Digging to America

by Anne Tyler

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes an intimate picture of middle-class family life (The New York Times) that challenges the notion that home is a fixed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0307263940
• ISBN13: 9780307263940
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A Senior Citizen's Romance

Ann Tyler is like Baltimore's version of a modern Jane Austen; she writes minutely observed stories about family, alienation and small accidental turns of fate. In this case, she describes a large family waiting in the airport. From the signs and banners, it is apparent that an American couple is adopting a Korean baby. When the adoption official appears with the child, pandemonium ensues and avid relatives capture the whole thing on videotape. Almost unnoticed in the shuffle, a quiet Iranian-American couple receive their own baby. A year later, Bitsy Donaldson, the American mother, remembers the unusual name and contacts Ziba Yazdan to see if she would be interested in celebrating an "Arrival Party". Gradually, the two families draw ever closer together. The children are one point in common but when Bitsy's mother dies of cancer, her father subsequently falls in love with Ziba's widowed mother, Maryam. These two, close in age and experience, are separated by culture and by Maryam's solitary habits. The novel begins and ends with coincidence that creates change. The author writes with a sure hand that holds a magnifying glass to the small things that create friends out of strangers, home out of exile and America out of an oddly assorted yet strangely sympathetic group of people. A grand book on a small scale.

Anne Tyler at Her Best

Oh gosh, folks ... hear the news that this book is not so much about its stated subject matter -- the adopted Asian children, or the American and Iranian families into which they are adopted -- as it is about who these people are and how they react ... The book is, at heart, a marvelous character study -- Anne Tyler at her very best -- drawing intricate, thoughtful portraits of "ordinary" people in particular circumstances ... gentle, kind, finely honed observations on the people involved and, well, life itself. Yes, it was perhaps something of a stretch for the author [although the NYT Book Review tells us that "Ms. Tyler was married for more than three decades to the Iranian-born child psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi, who died in 1997"], to blend the various ethnic sensibilities, but Anne Tyler fans who may have been put off by the plot synopsis need not fear -- this is a wonderfully observed novel, among her best, and although the subject matter is somewhat different than her usual Baltimore cast of characters, it is also very similar (the characters are, after all, wherever they may have come from, living in Baltimore), in her finely delineated description of each of the characters. This is not to imply that she doesn't have something to say about different cultures and their interactions -- she does, of course, have quite a lot to say about that, but it's very subtly embedded in the character studies. Avid Anne Tyler fan that I am (going as far back as "Tin Can Tree"), I blew off this book for almost two years, based on professional reviews and my own sense that this might not be on target, but I am very pleased to report that having gotten over all that, this book is one of her very best -- I just loved it, as I have just loved all her books. I think it would serve as great introduction for those who have not read Anne Tyler, and for those who already know her, it's a total "must read".

Revealing Story of Insiders and Outsiders Searching For Their Niche

Anne Tyler is the master of creating characters so real you can laugh with and cry with, be disappointed by but love unconditionally. In this novel she connects two such families, one American and one Iranian-American, by a chance meeting at Baltimore's airport where both families are awaiting adopted daughters from Korea. Bitsy Donaldson, the American mother, is an organizer and planner and conceives the idea of an arrival party each year to celebrate the day both girls, Jin-Ho and Sooki (later Americanized to Susan), arrived in America. The families are quite different, drawn together only by August 15, 1997, the date they both received Korean daughters. Their differences are the basis of this book, the exploration of the outsider in all of us and the drive to be accepted. Bitsy's family is traditional American, never doubting their way is the right way, but very politically correct about accepting the traditions of foreigners. Susan's adopted parents, Ziba and Sami, want to fit in and be accepted as Americans on the one hand, while laughing and mocking American ways on the other. Although they grew up in America. they have always been "outsiders" and continue to embellish on that by adopting a Korean baby. Perhaps they felt that by Americanizing her name and clothing they would make her an insider. The Donaldsons, however, are intrigued by their baby's other-world culture and embrace it without realizing how they are making her an outsider in her own family. But beyond the parents and the children, this is the story of Susan's paternal grandmother, Maryam Yazdan, the ultimate stranger in a strange land. Although she has been in America for most of her adult life, she feels removed and not part of her adopted country and yet, she knows that she would be as out of place back in her birth country. Tyler weaves Maryam into a love story, very touching and poignant in its portrayal of love in the golden years after the death of a long-time spouse. Will the outsider be able to accept an insider or will that insider destroy the relationship by constantly reminding her of her foreignness? Anne Tyler has a beautiful gift and it is that she can create characters that seem so real, you forget they are only fictional. In this book particularly, I felt as if the Donaldsons and the Yazdans were my neighbors and I loved every minute I spent in their homes. Also, if you ever indulged in the childhood pastime of digging to China, you will fall in love with the very clever title of this book.

deceivingly sophisticated

I just finished this novel yesterday. While reading it, I was constantly disappointed when I had to put it down. I came to really care about the characters in the book, even--as Maryam seems eventually to do--about Bitsy. I had not read Anne Tyler before, and given the dismal response to this novel from her frequent readers in this section, I'm not sure I want to go back to the "old" Anne Tyler (although, based on how much I liked this book, of course I will). They rave about her former novels and then describe this one as "boring." The reason I read it to begin with was that I heard a reviewer from the New York Times enthusiastically recommend the book, saying that it signalled a breakthrough for Tyler. I'm surprised at how many readers could not see the so-called repetitiveness of the "Arrival Parties" as the device by which Tyler developed her characters over a period of time. Also, one reviewer in this section said that she was disappointed that Tyler did not portray what it was like for foreigners in a post 9/11 atmosphere to live in the U.S., but that was clearly not Tyler's intent. While 9/11 was mentioned at one point in the book, its effects on the characters were not meant to be central to the book's story. Another critic in this section, who herself has an adopted Korean daughter, complains that Tyler does not describe the experiences of having such a daughter. I am puzzled again: This book is all ABOUT the experiences of having such a daughter, albeit from the perspective of two different families. And since I have friends who themselves have adopted Korean and Chinese daughters, I can refute another critic's claim that the process as Tyler shows it in the book is unrealistic. It is, in fact, very realistic. The seeming simplicity of the book's plot, which others berate as repetitiveness, gives the story its sophistication. The book is also very funny (the pacifier party chapter that one reviewer criticizes is, from my perspective, the funniest chapter.) I hope potential readers of this book will not be put off by some of these "I just don't get it" reviews. If they do, they will be missing out on some fine reading, indeed.

A Kinder, Gentler Jane Austin

I always marvel at what a quick and easy read Anne Tyler is without being glib and facile. Her latest novel DIGGING TO AMERICA is no exception. It's as if Jane Austin came to live in present day Baltimore and was kinder and gentler. There is not a single villain amongst Tyler's latest group of just off-center characters-- and there are enough folks here to fill up a Eudora Welty Sunday dinner-- I'm almost positive Ms. Welty would like this novel if she were alive. Two couples, previously unknown to each other, arrive at the Baltimore airport on Friday, August 15, 1997 to meet their newly adopted baby daughters from Korea. Because of that meeting, they become friends, particularly the two mothers. The Donaldsons-- Bitsy and Brad-- are as American as key lime pie, and their new friends, Sami and Ziba Yazdan, are Iranian American. Much of the plot has to do with Sami's mother Maryam who came to the United States as a young bride and her difficulties with being between two worlds and not feeling at home in either. The characters sometimes act silly, occasionally badly; but to a person they mean well. Ms. Tyler writes beautifully about finding love again in old age, a topic few writers do well or even attempt for that matter. Of course Gabriel Garcia Marquez covers that topic in the incomparable LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA; but then he writes well about everything. The author also tackles the tricky task of getting into the head of an Iranian character and apparently pulls it off. There are many instances of gentle humor here. Ms. Tyler pokes fun at Americans and all our foibles. Maryam has so much difficulty understanding Bitsy's father Dave: "He is so American. . . He takes up so much space. He seems to be unable to let a room stay as it is. . . He has cluttered my life with cell phones and answering machines and a fancy-shmancy teapot that makes my tea taste like metal. . . You think that if you keep company with them [Americans] you will be larger too, but then you see that they're making you shrink; they're expanding and edging you out." Ms. Tyler writes eloquently about the solitude of old age. Her description of a day in the life of Maryam (p. 255) approaches poetry: "What a small, small life she lived! She had one grown son, one daughter-in-law, one grandchild and three close friends. Her work was pleasantly predictable. Her house hadn't change in decades. Next January she would be sixty-five years old-- not ancient, but even so, she couldn't hope for her world to grow anything but narrower from now on. She found this thought comforting rather than distressing." Finally only a writer of Ms. Tyler's ability could make-- for me at least-- a party to wean a baby from pacifiers interesting. The guests at the event tie the pacifiers ("binkies") to helium-filled balloons and release them into the sky. Another winner for Ms. Tyler.