Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler 1941-, American novelist, b. Minneapolis. Often set in the American South and frequently in and around Baltimore, Md., her fiction, which is marked by wit and perception, portrays vivid characters involved in ordinary human life, particularly family relationships. Among her novels are A Slipping-Down Life (1970), Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), Breathing Lessons (1988; Pulitzer Prize), Saint Maybe (1991), Ladder of Years (1995), The Amateur Marriage (2004), and Digging to America (2006).

Tyler, Anne (1941– ), American novelist, who grew up in North Carolina but has spent most of her adult life in Baltimore, Maryland. Her presentations of a stratified Baltimore and of contemporary cultural shifts make her the first urban Southern novelist. Her fiction reveals the necessity for individuals, however isolated, to receive recognition, however tenuous, if society is to be healthily pluralist. A Slipping Down Life (1970), a tender portrait of a fat young rock-music groupie, is in Tyler's view her first successful novel. Searching for Caleb (1976) has the generous canvas now associated with her. Outstanding novels, each offsetting a character in crisis against the demands of others, include The Accidental Tourist (1985), Breathing Lessons (1989), Ladder of Years (1995), Patchwork Planet (1998), a fine example of Tyler's empathy with the late 20th-cent. male, and Back When We Were Grown-Ups (2001).