Anne Tyler gets into her characters’ heads. Here she speaks for thirty-year-old, still adolescent, rebellious, warmhearted Barnaby, ironically the only really charitable member of a Rockefeller-like family whose mother will not let him forget the humiliation and costs of his early mischievous juvenile housebreaking career.
Trying to prove he is a man to be trusted, he helps senior citizens with household tasks as an employee of the RentaBack Agency, founded by the motherly Mrs. Dibble. Funny and empathetic, Barnaby shows us what it is like to grow old as he deals with the widely different personalities of his clients.
His own odyssey leads him to understand why his wife left him, get to know his little girl, and find his own personal angel, a highly unlikely candidate.
Leave a Reply