What the??? So much praise for this book and author. But it really fell flat for me. If I could give half stars, it would be 2.5

One thing I kept hearing over and over was how Anne Tyler reels you and and really gets you excited about the characters. I feel I didn't learn anything about some of the main characters except Abby and Junior. What about Denny. I would have loved to understood him more but he was left as an enigma. Sure you can understand he was resentful about Stem showing up, but come on... At some point couldn't the family had at least one attempt at a decent conversation about it.

I was completely shocked at how Abby was killed off in section one. First, I really hoped the author was going to delve into why she was suddenly disappearing. Obviously the author wanted to take us a different route and tell us about how the family came to be. Abby's part was okay. But Junior, what an a-hole. He was such a jerk to Linnie, and, well, everyone (except maybe his children, we don't much of that interaction). To spend his life working his way to better himself but dismissing people that were like him as well as those who he was trying to emulate. The manipulation. And living his life as a lie with Linnie. For all those years.

The overarching theme I did gleam from this novel is how a person can determine how they feel people should act and behave, how they want their ideal family to behave and how those expectations can lead to disappointment and rejection when you can't let those ideals go. People are human and we can only expect them to act the way they wish not how we wish for them to behave.