Just Finished Reading: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

Macon Leary (played by William Hurt in the 1989 movie adaptation) hates to travel – which makes him the ideal author of the best selling series of Accidental Tourist guidebooks specifically written for the tired businessman who hates being away from home. Set in his ways to the nth degree he copes with the chaos of life by simply ignoring it. As a life strategy it seems to work until his young son is killed in a random shooting. When his wife (played by Kathleen Turner) can no longer cope with his apparent inability to feel anything about the death she leaves him and asks for a divorce. Forced to cope on his own for the first time in his life things begin to spiral out of control. When his dog, Edward, bites a stranger he seeks help with his training from the local Meow-Bow dog clinic run my Muriel Pritchett (played by Geena Davis). With her basic chaotic nature and her persistence she attempts to connect Macon with a world he has never felt comfortable in. But can he cope with any more chaos in his life without going into complete meltdown?

I probably haven’t seen the movie of this book since I watched it on videotape in 1989. I’ve been a fan of William Hurt for years and, after finally reading this, see how much he nailed the character of Macon. Whenever I ‘saw’ him in the book or ‘heard’ his voice I saw and heard William Hurt. It was uncanny. To a lesser extent I ‘saw’ and ‘heard’ Davis as Muriel. Certainly at the beginning of their relationship I thought that she’s aced her adaptation too. It was only when things developed (and I’m not sure if this was in the movie) and they moved in together that I was presented with a harder, slightly crazier and more bitter Muriel that I didn’t recognise as Geena Davis. Like in the movie, Macon’s wife Sarah was mostly absent – either leaving or, briefly, coming back. This was primarily the story of Macon – falling apart, coming to terms, resisting change, slowly realising he can’t go on like this, fighting desperately to put things back together like before and finally deciding that the future must be different from the past.

I really liked the first half of this novel. It brought back many pleasant memories of the movie and, more than once, made me sigh with heartfelt sympathy for Macon’s circumstances. I even saw some of his coping strategies played out in my own life with some amusement. The second half I found to be more of a struggle. Tyler had already more than made her point by then but went back to it time and time again comparing Macon’s possible future with Muriel with Macon’s deeply dysfunctional siblings. More than once I thought to myself “Yes, I get it. Move on!” but she didn’t. At the end it became more than a little tedious and I had to grit my teeth to finish the last 50 pages. After such a promising stat that was more than a little disappointing. In consequence I can’t really recommend this. I can recommend the movie though……