DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT by Anne Tyler

Pearl Tull’s husband, Beck, abruptly leaves her with three children to raise on her own.  Cody, the oldest, is as mean as a snake, playing tricks on his kinder and gentler younger brother, Ezra, to get him into trouble or just for the fun of it.  Cody is obviously jealous of Ezra’s even-tempered likeability and is sort of a male version of the title character in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride.  Jenny becomes a doctor but seems destined to repeat her mother’s habit of striking and verbally abusing her children.  There are some LOL nuggets in this book, including a hilarious letter proposing marriage to Jenny.  Her terse reply is also funny, but this book goes from funny to dark in a heartbeat.  Plus, Pearl’s mistreatment of her children and Cody’s mistreatment of Ezra just overshadowed everything else for me.  Ezra is a saintly sort of character, but I found it hard to respect him; he needs to grow a backbone.  I really liked the ending, but the rest of the book is definitely a downer.  One character, Ruth, whose story I don’t want to give away here, is particularly unfortunate, and another, Josiah, deserves better in life, although he is not nearly as pitiable as Ruth.