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Digging To America
by Anne Tyler


8.6

based on 24 reviews
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based on 13 votes
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Official Publisher Site

Tyler's latest novel focuses on two households--one white, the other Iranian-American--who are brought together when they each adopt a Korean baby.

Knopf, 288 pages
05/02/2006
$24.95

ISBN: 0307263940

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Daily Telegraph Jane Shilling

A comedy that is not so much brilliant as luminous - its observant sharpness sweetened by a generous understanding of human fallibility.

Booklist Donna Seaman

Tyler creates many blissful moments of high emotion and keen humor while broaching hard truths about cultural differences, communication breakdowns, and family configurations. This deeply human tale of valiantly improvised lives is one of Tyler's best.

Library Journal

A touching, well-crafted tale of friendship, families, and what it means to be an American.

The Spectator Caroline Moore

Tyler is superbly alive to the complexities of emotion thrown up by the clash of cultures. [20 May 2006]

Christian Science Monitor Heller McAlpin

Once again, this wise and warm-hearted author delves beneath the surface of ordinary Americans to find that there are no ordinary Americans.

Daily Telegraph Victoria Lane

The greatest pleasure, though, is to be had in Tyler's descriptions of small children. She makes their characters so distinct (so while baby Jin-Ho hugs an armful of autumn leaves, Susan plucks "fastidiously" at the single leaf that lands on her jacket and holds it up to inspect it) yet is aware that they are only the innermost grain of the pearl.

Houston Chronicle Charles Matthews

Tyler's skill at getting the reader inside her characters' heads, often with a precise and unexpected detail, is undiminished.

San Francisco Chronicle Elizabeth Gold

Digging to America is surprising, and in a very good way. It has all of the Tyler virtues: the sly wit, the psychological acuity, the empathy. But in Digging to America, Tyler has opened up her world to the world -- the global changes that enable an assimilated Iranian American, an Iranian immigrant and an orphan girl from Korea to become an American family.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

With Maryam Yazdan, the novel gives us an affecting portrait of a woman caught between two cultures and two countries, a woman pulled between the expectations of her clamorous family and her own temperamental inclinations toward solitary independence.

The New York Times Book Review Liesl Schillinger

One senses that, like Dave Donaldson, the bereaved grandfather of Digging to America, Tyler has begun to shift her focus as she wrestles with the question of how an individual moves forward. With the map she's sketching, she's no longer in search of buried treasure; she's in search of the road ahead.

Los Angeles Times Gene H. Bell-Villada

Within the confines of her deceptively understated art, Tyler's experiential range here expands considerably. [25 June 2006, p.R7]

Sydney Morning Herald Helen Elliott

The central mystery of all Tyler's work is how she sustains the kindliness without overheating it into homey. It has much to do with a feathery comic touch, but readers and other writers puzzle over something indefinable, some unique evanesence. Try to analyse and it vanishes.

The Economist

Tenderly observed and lifted by humour, Digging to America is a complex novel that asks if anyone can ever truly fit in. In answering that question Ms Tyler has woven her magic once again.

The Independent Julie Wheelwright

There is so much truth here, as Tyler strips away the issue of ethnic difference to reach the heart of her complex and compelling matter.

The New Yorker

There are many opportunities for the sort of rueful comedy at which Tyler excels, but she also explores the permutations of estrangement available to those whose identity depends on calling elsewhere home, and delineates, with offhand grace, how subtly our own set of family customs defines us.

The Observer Adam Mars-Jones

It hardly seems likely that a novel could contain too much understanding. Isn't that what fiction aims at, supersaturation with insight? Still, that's the strongest criticism that can be made against Anne Tyler's new novel.

The Guardian Lisa Allardice

Digging to America will do little to dissuade Tyler's detractors, for whom, as one critic acidly put it, she has become "America's foremost Nutrasweet novelist". But there's more spice and bitterness here.

Kirkus Reviews

Vintage Tyler, with enough fresh, new touches to earn her the next generation of fans. [1 Mar 2006]

Publishers Weekly

Tyler (Breathing Lessons ) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. [27 Feb 2006]

Washington Post Ron Charles

With her 17th novel, Tyler has delivered something startlingly fresh while retaining everything we love about her work.

Chicago Tribune Lynna Williams

The novel is a welcome counterpoint to some of the talking-heads debate about immigration issues currently filling the airwaves. It reminds us, gracefully, that humans are more complicated than sound bites. [23 July 2006]

Boston Globe Gail Caldwell

The novel wants to be comic but too often seems attached to its own humdrum, slightly foolish events. Tyler can be a very funny writer, but here the jokes are weak and even saccharine.

Wall Street Journal Tara Gallagher

The cumulative effect of Ms. Tyler's intricate understanding of her characters can be disappointingly plain, as though she is too fond of them to allow their complexities to interfere with their lives.

Entertainment Weekly Tina Jordan

For all of Tyler's writerly gifts -- and she has many -- it's hard to enjoy Digging to America: The characters are just that unlikeable.

The average user rating for this book is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Walt J gave it a10:
I've been a big Tyler fan for years and for me her books are always something to look forward to. I like some better than others but all of them have been well written and this is no exception. I love her plain simple writing style and usually like most of her characters. She has yet to disappoint me.

curare gave it a3:
I couldn't muster enough faith in the story to prod any longer than page 41. I found it difficult to relate to, sympathize with, or even respect the characters. They were intolerable, existing only to drive the plot. The book professes to extol the principles of cultural tolerance and individual sensitivity, but it fails in this as it attempts to bridge ethnic, gender, racial, economic, generational, and, especially, the individual divide. The characters are pigeonholed in stereotyped behavior, manner, and thought. A stilted performance of a highly advertised and acclaimed book.

Florence P gave it a10:
I have read every one of her books and loved them all.

Kathy R gave it a7:
Watching the mixing and melding of these families was fascinating and funny.

Lisa R gave it an8:
Loved both families; the contrast of one family trying to be more "american" with the other family trying to embrace the ethnic roots of the adopted child is very thought provoking.

Kurt O gave it an8:
Tyler is 15 years from her best work, but this is still a highly enjoyable story of the perils of maintaining a sense of individuality while being part of a family and a larger social group. Definitely one of Tyler's better recent efforts and infinitely superior to the sour "The Amateur Marriage."

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Digging To America by Anne Tyler

Digging To America
by Anne Tyler