Celestial Navigation

Author: Anne Tyler
Date Finished: 5/28/06

Anne Tyler’s books should come with a warning label that says, “Talk to the people you love or you’ll end up miserable.” Celestial Navigation is one of the more depressing of her novels that I’ve read, and I’ve read quite a few. In this book, told from multiple points of view, a shy artist, Jeremy Pauling, lives with his mother, staying mostly in his art studio on the top floor of their Baltimore row house. When his mother dies, he takes in a boarder, Mary Tell and her young daughter.

Jeremy and Mary fall into what looks like a marriage to all eyes; they cannot actually be married because Mary’s first husband will not give her a divorce (the book is set in the 60s). Jeremy goes from a quiet loner with a mildly successful art career to a completely bewildered father of six, struggling to find a way to interact with his family even as his art becomes successful enough to support his large brood.

In typical Tyler fashion, both Mary and Jeremy come to feel trapped by their circumstances, worried that the life in front of them isn’t the life they were meant to have at all. Tyler is at her best when she is describing the little conversations and miscommunications that tangle up human relationships. In other novels, Tyler resolves the tangles on a more hopeful note; in this one, while there is no tragedy, there is no happy ending.

Reading Tyler is always a lovely experience, sort of like listening to your own brain chatter that has been refined and distilled down to its essential content. Celestial Navigation is lovely, so lovely that you hope and hope for the characters to come to their senses and go forward being lovely together. Although they do not, Tyler's ability to give us a peek into her characters' reasons for acting the way they do is always worth the time spent reading her work.