Anne Tyler manages to create such believable characters time and time again and in Digging to America she delivers yet again. The two families in the novel are linked forever by the Korean children they have each adopted. They celebrate “Arrival Day” each year with a party together. Through the various parties and with the passage of time Tyler explores the characters’ differences, their varying hopes and dreams, cultural backgrounds, sense of fitting in. A brilliant scenario for putting these different families together and beautifully written.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently that life can always be improved), two full sets of grandparents and a host of big-boned, confident relatives, taking delivery with characteristic American razzmatazz. Then there are the Yazdans, pretty, nervous Ziba (her family 'only one generation removed from the bazaar') and carefully assimilated Sami, with his elegant, elusive Iranian-born widowed mother Maryam, the grandmother-to-be, receiving their little bundle with wondering discretion.
Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as tiny, delicate Susan, wholesome, stocky Jin-ho and, later, her new little sister Xiu-Mei, take roots, become American. While Maryam, the optimistic pessimist, confident that if things go wrong - as well they may - she will manage as she has before, contrarily preserves her 'outsider' status, as if to prove that, despite her passport, she is only a guest in this bewildering country.
Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes - it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds. And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.
Digging to America features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Digging to America is available in Ebook, Paperback
Digging to America was written by Anne Tyler and published by Vintage
Digging to America has 329 pages
£9.89
