fiction
Macon has had a rough year.
His son was murdered.
Then his wife left him. He is stuck in his monotonous, small life when he meets
Muriel and things are never the same.
Macon is a travel writer but doesn’t like traveling. He has
very definite opinions on everything; opinions which tend to be stuffy and unpopular,
which is just as well since he doesn’t like people. Trying to give him the benefit of the doubt
since we, the readers, are only meeting him after his tragedies, I still found
myself bored and disinterested in his pathetic existence in the first quarter
of the novel. I switched to a different novel because I needed a break from
Macon’s depressing life carousel.
I went back to The Accidental Tourist after completing my “palate
cleanser” book and was able to complete the novel. Macon was his own
worst enemy and couldn’t seem to summon the emotion and drive necessary to make
any changes. Then again, he failed to
see anything wrong with himself. Despite
himself, Muriel affected his momentum. She was so completely
different than anyone he’d previously encountered and so relentless in her
optimism and energy that he couldn’t help but become folded into her
world. It took someone like her to snap
Macon out of his tragic circumstances.
The ending of this Anne Tyler novel was odd, though. I guess it was in character for
Macon to fall back into old habits but the way he finally realized how he
wanted to proceed seemed anticlimactic. On the other hand, it was definitely
time for the novel to end.
The audiobook narrator, Jefferson Mays, was good. He had a variety of voices and his voice acting was on point. He also actually sang!
YAY! I’ll give him an A.
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