Monday, November 26, 2018

IF MORNING EVER COMES




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If Morning Ever Comes, Anne Tyler, Alfred A Knopf, 1964, 265 pp
 
 
This is Anne Tyler's first novel. The other day I read her latest, Clock Dance. Bookends! Don't be put off by the silly reprint cover shown here. I don't know what they were thinking. 
 
Only 22 when it was published, she got a rave review by Orville Prescott in the New York Times. Not bad for a young woman's first novel in 1964. I learned that she studied writing with Reynolds Price in college. Maybe he gave her a hand in getting published.

It is quite a Southern story with echoes of Eudora Welty. Ben Joe Hawks is studying law at Columbia, though not because he necessarily wants to be a lawyer. He has a widowed mother and six sisters back in North Carolina and feels responsible for them. 

Suddenly one morning he hops a train and heads home. He feels worried about all those females. When he arrives they are all like, "Oh, hi," but don't see any need to be worried over. 

Of course you can't go home again, especially to the South in mid-twentieth century America. That was also the theme of that disappointing Robert Penn Warren novel Flood I read recently. Tyler's book has plenty of emotion but it is not melodramatic. Her trademark human but offbeat characters are already there.

Apparently she has said she wishes she could disown her early novels. If I could have a chat with her I would say don't. I have a soft spot for first novels. It is like looking at a baby and trying to picture how that individual will grow and become to be.

I had a soft spot for young Ben Joe Hawks. There is something endearing about a lone male in a house full of females. As he tries to knit his past into his present, I felt all those females should have worried about him!


(If Morning Ever Comes is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

10 comments:

  1. Sounds like an interesting novel. I have not heard of this Anne Tyler novel before.

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    1. Probably you haven't heard of it because it is so old!

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  2. How cool that The NYT reviewed her first novel! Somehow I always thought that her novels were fluffy, but I have not read any by her so I wouldn't know. I don't know where I got that notion.

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    1. Her critics love to call her fluffy and of no importance. I say that if more people had the insight into their fellowmen that she has, we would be far better off.

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  3. I think the first book of hers that I read was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant so there are several earlier books that I've never gotten to. Maybe at some point I'll be able to rectify that. I do love Anne Tyler!

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    1. As far as I am concerned those early books are worth reading.

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  4. I've read half a dozen of Tyler's books but hadn't even heard of this one. According to the images on https://www.fantasticfiction.com/t/anne-tyler/, a number of her earlier books have been reprinted with the same style of cover. (!)

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    1. Oh, I love Fantastic Fiction, because you can see all of an author's books in publication order. I guess they are trying to give those early books the looks of their times? Like the avocado rotary phone. Ha Ha.

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  5. I'm glad you unearthed this debut. I did know about this one. Crazy cover too. She's been so prolific in her career. I have only read like 4 or 5 but I'd like to return to them or get to more.

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    1. I must say I have never regretted reading any one of her novels.

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