The Clock Winder

St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 5th November 2020.

The clock winder. Anne Tyler.

This book was not a great success with this reading group. Most people found it uninspiring or, in the case of those who had read other Anne Tyler titles and liked them, disappointing. We agreed that it was not one of her best books – the chief complaints were underdevelopment of the characters, and the weak and uneventful plot. No one seemed to find much of a point to the narrative, and those who attempted to draw an analogy between the Emerson family and the state of America at the time of writing (1960s), also retired defeated. Nor could anyone understand the title (unless it was a “symbol of the repetitiveness of this family's behaviour – open/wind/close/repeat?”).

A dysfunctional family, with some very unpleasant traits: Mrs Emerson snobbish and superficial, her seven children mostly selfish and bickering with each other. Elizabeth the hired help (latterly daughter-in-law) was the only character who moved things along, but even in her case we don't find out much about her childhood, or why she disliked her parents so much, or what her motivations might have been. The whole story, we thought, was difficult to engage with and very unexciting – even when someone is shot, the whole event just passes by without any drama or much in the way of consequences.

Positive comments were very few: an 'easy narrative and style' was really the only one made! In general, The Clock Winder was “just too bland, pointless and affectless”. One of her early titles, and her later writing was thought to be much better.

This book was read during October 2020 and the continuing restrictions due to the Covid-19 virus, and so the discussion was not 'live' as usual, but took place via a Facebook group, email and telephone conversations.