SOURCE: "Anne Tyler's Insiders," in Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 47-56.

In the following essay. Bowers discusses the inside knowledge that Tyler shares with the readers of her novels.

In her most successful novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler's central character, Pearl, reacts to her husband Beck's abrupt announcement that he "didn't want to stay married":

"I don't understand you," she said. There ought to be a whole separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words—for perfect, absolute truth.

Tyler does not create the language of pure truth, but she succeeds in pushing through the limitations of traditional narrative by collusion with the reader, in essence, by sharing a joke. She allows the reader to share inside knowledge, not only family secrets but self-delusions, true motives, quirks of perception. When Pearl reckons with Beck's leaving and debates how to tell...