Search - Back When We Were Grownups

Fifty-three yr. old Rebecca reflects on the past thirty years. How she married an older man with three little girls and became caught up in the whirlwind of their lives. Now after Joe's death, she questions who she really is. A funny, deeply moving and charming story.

Amazon.com's Best of 2001
The first sentence of Anne Tyler's 15th novel sounds like something out of a fairy tale: "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person." Alas, this discovery has less to do with magic than with a late-middle-age crisis, which is visited upon Rebecca Davitch in the opening pages of Back When We Were Grownups. At 53, this perpetually agreeable widow is "wide and soft and dimpled, with two short wings of dry, fair hair flaring almost horizontally from a center part." Given her role as the matriarch of a large family--and the proprietress of a party-and-catering concern, the Open Arms--Rebecca is both personally and professionally inclined toward jollity. But at an engagement bash for one of her multiple stepdaughters, she finds herself questioning everything about her life: "How on earth did I get like this? How? How did I ever become this person who's not really me?"

I felt this story was quite sad, really. Rebecca Davitch realizes that maybe she is living the wrong life-but how to change it? Set in Baltimore, at the end of the 20th century, she is a woman who tries to please everyone, especially her family. When she starts to have doubts about the way her life has gone,---- *SPOILER ALERT* ---- she tracks down an old 'friend' to see if she did in fact make a mistake way back when. I think all, or at least most, 'middle-aged' women will identify with her- what if I'd done it differently?? Lots of characters,lots of family turmoil,a quick read.

Interesting characters, great relationships.

I enjoyed this as I found it introspective and also funny.