Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

Second only to Maeve Binchy - Anne Tyler is my favorite authoress. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons and you might also be familiar with The Accidental Tourist, Back When We Were Grownups or Saint Maybe. I have read every book she has written and whenever a new book of hers comes out I immediately put it on hold at the library. I just got this one and it came out in late 2009. She did not disappoint - again. She has a unique way of making you feel like the character. She must spend her life observing people so closely - either that or she herself knows these kind of folks intimately. She has a way of making the reader love her characters with all their flaws and quirkiness just like you would a funny aunt or strange cousin. There is never anything flashy or all that dramatic in her works - they are ordinary, which is what makes them so wonderful. That sounds kind of strange - but they are real people that we might know, living real lives, solving problems and working through struggles and feeling real feelings. And as in real life, sometimes the problem isn't resolved in the "happy ending" sort of way we think it should. She does it all so subtly - so gradually that you don't even realize that you are actually learning and gaining insight. Isn't that what reading is all about - while being entertained we find we actually learn something? A huge thumbs up!