pomades and lavender water and the sharp-scented bottle of crystals that sickly Cousin Bertha had carried to ward off fainting spells.

***

I think a lot about Scarlatti’s Restaurant and how nice the lettuce smelled when I tore it into the bowl he wrote – his only mention of homesickness, if that was what it was. Pearl gave a jealous sniff. “As if lettuce had a smell!”

***

Remarkably: As a child Cody accidentally shoots his mother with an arrow. The arrow gets into her chest, near to her heart. When Cody is grown up and already married to Ruth he thinks about shooting Ezra in the heart with a rifle.

***

Cody had a sudden intimation that tomorrow, it would be more than he could manage to drag himself off to work. His success had finally filled its purpose. Was this all he had been striving for – this one brief moment of respect flitting across his father’s face?

And (just for my own archive) the back says:

Through every family run memories which bind them together – despite everything

The Tulls of Baltimore were no exception. Abandoned by her salesman husband, Pearl is left to bring up her three children alone – Cody, a flawed devil, Ezra, a flawed saint and Jenny, errant and passionate. Now as Pearl lies dying, stiffly encased in her pride and solitude, the past is unlocked and with it its secrets.

‘This writer is not merely good, she is good’- John Updike

‘Excellently done: the minutiae of domestic landscapes, the lunatic irrationality of family quarrels, the torments of sibling rivalry’- Sunday Telegraph

‘Funny, heart-hammering, wise, it edges deep into truth that’s simultaneously (and interdependently) psychological, moral and formal … from start to finish, superb entertainment’- The New York Times Book Review

Erbie, thanks for this BookRing, I enjoyed it very much, the book is on it’s way to wollie.

RELEASE NOTES:

Happy BookCrossing

Uit! Zo hee, wat een leuk boek! Ik had nog maar 1 boek van deze schrijfster gelezen, en dat had wel een goeie indruk gemaakt. Deze vond ik ook erg goed. Echt een boek als een warme trui; je kunt je er behagelijk in nestelen. Vond ik dan. Thanks Erbie, voor het delen! Mijn goede voornemen voor morgen is deze op de post naar Dutch-Flybaby doen. Ik vind dat Anne Tyler zo goed humor en ernst weet te combineren, en ontroerende personages schept.
Oh, just saw the other entries and they're all in English! Anyhow, I greatly enjoyed this one, though I got the impression that it would have been a better book if it was three times as big! Sometimes the author skips details and events in the lives of her characters that would help to flesh them out a bit more.

It's here!

A not very exciting story about a family. The most impressive part of the story for me was when the father told his son he did not feel appreciated by his wife in who's eyes he never could do anything right. I do appreciate that insight but do not understand the need for so many pages in the book to tell this on the last page.
Will try to pass this book on to Rubyblue at the bookcrossingmeeting in Tilburg on sunday or will hopefully find someone to take the book to her.

RELEASE NOTES:

This book is going with me to the bookcrossingmeeting at bookshop de Zevensprong in Tilburg tomorrow. Biba89 will take it with her to Rubyblue (thanks).
Happy reading Rubyblue!

O my God! This was a bookring! And I was merely the postman! I stalled this ring for four months and I did not even read it, I have read it years ago. It was waiting on my shelf, for the opportunity when I saw Rubyblue again, but this has taken a while. Anyway, on Sunday this long-awaited meeting and transfer of hefty volumes will take place at the OBCZ in Nijmegen or, hopefully, on the train towards it.

RELEASE NOTES:

So, this was a bookring? Oh dear. I, being merely the transport medium, have kept it for the better part of a year. Hopefully the transfer to Rubyblue will succeed this time.

RELEASE NOTES: