Noah's Compass

Quintessential Tyler but full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes subtly, heartbreakingly with our times.

LIam Pennywell has spent most of his life dodgin issues and skirting adventure when suddenly, in his sixty-first year, something happens that jolts him out of his certaint and leaves him with a frightening gap in his memory. In trying to piece together what took place on his first night in a new apartment, Liam finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own set of thorny problems...

Author Biography
Born in Minneapolis in 1941, Anne Tyler lives in Baltimore where her novels are set. She is the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Breathing Lessons and other bestselling novels, including The Accidental Tourist, Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups, The Amateur Marriage and most recently Digging to America.

Reviews
As exquisitely observed and quietly brilliant as the rest of Tyler’s fiction,Anne Tyler draws a comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous - its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility,Noah’s Compass is immensely readable. It displays many of Tyler’s finest qualities: her sharp observation of humanity, her wry comedy; the luminous accuracy of her descriptions... a novel by Anne Tyler is cause for celebration,Anne Tyler is a novelist who has elevated pitch-perfect observation of everyday detail into an art form... a beautifully subtle book, an elegant contemplation of what it means to be happy and the consequences of a defensive withdrawal from other people,One of my favourite authors, one of the very few I rush out to buy in hardback.,A brilliant writer... Funny, wise, tragic.,Tyler brings a scorching wisdom, an understanding of what breaks the human spirit, and the ways in which people try to paper the cracks…Limpidly, singingly written, with dialogue to break a scriptwriter’s heart,Prose is as bright and pretty as in her best work. The dialogue crackles and there are insightful observations about the way families create stories to explain themselves,Her novels have a grace and an emotional depth that few romances can match,Compassionate and funny dissection of the workings of the human heart,Sharply funny, and tenderly wise,Has behind its scenes a darkness from which the author doesn’t flinch, but nor does she dwell on it either…And it does read like a novel with purpose; certainly, it’s about a man who wonders if there’s any point to him. It’s quite a trick to encompass meandering and meaninglessness without meandering meaninglessly, and Tyler brings it off with hints, gestures and elegant cadences,A prize of a novel, readable yet with a mood of autumnal sadness liable to sit on the reader’s chest for some time after the book is finished…Tyler has her own internal compass and knows just where to steer her narrative arc,Tyler’s deft hand at human comedy keeps you entertained the whole time,Wonderfully imagined exploration of memory, loss, and relationships, and how we look at our pasts,Her sterling talent for composing an enthralling story, skilfully paced and enlivened by more than one startling, but eminently satisfying, plot twist, is on display here’,Sensitively drawn characters,This is her 17th novel, and it has the smoothness and simplicity of a skilled craftsman at work,As always with Tyler, the prose flows sweetly from page to page, conjuring up characters so believable you want to thump them,Written with such heart and humour you’ll ration the pages in the hope that it will never end,Another heartfelt, evocative novel from Tyler,Anne Tyler is always good value, and this novel, replete with subtle ironies, is characteristic of her lucid style.,Has the surer touch than almost all of the twice as famous among the American novelists of her generation,Tyler has composed a four-act drama in the form of a novel. There is nothing extraneous and nothing overly dramatic here, and in that lies her very considerable strength as a writer,Tyler writes in such prodigious prose it seems effortless. This is life without the special effects, in all its mundane and infinitely fascinating detail,Anne Tyler has elevated the observation of everyday detail into an art form’. ‘a beautifully subtle book, an elegant contemplation of what it means to be happy.,Reading Tyler’s novels often feels like slipping into favourite pyjamas: her 18th is just as comfortable and comforting. Combining a light-hearted David Lodge-like meditation on old age with the domestic dysfunction of a soap set in Middle American, her simple, nuanced prose reveals some lovely twists.,·Tyler brilliantly anatomises everyday life… Her novels have emotional depth and engaging with her characters is a pleasure