Anne Tyler writes some of the best fiction around on family relationships. She also has an enormous backlist that I want to slowly make my way through. I was a little surprised to see that Earthly Possessions opens with a bank robbery but soon treads familiar territory about family and dysfunctional relationships. It’s also a good (accidental) insight into American life in the 1970s before everything was complicated with the internet, mobile phones and computers.

Charlotte is planning to leave her husband (not for the first time) and is waiting at the local small town bank for some money. She is unwittingly caught up in a bank robbery and taken hostage by the offender who is planning to drive to Florida to meet a friend and spring his pregnant girlfriend from a home for unmarried mothers. As she and Jake drive, Charlotte reflects on her life and what brought her to this moment. From the guilt she experienced as a young child, to picking up the slack for an extended household, she’s been going with the line of least resistance. It soon turns into that kind of relationship for her and Jake –rubbish collecting in the car as she talks him through his life choices and the unexpected changes in plan. Charlotte gets stronger as they enter Florida making her own choice to end this odd situation – but what will she choose for herself?

Anne Tyler excels at the quirky features of individuals and families. Charlotte’s storytelling explores marriages that were never quite honest with each other and things said in childhood that were taken to heart and held fast in adulthood. Charlotte’s family home is also a silent character – big with endless rooms for strays and mountains of furniture, right in the commercial part of town that’s gloomy yet a drawcard for the photography studio attached. The house contains Charlotte’s history and seemingly future too, try as she might to change things. The story of Charlotte’s parents and husband’s family as just as dysfunctional – the mother than ran off with the father in law, the sons who didn’t know what to do with themselves and the parish members that attach themselves to her husband for years on end. It’s a mystery to Charlotte as she navigates what might have been against what things are. Her story is just as fascinating as Jake’s, as she comes to the realisation that it doesn’t have to be the same life she returns to.

I did like the unintended view into small town America in the 1970s and earlier, where a security camera in the bank was big news. Soda fountains, a radio repair shop and cars with keys in the ignition – it’s a different world. (Although I’ve never heard of a late night bank that’s open). It’s surprisingly charming, yet the issues still feel modern in the twenty-first century as people reflect on their lives and choices. It’s a great story of family and relationships bound up in an unintentional road trip novel.

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Charlotte Emory plans to leave her husband and children and gets kidnapped by an escapee from prison at a bank robbery.

This tale is so sad, she always thought that there was a mix-up at the hospital when she was born because she looked nothing like her mother. There was no real connection between the mother and daughter and it seemed that she married to be free of her mother. The robber is a little impulsive and never takes responsibility. He takes Charlotte as a hostage in a stolen vehicle and has s plan to see his friends in Florida. Me, the robber, Jake was always doing before thinking. He kept getting into trouble. I felt sorry for his pretty but not-so-bright girlfriend. With Charlotte and the girlfriend, their lives could have been so different, yet both are doomed but interesting characters. ( )

Pretty good story of woman who goes over her life while she is a hostage at a bank robbery and afterwards. Quirky characters like Anne Tyler's specialty. ( )

3.5 stars, rounded down.

Anne Tyler can take quirky, oddball, and unorthodox and turn it into familiar, approachable, and honest in the course of a 250 page novel. It is one of her strengths. You begin, seeing her characters as goofier than you, apart from the norm, and you end by seeing them as very human, even a bit of a kindred spirit.

Charlotte Emory is about to leave her husband when she is unexpectedly abducted by a bank robber. For most of us, a gun in our side and being forced into a car with an unknown man would be crippling, for Charlotte it is almost an adventure, at last. What it actually becomes is an opportunity for Charlotte to consider her life in a different light, and while she learns more about herself, so do we.

This is not one of her best works, but it felt very familiar to me (without feeling predictable) and I enjoyed reading it. Nice break from the disappointments I have had lately. A break to regroup and consider the next step...we all need that from time to time.
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A bored housewife is kidnapped and goes on a road journey with her young hopeless kidnapper. Well-written, and I appreciated the bleak humour, but all the characters are so passive, stupid, barely functioning that I found this a depressing unenlightening read. ( )