Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [1]
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Wonderful … A novel that is old-fashioned in its moralism. And completely convincing and refreshing.”
Detroit Free Press
“ONE OF FICTION’S ABSOLUTE
MASTERS …
Compassionately and convincingly drawn … The classic Tyler trademarks appear immediately, the warmth and humor of the narrative voice, as if the novel were being told to us by a friend who creates an engaging character quickly and hooks us to her tale.… If you shelve your contemporary novelists alphabetically, as I do, Anne Tyler stands beside John Updike. There’s a metaphor there too powerful to ignore.”
St. Petersburg Times
“Anne Tyler cuts through the monkey business straight to what is true and real in life. To open one of her books is to open an invitation—she leads you right through the front door, plumps you down on the sofa and surrounds you with her characters, ordinary people coping with the kind of extraordinary things that happen every day.… With each new novel she reaches another dimension in her tender exploration of humanity, and reinforces her place among America’s best writers.… With her distinctive blend of unforced philosophy, gentle humor and high farce, Tyler takes us into the life of Ian Bedloe as it is turned inside out.… The maturing of Ian Bedloe is one of Anne Tyler’s most subtle designs.”
The Buffalo News
“The reader is emotionally involved and touched as never before.”
Publishers Weekly
By Anne Tyler:
IF MORNING EVER COMES
THE TIN CAN TREE
A SLIPPING-DOWN LIFE
THE CLOCK WINDER
CELESTIAL NAVIGATION
SEARCHING FOR CALEB
EARTHLY POSSESSIONS
MORGAN’S PASSING
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST
THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE
BREATHING LESSONS
SAINT MAYBE
LADDER OF YEARS
A PATCHWORK PLANET
BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWNUPS
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Copyright © 1991 by ATM, Inc
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-52704
eISBN: 978-0-307-78456-8
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
1 The Airmail Bowling Ball
2 The Department of Reality
3 The Man Who Forgot How to Fly
4 Famous Rainbows
5 People Who Don’t Know the Answers
6 Sample Rains
7 Organized Marriage
8 I Should Never Tell You Anything
9 The Flooded Sewing Box
10 Recovering from the Hearts-of-Palm Flu
1
The Airmail Bowling Ball
On Waverly Street, everybody knew everybody else. It was only one short block, after all—a narrow strip of patched and repatched pavement, bracketed between a high stone cemetery wall at one end and the commercial clutter of Govans Road at the other. The trees were elderly maples with lumpy, bulbous trunks. The squat clapboard houses seemed mostly front porch.
And each house had its own particular role to play. Number Nine, for instance, was foreign. A constantly shifting assortment of Middle Eastern graduate students came and went, attending classes at Johns Hopkins, and the scent of exotic spices drifted from their kitchen every evening at suppertime. Number Six was referred to as the newlyweds’, although the Crains had been married two years now and were beginning to look a bit worn around the edges. And Number Eight was the Bedloe family. They were never just the Bedloes, but the Bedloe family, Waverly Street’s version of the ideal, apple-pie household: two amiable parents, three good-looking children,