Digging to America

Author: Anne Tyler. Copyright 2006. Published by Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-307-26394-0

The unusual gathering of cultures captures your interest from the very beginning: Two couples at the airport await the arrival of Korean baby girls—one couple very American, thank you very much, and one couple Iranian. The hubbub created by the Americans as they wait contrasts with the quiet patience of the Iranians, though both are equally anticipating their adopted children.

From this chance meeting at a Baltimore airport arises a friendship between two families who have little in common except the nationality of their adopted daughters. Through sheer exuberance, Bitsy, the American mother, forces the fragile relationship to develop, against the cautious judgment of Maryam, the Iranian grandmother. Not a newcomer to the United States, she nevertheless still feels like an outsider. As we get to know her, we discover that she holds herself outside even her closest relationships and unjustly blames her self-imposed alienation on her foreignness. This unlikely pairing of the two families eventually wears away the wall Maryam has built up for herself over the years.

If fast-moving plots are what you look for in a book, you will not find it here. Very few changes occur from the beginning to the end, besides the death of Bitsy's mother -- essential to Maryam's awakening -- and the growth of the babies into young girls.

The point of view switches back and forth among the characters, beginning and ending with Maryam. Probably the most surprising is toward the end when suddenly the reader is inside the head of the now five-year-old Jin-Ho as she makes her own observations of her American mother's obsession with keeping Jin-Ho "Korean"—an American resisting the Americanization of her own child. The Iranians, on the other hand, have changed their Korean daughter's name to Susan -- indicating a desire to be more American while at times resenting what they see as the overbearing oppressive American personality.

The lasting impression I take from this book is an renewed awareness of how fascinated we Americans are with things foreign and the revelation that those here from other countries may not appreciate the implications that they are not "one of us" by our constant attention to their "strange ways."

Though the change in character viewpoints gave insight into the reasons we have difficulty communicating with each other -- culture, gender, generation -- I came away feeling like I still didn't know the people all that well -- that they existed only to teach me lessons about inter-cultural understanding, without the satisfaction of having enjoyed a great story.

I would read another of Tyler's books, to see if another of her stories would give me the pleasure that a compelling plot provides, along with the character development, however shallow, that I appreciated.