Ladder of Years

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance, Redhead by the Side of the Road and French Braid.In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

"Her best book yet" -- Roddy Doyle "Every scene breathes with intimacy. Lifelikeness almost lifts the characters off the page. Ladder of Years ruefully contemplates the unhaltable passage of time. But, scintillating with joie de vivre, it also offers an intensely appealing way of passing it" Sunday Times "Anne Tyler's novels have three qualities that make them special: they are funny, they are sad, they are intelligent" -- Nick Hornby "Dialogue top-rate, people alive to their fingertips, places as real as next door - you don't get a finer comedy of manners than this" Mail on Sunday