Clock Dance Miriam R. Kramer Anne Tyler has had a weighty influence on American letters with her prolific collection of novels, which include the excellent Breathing Lessons, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and her twentieth book, A Spool of Blue Thread, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. Her latest work, Clock Dance, showcases her easily approachable writing style but also some unfortunate weaknesses in her character development and narrative. Her story centers on Willa Drake, a woman whom the reader follows from her preteen years in 1967, early adulthood in 1977, married life in 1997, and latest chapter of life in 2017. The eleven-year-old Willa and her younger sister, Elaine, live in small-town Pennsylvania with their parents, the mild-mannered Melvin and dramatic Alice. Willa grows up wishing for a big, happy family because of the instability in her own small one. Her histrionic mother slams in and out of the house, fighting with her passive father, whom she derides as Saint Melvin. Alice is prone to Jekyll–and–Hyde mood swings, in which she changes from Willa’s bright, charming mother to a frustrated, erratic woman who hits her children and disappears unpredictably from the house, leaving a trail of emotional destruction in her wake. When her mother emerges after a two-day absence, the pre-teen Willa’s resentment at being placed in the position to care for her younger sister and suffer her mother’s bouts of temper pushes her to a critical decision: what kind of person she will choose to be in life. Her decision to emulate her father rather than her mother, as if there were only two choices available as role models, creates a profound effect on her own character and on her future. In an exclusive preface to the Barnes & Noble edition of Clock Dance, Tyler…