Noah’s Compass, by Anne Tyler
This is Anne Tyler’s seventeenth novel and will be welcomed by her many fans. It will also be familiar, even a little too familiar, to be judged on its own. There is the same Baltimore setting, the same domestic reassurance, the same blameless clueless protagonist, and the same invasive presence of over-zealous women. All these people are essentially virtuous, even at their most tiresome. One might say that Tyler’s style is virtuous: sunny, uninflected, and at ease with what she has to tell. Even the reader feels virtuous, perhaps beguiled by her characters into an assumption that nothing will shock or disturb. Thus a most agreeable alliance is once more sealed between writer and reader.
Liam Pennywell, at 60, has been encouraged to retire from his teaching job. He is not unduly disturbed by this, makes sensible arrangements, gets rid of most of his possessions, and moves into a small rented apartment. So far, so good. Then one night he sinks thankfully into bed, and wakes up in hospital, with no memory of what has happened to him or how he got there.
His recovery is without incident but he is troubled by the gap in his memory, and it is this gap that powers the rest of the novel. For another writer this might be a blueprint for tragedy, but Liam is made of more amiable stuff. One day in his doctor’s waiting room he is aware of a man much older than himself having his memory discreetly jogged by a woman who appears to be his assistant. Without weighing the consequences he makes it his business to annexe her in the hope of receiving the same service.
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