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|summary=The low-key domestic plot (newly-retired man falls in love with a younger woman) belies the important theme of coming to terms with a reduced place-in-the-world in older age. A memorable and thought-provoking read just ripe for mature reading groups to pluck.

It's always a red -letter day to sit down to an unread Anne Tyler. This is her eighteenth published novel. For any readers not already fans of her books, this American writer observes the ordinary in order to excel at 'making the familiar, strange'.

Liam Pennywell and his family are familiar to all of us. He's a pleasant man who has just lost his job to a younger teacher. To Liam, it's the end of a career which has been disappointingly undistinguished, after the high hopes and intellectual excitement generated by his philosophy degree. He understands that society now places a low valuation on his worth and has no further use for his skills, except perhaps as a low-grade teaching assistant. In consequence , his feelings of self-worth are so low as to turn his profile invisible.

Although just of an age to take his pension, his family expect him to find another job (he has, after all, several years of economic productivity ahead of him; if he isn't working he may become a liability to them). As with many grown-up children, Xanthe, Louise and Kitty take him for granted; they certainly don't expect their father to be caught up in a destabilising life transition just when they have need of his stability for their own crises. Barbara, his ex-wife, and Julia, his sister, join the three daughters in bossing and patronising him and it has to be said that Liam makes little attempt to stand up against any of them. In a context other than the family, he might understand the conflicting feelings of dislike and affection the women engender in him (for hate and love are too strong emotions for what he now feels). But all the family -run their relationships with him as habit. As it's family, albeit a disjointed one, Liam is sidelined into acquiescence to their way of behaving towards him.

Why Noah's compass? Well , one day when Liam is babysitting his young grandson, Jonah. They talk about the Biblical story of Noah launching the Ark, and being tossed around for forty days and nights over land flooded by the sea. Jonah wonders where Noah bought the gas for the boat, and then if the Ark was a sailboat.

If you liked this story (apart, obviously, from another Tyler) I'd like to recommend [[Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden]], which is rather like a detective story in revealing the character of Molly Fox through the eyes of her sophisticated Dublin friends. We think you'll also like [[Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler]].