Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant
DYSPEPSIA OF FAMILY DYSFUNCTION
“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant,” Anne Tyler’s breakout novel of family dysfunction, the hearth that is symbolic of the home is replaced by the dinner table (Tyler, 1982). Parents Pearl and Beck Tull follow Beck’s dysfunctional career path, moving often and never putting down roots. Beck’s wanderlust comes to the home when he deserts Pearl after having given him three children. She becomes reactionary, fracturing the family as the children persevere through differently perceived childhoods with each other, simultaneously, based on their interpretations of each mother-child relationship (de Mott, 1982).
Cody, the oldest child, resentful and angry with his father, develops many of the same traits–a rolling stone, lighting here and there for different employment opportunities. His life is one of desertion, dragging his wife and child to each greener patch of grass along with him. His wife herself is his revenge at his father, taken out on his brother, after stealing her away from him. Moving frequently, they are subjected to the pain of desertion in that they are never allowed to establish a continuity of home and family. Ezra, the middle child, becomes the empathizer, healing rifts under their roof when he can. His glue for the family is his cooking, which figures prominently when he inherits a restaurant, “The Homesick Restaurant.” The name itself is ironic, in that he seeks reconciliation with a coming-of-age that should have been but did not. Jenny is the academic, pursuing a medicine career, excelling professionally, but failing to put down her own roots when it comes to marital stability and continuity, going through three marriages.
Each of these children interpret their childhood and their lives through the poison of their father’s desertion and their reactionary mother. The symbolism congeals at the dinner table after Pearl’s funeral, when all of the dysfunction is revealed symbolically with eating disorders and acrimony. Ultimately, Beck–the prodigal parent–returns to the table, setting into motion a cycle of reconciliation, especially with his son, Cody. Ezra has finally given the tonic for this family’s ills by feeding them what they were needed after the malnourishment of distorted memories and sibling/parental dysfunction.
Tyler, Anne, (1982). Dinner at the homesick restaurant. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
De Mott, Benjamin. (1982). Funny, wise, and true. New York: New York Times.
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