The Clock Winder

by Anne Tyler

Overview

With wondrous observations and bittersweet humor, the beloved best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author tells the story of an unsuspecting young woman who becomes the North star that helps a stumbling, dysfunctional family find its footing.

Mrs. Emerson, widowed with seven adult children, lives alone in crumbling Victorian mansion outside Baltimore with only a collection of antique clocks to keep her company. Elizabeth Abbott—twenty-three years old, aimless, bohemian, and beautiful—leads a vagabond lifestyle until she happens upon Mrs. Emerson’s home and convinces the older woman to hire her as a handyman. When three of the strange, idiosyncratic Emerson children return to their childhood home for a visit, they are irresistibly drawn to Elizabeth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780449911792
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/27/1996
Series:	First Ballantine Books Trade Ed Series
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	878,518
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the author of more than twenty novels. Her twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hometown:

Baltimore, Maryland

Date of Birth:

October 25, 1941

Place of Birth:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Education:

B.A., Duke University, 1961

Editorial Reviews

To read a novel by Anne Tyler is to fall in love.” —People

“Her brilliance in capturing the ripples on the surface of family life gives her claim to be the Jane Austen of our age.” —The Daily Mail (London)

“Tyler has explored the oddities of humanity with a cool yet loving eye, finding unexpected depth in ordinary people and showing how they manage to hand on to each other despite all the forces that conspire to drive them apart.” —The Washington Post

From the Publisher