 First edition cover | |
| Author | Anne Tyler |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | 1972 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 312 pp |
| ISBN | 0-394-47898-3 |
| OCLC | 206830 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.T979 Cl PS3570.Y45 (70178960) [1] |
The Clock Winder is a 1972 novel by Anne Tyler.
The protagonist of the story is Elizabeth, a young woman who is taking time away from college to earn a bit of money and discover a sense of direction. By happenstance, she ends up landing in Baltimore near the home of Mrs. Pamela Emerson, a recent widow and the mother of seven grown children. Seeing Mrs. Emerson struggling to store her porch furniture in the garage for the winter, she stops to offer help and ends up becoming Mrs. Emerson's handyman and companion.
The story, which spans 14 years, discusses the relationship between first Elizabeth and Mrs. Emerson and then the relationship between Elizabeth and several of Mrs. Emerson's children, particularly Timothy and Matthew. Elizabeth and the Emersons end up changing each other's lives in fundamental ways.
The Clock Winder could be called Tyler’s “forgotten novel,” as it received little recognition, few reviews, and little financial success when it appeared in 1972. Tyler herself considered this, her fourth novel, to be one she is a bit ashamed of, along with the three that preceded it. [2] However, she also acknowledges that her writing improved considerably with her third and fourth novels, so that her fifth novel, Celestial Navigation , is one that she now considers “her favorite.” [3] In his 2003 Washington Post review, Jonathan Yardley points how The Clock Winder, while flawed, presaged several characteristics of her subsequent novels: For one, it was her first novel set chiefly in Roland Park, Baltimore. More significantly, it is her first in which a major focus is on complex relationships within large idiosyncratic families, and the forces that drive the family members apart, as well as those that continue to pull them back together over time. [4] In 1972, Tyler had just returned to writing after taking off 5 years to raise two girls to school age, an experience that she feels gave her a “richer and deeper…self to speak from.” [3] At one point in the novel, it seems we hear Tyler herself speaking through the main character Elizabeth: “For every grownup you see, you know there must have been at least one person who had the patience to lug them around, and feed them, and walk them nights and keep them out of danger for years and years without a break...Isn’t that surprising? People you wouldn’t trust your purse with for five minutes, maybe, but still they put in years and years of time tending their children along.” [5] Tyler, in her subsequent 15 novels, has continued to focus on the ties that push apart and pull together family members, though her definition of “family” includes any group of people that live closely together. [6] [7]
Jonathan Yardley acknowledges The Clock Winder’s flaws: “Its shape is a little loose, some of the secondary characters never quite come into focus, and one wants to know a bit more about the husband whose death sets all these events in motion than is doled out in one long paragraph.” [4] As a novelist who prides herself on developing characters in depth, [2] [8] Tyler later criticized herself for the number of “shallow” characters in this and other earlier novels. [9] Still the novel develops thoroughly “two splendid characters in Mrs. Emerson and Elizabeth Abbott.” [4] Yardley also notes that The Clock Winder contains “page after page of utterly convincing dialogue, quiet humor and keen observation.”
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 novel of manners written by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
Elizabeth Taylor was an English novelist and short-story writer. Kingsley Amis described her as "one of the best English novelists born in this century". Antonia Fraser called her "one of the most underrated writers of the 20th century", while Hilary Mantel said she was "deft, accomplished and somewhat underrated".
Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels.
Anne Shirley is a fictional character introduced in the 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. Shirley is featured throughout the classic book series, which revolve around her life and family in 19th and 20th-century Prince Edward Island.
The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family, born in the village of Thornton and later associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849), are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories immediately attracted attention for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942. A lifelong Virginian who published 20 books including seven novels which sold well as well as gained critical acclaim, Glasgow portrayed the changing world of the contemporary South in a realistic manner, differing from the idealistic escapism that characterized Southern literature after Reconstruction.
Persuasion is the last novel completed by Jane Austen. It was published along with Northanger Abbey at the end of 1817, six months after her death. The novel was published on December 20, 1817, although the title page is dated 1818.
Amelia Peabody Emerson is the protagonist of the Amelia Peabody series, a series of historical mystery novels written by author Elizabeth Peters. Peabody is married to Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson and has one biological child, Walter "Ramses" Peabody Emerson.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-three novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."
To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.
Jilly Cooper, CBE, is an English author. She began her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. She is most famous for writing the Rutshire Chronicles.
The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.
The Realm of Possibility is a 2004 young adult novel by David Levithan. Presented as a "collection of interrelated monologues written in free verse," it tells the individual stories of twenty teenagers struggling with high school angst and adolescent life.
Paule Marshall was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant.
The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, following the huge success of his bestselling 2003 debut The Kite Runner. Mariam, an illegitimate teenager from Herat, is forced to marry a shoemaker from Kabul after a family tragedy. Laila, born a generation later, lives a relatively privileged life, but her life intersects with Mariam's when a similar tragedy forces her to accept a marriage proposal from Mariam's husband.
One Day is a novel by David Nicholls, published in 2009. Each chapter covers the lives of two protagonists on 15 July, St Swithin's Day, for 20 years. The novel attracted generally positive reviews and was named 2010 Galaxy Book of the Year. Nicholls adapted his book into a screenplay; the feature film, was released in August 2011, and a planned television series for Netflix.
What Happened to Goodbye is a young adult novel by Sarah Dessen. The book chronicles the life of a teenage girl, Mclean, and her journey of self-discovery. The book was released on May 10, 2011, by Viking. It received mainly positive critical reception.
The Bennet family is a fictional family created by the English novelist Jane Austen, in her 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and their five daughters: Jane, Mary, Catherine, Lydia, and Elizabeth, the novel's protagonist