Anne Tyler - Noah's Compass

Before he settled in with his book, he put the chicken in the oven on low and he exchanged his sneakers for slippers. Then he switched on the lamp beside his favorite armchair. He sat down and opened his book and laid Jonah’s bookmark on the table next to him. He leaned back against the cushions with a contented sigh. All he lacked was a fireplace, he thought.

But that was all right. He didn’t need a fireplace.

Socrates said… What was it he had said? Something about the fewer his wants, the closer he was to the gods. And Liam really wanted nothing. He had an okay place to live, a good enough job. A book to read. A chicken in the oven. He was solvent, if not rich, and healthy. Remarkably healthy, in fact-no back trouble, no arthritis, no hip replacements or knee replacements. The cut on his scalp had healed so that he could feel just the slightest raised line, barely wider than a thread. His hair had grown back to hide it completely from view. And the scar on his palm had shrunk so that it was only a sort of dent.

He could almost convince himself that he’d never been wounded at all.

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University, and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. This is Anne Tyler’s seventeenth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.