SOURCE: "The Accidental Convert," in The New York Times Book Review, August 25, 1991, pp. 1, 26.

In the following review, Parini states that Tyler's Saint Maybe is "a realistic chronicle that celebrates family life without erasing the pain and boredom that families almost necessarily inflict upon their members."

Anne Tyler likes to break America's heart, and she will do it again in Saint Maybe. Her subject, as ever, is family life, with the family pictured as a kind of leaky but durable vessel that ferries her motley characters down the tortuous river of time. Ms. Tyler is fascinated by the unexpected ways that people affect one another, for good and ill, and this fascination has given her shelf of books an impressive unity. Saint Maybe, her 12th novel, is vintage Tyler, delicately stamped, like a watermark, with her intimate and unmistakable voice.

One is used by now to Ms. Tyler's oddball...