Short Takes

Digging to America.
By Anne Tyler. Knopf. 277 pp. $24.95.

Toward the end of Digging to America, Maryam, the elegant widowed Iranian-American who forms the emotional heart of Anne Tyler's excellent new novel, wonders whether "every decision she had ever made had been geared toward preserving her outsiderness." Tyler has written an acutely observed physiological study of belonging and identity--to country, to family and to one's own self. In doing so she has created two utterly believable families: the Iranian Yazdans--Ziba, Sami and Sami's long-suffering mother, Maryam--and the unapologetically white middle-class Americans Brad and Bitsy Donaldson. Their lives unexpectedly intersect at Baltimore Airport as Bitsy and Ziba anxiously await the delivery of their adoptive Korean daughters, Jin-Ho and Susan. This date marks the beginning of a long, occasionally perplexing and ultimately rewarding friendship between the families, one that is punctuated by the annual and hilarious "Arrival Party"--an invented tradition that celebrates the anniversary of both daughters' arrival in America.

In a style reminiscent of a seventeenth-century novel Tyler shifts perspective between her characters, creating a complex interior landscape that explores the fraught yet rewarding ties of motherhood and family. Underlying Bitsy and Ziba's friendship is their shared infertility. In one touching moment Ziba tells Bitsy that "her parents believed that people who couldn't have children shouldn't have children." Bitsy covers "Ziba's hand with her own" and looks up: "Ziba's eyes had flooded suddenly with tears."

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