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    Back When We Were Grownups
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    Back When We Were Grownups
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    Back When We Were Grownups
    Audiobook8 hours

    Back When We Were Grownups

    Written by Anne Tyler

    Narrated by Blair Brown

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

    The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else's?

    On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation-something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family's crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, a divorcé with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.

    Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it-how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been-is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.

    As always with Anne Tyler's novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2001
    ISBN9780739300398
    Unavailable
    Back When We Were Grownups

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    Reviews for Back When We Were Grownups

    3.5/5

    792 ratings35 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Rebecca Davitch married young to an older man with three daughters. When he died 6 years later, she took over the family business of hosting parties. Now the 3 stepdaughters and her daughter are grown, and Rebecca is keeping the business going and caring for her late husband's 99 year old uncle. She begins to wonder if this life, so different from what she expected, is what she was truly meant for.
    • 4/5
      This author can make the ordinary interesting. And so often you have the recognition factor as when "it was very tiring to speak in her grandma voice" or, when Tina comes to stay and clucks critically at the discarded eggshells in the eggbox "This was what happened when people came to stay:they forced you to view your life from outside." As others have commented I too got confused by the nicknames of the step-daughters and daughter.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, but after the ending, was disappointed that I had spent so much time with with a group of people who were almost all unpleasant or unhappy.
    • 4/5
      I liked the main character. She's my age, so I relate to the idea of looking around and wondering how my life became what it is. I think Anne Tyler novels are best appreciated if you only read one every years.
    • 4/5
      A very nice, low-key social comedy about a middle-aged widow who seems to be leading a very full and satisfying life at the centre of a complicated extended family and running the family business, until one day she starts to build herself a fantasy about the life she could have had if she had stuck with her boring college boyfriend instead of marrying the eccentric Joe. Apart from being extremely well observed and written, with some absolutely brilliant little details of description and dialogue, it's also the perfect thing to cite as a counter-example when somebody is trying to argue that Americans don't understand subtlety or irony: both qualities without which this story would be completely lost.
    • 4/5
      It's been a while since I've read Anne Tyler, and this book reminds me of why I like her. Small stories of everyday people, told well, with sympathy, but without the condescension that many authors have about characters not from the educated middle-class.
    • 4/5
      The ending was very unsatisfactory. Tyler does have this tendency to end on a commonplace note instead of a bang, but even more so in this work. Other than that, though, I adored this book. The thing I love most about Tyler is her ability to create real people in her fiction - people you like as much as they annoy you - and the characters in this novel felt astonishingly real.
    • 4/5
      I listened to [Back When We Were Grownups] on audio over the past couple of weeks. I really enjoyed this story about Rebecca Davitch, the matriarch of a large, unruly family who owns an inn where parties are thrown. Her organizational skills and upbeat attitude have served her well in the business, but she sometimes she feels like she's turned into a stranger. Even her family doesn't seem to know the real Bec. As she welcomes new grandchildren, plans Poppy's 100th birthday party, and starts to date again, she reflects on who she is and who she has become. I liked this book because I could identify with Bec. Her questions about who she really is are questions that I wrestle with too. A number of the supporting characters - especially Poppy - are loveable and genuine, and they round out this story nicely. Tyler excels at providing an intimate look at family life.
    • 3/5
      Rebecca Davitch is in her early 50's and is wondering whether her life might have been very different if she hadn't married into the chaotic Davitch clas and taken on the care and feeding of young stepdaughters as well, it seems, as her husband's entire family when he is killed after only a few years of marriage. Rebecca renews an old relationship, only to find it unsatisfying, As the story unfolds, the reader realizes that Rebecca is far better than she realizes, and ideally placed at the heart of this large and sometimes bumptious, family. This is a sweet and pleasant book.
    • 5/5
      At 53, Rebecca Davitch has discovered she has become "the wrong person". No longer the serene young lady she was at 20, she has become family caretaker and cheerleader and dresses rather frumpily in her opinion. So she decides to do something about it. Now a mother, grandmother and proprietor of the family business, Rebecca decides to go back to her "roots" - her hometown in Virginia. She locates her old boyfriend whom she jilted and renews her intellectual interests. As Rebecca tries to recapture a life that might have been, the reader is shown the life that was for Rebecca at 20 years old. I loved this book - the characters really draw you in. If I had one complaint, it would be that it was a little confusing to keep all the characters straight. I give this book an A+!
    • 4/5
      I liked the main character. She's my age, so I relate to the idea of looking around and wondering how my life became what it is. I think Anne Tyler novels are best appreciated if you only read one every years.
    • 3/5
      Anne captures the intensity and flavors of relationships among families, the separate conversations, the short tiffs and arguments, the happy times, the comings and goings of the members and the doubts and thoughts about where life is heading. I was unsure of the ending, it felt very unsatisfying and left a hole in the story. Had she really moved on in her life or was she still where she had started at the beginning of the novel. Will, the boyfriend from rebecca's teenage years served as a realization that back to the past was not an option, but was the future any brighter. Wa there any satisfaction with here she had eneded up?
    • 3/5
      When I told my father I had just finished reading an Anne Tyler novel, he described exactly the plot without even knowing which title I had read: It was set in Baltimore, about a large, dysfunctional family with some eccentric quirks, and not very much happens. I realized that this was not only an apt summary of BWWWG but also every Tyler novel I have ever read. There are those writers who write one book and know they are done, and then there are those who write the same book over and over but never realize it.
    • 5/5
      I've read enough Anne Tyler novels that I almost believe I lived in Baltimore in a previous life. As always, this one is totally captivating with unbelievably fleshed-out characters.
    • 4/5
      In this book, a widow re-evaluates her life and the choices she's made. I enjoyed this book, even if it was somewhat predictable and nothing earth-shattering. It's a good choice when looking for a light, but not-too-light, read.
    • 4/5
      53-year-old Rebecca thinks she turns out to be someone she's not. Through the book, she thinks she was "miscast" the day she met her husband.
    • 3/5
      About a 53 year old woman who has an instant family and her activities with this famly. I thought it would be a book about the woman herself but it turned out to be more of the family surrounding the woman than about her. I didn't like it very much.
    • 4/5
      One of my favourite Anne Tyler novels. Sort of a shorter, female, better written version of Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again thematically. Don't want to spoil the plot. But I will say that in a supreme synergistic irony, I read the book just as I too was re-enacting an adolescent/early adult romance rerun. With very similar results, I must say.
    • 4/5
      Perhaps you need to be middle-aged to really get the full impact of Back When We Were Grownups. I did feel somewhat sympathetic towards the protagonist, Rebecca Davitch, who begins to question the years she has spent as a defacto matriarch, carer and general dogsbody for her long-dead husband's family. But compared to Tyler's other families, the Davitchs seemed a bit sketchy and dull.
    • 3/5
      hazy indistinct snapshot of a woman in the midst of family chaos. no real sympathy for this heroine emerges. the fact that she lets her entire brood trample all over her without the least regard tends to evoke the same tendency in me as a reader. i was plowing through without really paying attention and mainly came away feeling ambivilent about the experience as a whole.
    • 5/5
      This book starts up with this first line: Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. A book that starts like that, is a book you want to read. I've spent the week chauffeuring my father back and forth to cancer treatments, and I've heard a lot of family stories. This wonderfully quirky book is pure Anne Tyler, and one of my favorites. This must be the third time I've read it because it always puts my family, and my role in the family, back into perspective for me. A wonderful book, and a must read for anyone over the age of 50.
    • 4/5
      I go so hot-and-cold on Anne Tyler's books. This one, I must confess, left me feeling mostly cold. The dialogue was great, but the book didn't have much more to offer. The main character, was likable, but I didn't really care much about what happened to her, and I got annoyed by the number of times she changed her mind about how she felt and what she wanted. I think I was annoyed not because she changed her mind so much, per se, but because Tyler doesn't explain the reasons behind the changes very much, which left me frustrated.
    • 5/5
      Sandy gave me this book for my birthday and I loved it. At the age of 53, Rebecca Davitch discovers she has become the wrong person. She married Joe Davitch at the age of 19. He had three young daughters. Their mother had walked out seeking a career as a singer. Within a few years, Joe died in a car accident and Rebecca is left to raise the girls and care for her husband's uncle.She cares for this people by continuing to run the business her mother-in-law started and then her husband ran - The Open Arms. It is a business that hosts parties. They own an old home in Baltimore and open the rooms for parties. Rebecca decides to contact her old boyfriend, Will Allenby. She had know Will her whole life and everyone assumed they would get married.
    • 5/5
      This audio is not one to listen to again and again. I'll probably pick up the book one of these days, though. Blair Brown is a great reader, but it's a melancholy story. I remember listening to this as I turned the bend on Elfinwild onto Rte 8 in Shaler.
    • 4/5
      I am a big Anne Tyler fan and this book is full of Typical Tyler quirky characters and unconventional family members, told with pathos and tenderness.
    • 1/5
      I hated this book. It felt contrived with the ridiculous names of the characters. I felt like I was reading something written by a 12 year old.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book. It grapples with the difference between who you believe yourself to be and the self you present to others, and makes a strong case that the self you present (through your actions) is actually more real. The main character perceives herself as a shy, intelligent studious girl, who married and took on a step-family who expected her to be constantly cheerful, outgoing and socially adept. After she's widowed and her family is grown, she needs to decide if that who she wants to continue to be, or if she wants to change.My favorite parts of this book were her interior dialogs about how much effort it requires to cheerfully take care of other people, and listen, and appreciate them, and yet how worthwhile it is to do it.
    • 5/5
      Anne Tyler has her finger on the pulse of humanity. She creates unforgettable characters that live on long after the book is finished. In this novel, Rebecca questions who she has become and how her life might have been different had she chosen a different fork in the road. As a young widow who has now grown comfortably into middle age, Rebecca is the heart and soul of her extended family, the Davitches; and becomes the heart and soul of the novel. Her journey to "the fork in the road" and back will make you laugh and cry at the same time. Wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant read for the middle aged woman
    • 3/5
      tedious at times espc. the first half of the book. It picked up after that.