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Clock Dance

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Clock Dance

By: Anne Tyler
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Clock Dance by Anne Tyler, read by Kimberly Farr.

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: when she was eleven and her mother disappeared, being proposed to at twenty-one, the accident that would make her a widow at forty-one. At each of these moments, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others.

So when she receives a phone call telling her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot and needs her help, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the moment decision to look after this woman – and her nine-year-old daughter, and her dog – will lead Willa into uncharted territory. Surrounded by new and surprising neighbours, she is plunged into the rituals that make a community, and takes pleasure in the most unexpected things.

A bittersweet novel of hope and regret, fulfilment and renewal, Clock Dance brings us the everyday life of a woman who decides it’s never too late to change direction, and choose your own path.

'She is and always will be my favourite author' Liane Moriarty

 Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

If Anne Tyler isn't the best writer in the world, who is? (Jane Garvey)
One of our greatest living fiction writers and if I was in charge, she'd have a Nobel by now (Julie Myerson)
Brims with the qualities that have brought her legions of fans and high critical acclaim. Characters pulse with lifelikeness. The tone flickers between humorous relish and sardonic shrewdness. Dialogue crackles with authenticity. Beneath it all is an insistence that it's never too soon to recognise how quickly life can speed by and never too late to make vitalising changes (Peter Kemp)
How does she do it? Her style is deceptively simple. Even though she performs narrative cartwheels that would lead other novelists to be praised as experimental... she does it with such ease that it seems closer to life than to art. it is almost as though we are there to witness time passing, and people changing (Craig Brown)
A writer sharp-eyed as a butcher-bird, skewering complacency... an immensely funny writer... a quiet writer, in that much of her skill goes toward the excision of anything that reminds the reader they are reading (Patrick Gale)
Clock Dance, rife with the hurts and joys of living, is far more than merely very good... For readers Anne Tyler is a life force; for writers she is simply the best (Eileen Battersby)
A smart, touching exploration of altruism and the nature of a meaningful life (Anthony Cummings)
A beautifully crafted, bitter-sweet story about regret, empty nest syndrome, loneliness within a relationship and seeking purpose and fulfilment in life. Kick back and lose yourself in this gem of a novel (Sinead Moriarty & Rick O'Shea)
My favourite author… She writes such absorbing, wise, tender books, devastatingly acute about human nature… She never fails (Jacqueline Wilson)
The loneliness and confusion of childhood are wonderfully rendered...reminiscent of Tyler's best work, such as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (Molly McCloskey)
All stars
Most relevant
thoroughly enjoyable and very skilfully performed. brought me to tears of sorrow as well as laughter.

heartaching and humorous.

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I've been an Anne Tyler fan for decades. This novel was well-written but as dull as the one - dimensional character it almost portrayed. I listened to the end always hoping that she'd wake up and live. The ending was an atrocious after-thought. Though Tyler may have planned it from the start one can't have faith that the character knew what she was doing. To dismiss her future life in a couple of sentences after making us wade through her non relationships was a bit disappointing. No. It was incredible and disappointing.

Underwhelming use of Anne Tyler's skills.

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This gentle yet steering story invited us to understand minor people with small lives. Yet they matter. The sadness of family distance and the joy of love . The longing for family closeness. How men and women are divided by walls. The clockwork dance is subtly feminist liberating women from the traditional shackles of compliance and expected subservience. Yet honours the nurturant of their souls. Captures the internal struggle of an ageing woman in middles America.

Anne Tyler always succeeds in gently moving the reader

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Absolutely adore anything written by Anne Tyler. Narration was very good as well. Recommended.

Another Anne Tyler Masterpiece

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