Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995                   TAG: 9508180102
SECTION: BOOK                    PAGE: D4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`LADDER OF YEARS' IS LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY

\ Anne Tyler's previous work has assured her a permanent place among leading American writers, and "Ladder of Years" is her best yet. Granted, its most appreciative audience may be women, but the midlife ennui which is her subject is something experienced by both genders. Tyler has chosen to exemplify it in the character of Delia Grinstead, wife of a Baltimore physician and mother of three children.

Wife and mother is the essence of Delia's identity until one June day during a family vacation in Delaware, the slight, innocuous Delia simply walks down the beach and into another life. Desertion was not intended, anger was not the motivation; she simply is swept by an indefinable momentum into acting out a fantasy many share at some point or other ... What would it be like to start over?

In the small town of Bay Borough she settles into a life of routine similar to the one she left, but in this one she is in control. That makes all the difference, to Delia herself and eventually to others around her.

The acquiescence of her husband, Sam, and children seems improbable, but as Tyler sketches the fractious teen-aged sons and the strong-willed 21-year-old daughter, their acceptance of events is a natural consequence of their self-centeredness. Sam's neutral reaction is harder to accept, but miscommunication and his tendency toward condescension make it more believable. Delia herself is unquestionably authentic.

Tyler's books are powerful. The source of that power is difficult to identify; the stories are simple, the style is unaffected, the characters are ordinary, the settings are mundane. Maybe the power lies therein - the ungarnished reality of the human condition is presented with insight and straightforward truthfulness. Her characters struggle against one another and within themselves. The overall impact frequently is melancholic, and the effect lingers well beyond the last page.

"Ladder of Years" contains everything that sets Tyler among the best novelists writing today, but it offers an additional element. It is funny, laugh-out-loud funny. The humor, so naturally rendered, is what makes this one Tyler's best.

Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.