SOURCE: Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl. “Comic Constructions: Fictions of Mothering in Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years.” Southern Quarterly 39, no. 3 (spring 2001): 130-40.

In the following essay, Macpherson explores Tyler's use of fantasy and metafiction in Ladder of Years and discusses the role of the mother in the novel.

Anne Tyler is a popular novelist, and even today, such a designation is more likely to warrant animosity than admiration in academic circles. Of the critical reviews or articles centered on Tyler, many are, indeed, critical—of her subject matter (the family), of her style (realism), of her narrative voice (wry, whimsical). Yet examination of Tyler's canon, and most specifically, of her 1995 novel Ladder of Years, reveals that such critical disregard is, in part, based on limited readings of her complexly comic novels. Tyler's twelve novels before Ladder of Years follow roughly the same trajectory, and her central concern—the war between...