In the paradoxical character of Emily, at once passive and inflexible, ruthless in her rejections and unswerving in her loyalty, Tyler has created [in Morgan's Passing] the kissing cousin to Charlotte Emory, the heroine of her last novel, Earthly Possessions. Both women achieve spiritual freedom in circumstances of poverty and psychological subjection; both are dutiful victims, not of the sexist gargoyles grimacing from the pages of so many recent novels, but of entirely ordinary men of limited competence and probity. Because "average" people don't usually make for large drama or high comedy, they are much less common in fiction than in real life. Perhaps it is Anne Tyler's most uncommon accomplishment that she can make such characters interesting and amusing without violating their limitations.

Happily, despite the novel's portending title, Morgan survives his reordering, not wholly intact but in all his essentials, and one finishes the book with...