I love, love, love Ladder of Years, so I was really looking forward to another visit with Anne Tyler. I have a stack of her titles — Clock Winder and Patchwork Planet among them — and somehow landed on the former.

Hmmm.  I love Anne Tyler. And there are absolutely entire sections of this book which were flawlessly written.  However–and this is a huge however–there were 3 or 4 chapters which were completely baffling and confusing and even hard to follow.

Most of the narrative involves Elizabeth–from her perspective and over the course of weeks.  But in those 3 or 4 chapters you jump time and perspective.  The narrators are drawn from minor, previously barely-mentioned characters–so their suddenly being front and center made for a strange adjustment.  I had to re-read the beginnings of these chapters multiple times to figure out what was going on and who these people were.  Then to be further vaulted into a completely different time period–sometimes several years later–simply added to my befuddlement.

Okay–then the real kicker–in the final chapter, she not only changes time and perspective, she changes Elizabeth’s name–in conversation as well as exposition–to Gillespie!  Sigh.

I wanted to love it.  I didn’t.