Noah's Compass

Quintessential Tyler but full of surprises - a perfectly pitched, enchanting and affecting novel about a man adrift in his own life, Noah's Compass chimes subtly, heartbreakingly with our times.

With the humour and poignancy of her classic The Accidental Tourist (though with a protagonist who doesn't venture far from home) Anne Tyler's new novel tells the story of a year in the life of Liam Pennywell, a man in his sixty-first year. A classical pedant, he's just been ‘let go’ from his school-teaching job and downsizes to a tiny out-of-town apartment, where he goes to bed early and alone on his first night.

Widowed, re-married, divorced and the father of three daughters, Liam is a man who is proud of his recall but has learned to dodge issues and skirt adventure. An unpleasant event occurs, though, to jolt him out of his certainty. Obsessed with a frightening gap in his memory, he sets out to uncover what happened, and finds instead an unusual woman with secrets of her own, and a late-flowering love that brings its own thorny problems.

His ex-wife (sensible Barbara) and daughters worry about him but Liam blunders on. His teenage daughter Kitty is sent to stay - though it’s not clear who is minding whom. His middle daughter, Louise, is a born-again Christian with a son called Jonah, but her certainties leave Liam still more perplexed.

Noah’s Compass is about memory and its loss, about incidents and relationships which open up sight lines into a painful past long dead for a man who becomes aware that merely trying to stay afloat may not be enough.

Reading Group Book Questions

1. The theme of solitude runs through the novel. Is it possible to be alone without being lonely?
2. Philosophy could be defined as a search for the truth about life. In what ways is Noah’s Compass a philosophical novel?
3. Why is it initially so important to Liam to recover his memory loss, and why do you think his obsession with this fades?
4. What function do Kitty and Damian perform in the novel? In what ways do they shed light on Liam’s situation?
5. How do you think Liam’s life has been shaped by his experience with Millie?

About The Author

Born in Minneapolis in 1941, Anne Tyler lives in Baltimore where her novels are set. She is the Pulitzer-prize winning author of Breathing Lessons and other best-selling novels, including The Accidental Tourist , Saint Maybe , Back When We Were Grownups , The Amateur Marriage and most recently Digging to America .