Barnaby Gaitlin is one of Anne Tyler's most promising unpromising characters. At 30, he has yet to graduate from college, is already divorced, and is used to defeat. His mother thrives on reminding him of his adolescent delinquency and debt to his family, and even his daughter is fed up with his fecklessness. Still, attuned as he is to "the normal quota for misfortune," Barney is one of the star employees of Baltimore's Rent-a-Back, Inc., which pays him an hourly wage to help old people (and one young agoraphobe) run errands and sort out their basements and attics. Anne Tyler makes you admire most of these mothball eccentrics (though they're far from idealized) and hope that they can stave off nursing homes and death. There is, for example, "the unstoppable little black grandma whose children phoned us on an emergency basis whenever she threatened to overdo." And then there's Barnaby's new girlfriend's aunt, who will eventually accuse him of theft--"Over her forearm she carried a Yorkshire terrier, neatly folded like a waiter's napkin. 'This is my doorbell,' she said, thrusting him toward me. 'I'd never have known you were out here if not for Tatters.'" These people are wonderful creations, but their lives are more brittle than cuddly, Barnaby knows better than to think of them as friends, because they'll only die on him. Yet his job offers at least glimpses of roots and affection. Helping an old lady set up her Christmas tree (on New Year's Eve!) gives him the chance to hang a singular ornament--a snowflake "pancake-sized, slightly crumpled, snipped from gift wrap so old that the Santas were smoking cigarettes." And Barnaby himself is sharp and impatient at painful--and painfully funny--family dinners, apparently unable to keep his finger off the auto-self-destruct button every time his life improves. As much as his superb creator, he is a poet of disappointment, resignation, and minute transformation.


From Library Journal
David Morse's reading in a calm, even tone reflects the unruffled attitude of the central character in this story. After getting into trouble early in his young adult life, and subsequently paying for his crime, Barney Gaitlin has achieved a level of fulfillment working with senior citizens. Unfortunately, he is perceived by most of his family and friends as a failure, not having attained a college education nor a high-paying position in a high-profile profession. In a relationship with Sophia Maynard, he tries to find a greater level of stability, partly to create a more suitable atmosphere in which to establish closer ties with his young daughter. Tyler's (The Ladder of Years, Audio Reviews, LJ 8/96) characters are real people recognizable in one's own circle of acquaintances. The bonds and tensions arising among family members are readily understandable. A definite recommendation for academic and public library fiction collections.?Catherine Swenson, Norwich Univ., VTCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New Yorker
[U]nlike the patchwork it depicts, it is a wonder of construction: everything fits; it's seamless.


From AudioFile
Anne Tyler's latest novel takes a detailed, funny and tender look at how human beings live in an oftentimes difficult modern world. David Morse is a wonderful narrator, taking us in and out and through the experiences of Barnaby Gaitlin, a young man who feels the world is against him. There's a fine line between tragedy and comedy; Morse seems to know instinctively which way to tweak Tyler's text for the maximum effect. The result is a touching and sometimes painfully funny audiobook that, at times, sounds more like a memoir than a novel. R.A.P. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Things are still quirky, sweet, funny, and wise in Tyler country, as once again, this beguiling novelist portrays seemingly placid characters on the verge of abrupt metamorphosis. Barnaby Gaitland, a 29-year-old threadbare nonconformist and the black sheep of an affluent Baltimore family, is locked in a perpetual cycle of resentment with his mother, who has never forgiven him for the embarrassment he caused her when he got caught breaking into their neighbor's home. This standoff, as well as his divorce, has contributed to Barnaby's disaffection from the adult world in general and his parents' world in particular. His father's family became exceedingly wealthy after his great-grandfather heeded the advice of an "angel," and now the Gaitlands, cold fish all, run a philanthropic foundation. Tyler has made altruism the axis on which this gentle tale spins as she contrasts the Gaitlands' writing checks for the "deserving poor" to Barnaby's regular performance of good deeds as an employee of Rent-a-Back. As he helps the elderly and the infirm and earns their adoration, Barnaby hopes for his angel and believes he has finally found her in Sophia, but even her kindness is tainted and superficial. As Tyler involves us in the minutiae of Barnaby's ragtag life, she offers piquant musings on old age, selfishness, the opaqueness of people's hearts, and the intractability of love. One of Barnaby's favorite clients, Mrs. Alford, has devoted years to making a quilt of "our planet" that is "makeshift and haphazard, clumsily cobbled together, overlapping and crowded and likely to fall to pieces at any moment," a perfect emblem of all our lives. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
Lg. Prt. 0-375-70290-3 Tyler's appealing warmth and flair for eccentric comedy are abundantly displayed in her superb 14th novel, following close on the heels of such recent successes as Breathing Lessons (1988) and Saint Maybe (1991). The story's narrator and main character (and, arguably, hero) is Barnaby Gaitlin, an underachieving Baltimorean approaching 30 who's divorced, stuck in a no-future job (which he loves) with Rent-a-Back, performing miscellaneous chores for elderly and disabled people, and indebted, financially and otherwise, to his upscale parents (who manage a charitable foundation) for his well- remembered juvenile delinquency. A beautifully plotted and skillfully exfoliating narrative traces Barnaby's gradual shedding of his youthful indifference and irresponsibility, and immersion in a nest of relationships that stimulate his growth into the ``good boy'' his clients believe him to be. There isn't a saccharine moment in this affecting story, which begins as Barnaby, en route to visit his young daughter in Philadelphia, contrives to meet a pleasant woman traveler who unself-consciously agrees to perform a favor for a distraught stranger. The puzzle of Sophia Barnes's instinctive goodness draws Barnaby to her and, paradoxically, toward another ``housebreaking'' that is the making of him as it's also an ironic echo of the novel's opening action. Prominent among the unlikely reality instructors who simultaneously smooth and ruffle Barnaby's amusingly described passage toward maturity are his patient father and disapproving mother (who, it seems, cannot forgive her son for outgrowing his waywardness), and especially his several aged employers, all knowing they're headed toward death, yet uniformly determined to hold onto whatever world is left them (for example, Mrs. Alford, who dies only after completing her ``quilt of our planet''``makeshift and haphazard, clumsily cobbled together, overlapping and crowded and likely to fall into pieces at any moment''). Absolutely wonderful: Tyler's many admirers are sure to number this among her very best work. (First printing of 250,000; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people's houses. It wasn't the big loot he was after, like his teenage cohorts. It was just that he liked to read other people's mail, pore over their family photo albums, and appropriate a few of their precious mementos. But for eleven years now, he's been working steadily for Rent-a-Back, renting his back to old folks and shut-ins who can't move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic. At last, his life seems to be on an even keel. Still, the Gaitlins (of "old" Baltimore) cannot forget the price they paid for buying off Barnaby's former victims. And his ex-wife would just as soon he didn't show up ever to visit their little girl, Opal. Even the nice, steady woman (his guardian angel?) who seems to have designs on him doesn't fully trust him, it develops, when the chips are down, and it looks as though his world may fall apart again.

SYNOPSIS

Ann Tyler's 14th novel tells the story of Barnaby Gaitlin, a lovable loser who's trying to get his life in order. Barnaby has overcome his past prediliction of breaking into people's homes to pore over their family photo albums and mail and take a few keepsakes of his own. But even after he's been working steadily as a mover, his prominent family cannot forget the price they paid for guying off Barnaby's former victims. His ex-wife would just as soon he didn't show up to visit their little girl. And when the chips are down, the old woman he feels trusts him the most won't put all of her faith in him.

FROM THE CRITICS

Laura Green - Salon

A train pulls out of Baltimore's Penn station. Boarding passengers include Barnaby, the scruffily dressed, estranged scion of the "old" Baltimore Gaitlins, and a prim, hair-netted young woman. Idly snooping, Barnaby sees this woman accept a mysterious package from a frantic stranger, who claims it is a passport forgotten by his daughter, awaiting its delivery in Philadelphia. On his way, reluctantly, to a rendezvous with his ex-wife and 9-year-old daughter, Barnaby spends the train ride futilely willing the prim woman to open the package, astonished at her ability to be "so well behaved even when she thought nobody was looking."

Fans will recognize, in this opening cocktail of Baltimore, frayed family ties, and the fateful encounter of strangers, the simultaneously mundane and magical world of Anne Tyler. They may find, however, that in A Patchwork Planet the mundane overwhelms the magical. Tyler's 14th novel is narrated with wry bafflement by 29-year-old Barnaby, whose life has gone off the rails since he was caught robbing neighborhood homes as an adolescent. A true Tyler protagonist, Barnaby seeks out the detritus of human relationships rather than looting stereos and jewelry: "Back in the days when I was a juvenile delinquent, I used to break into houses and read people's private mail. Also photo albums ... I sat on the sofa poring over somebody's wedding pictures." To the despair of his distant father, his social-climbing mother, his chilly ex-wife and his prematurely patriarchal brother, Barnaby now works for a company called Rent-a-Back, doing odd jobs for elderly clients.

He also waits, without much hope, for a visitation from the Gaitlin angel. It was such an angel — a "big, tall woman with golden hair coiled in a braid on top of her head" — who first suggested to Barnaby's great-grandfather the invention of the wooden dress-form that made the Gaitlins rich. We know that Barnaby will find his angel, though perhaps not where he first looks; we also know that his search will lead him through family crises and reconciliations. Indeed, the theme and action of A Patchwork Planet, as in all of Tyler's novels, can be summed up in Barnaby's reflections on how "these family messes" are temporarily resolved: "The most unforgivable things got ... oh, not forgiven. Never forgiven. But swept beneath the rug, at least; brushed temporarily to one side; buried in a shallow grave."

In A Patchwork Planet, however, the shallow burials and exhumations of the familiar Tyler types — the passive, lovable loser man, the provocatively undernourished girl, the less-than-loving mother — seem more mechanical than epiphanic. The characters are exasperatingly, rather than charmingly, quirky: As Barnaby misses one more appointment or confesses to having once attempted to torch his parents' house, the reader may share his family's annoyance. Tyler's best novels, such as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, hit their targets — her readers' hearts — with a gentle but satisfying jolt. They expose the damage done by familial negotiations, but insist on the possibility of consolation. A Patchwork Planet diverts, but its characters' wounds don't go very deep, and their recoveries fail to inspire.

Chicago Tribune

Heart-tugging...vintage Tyler.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Wonderfully readable.

Library Journal

David Morse's reading in a calm, even tone reflects the unruffled attitude of the central character in this story. After getting into trouble early in his young adult life, and subsequently paying for his crime, Barney Gaitlin has achieved a level of fulfillment working with senior citizens. Unfortunately, he is perceived by most of his family and friends as a failure, not having attained a college education nor a high-paying position in a high-profile profession. In a relationship with Sophia Maynard, he tries to find a greater level of stability, partly to create a more suitable atmosphere in which to establish closer ties with his young daughter. Tyler's (The Ladder of Years, Audio Reviews, LJ 8/96) characters are real people recognizable in one's own circle of acquaintances. The bonds and tensions arising among family members are readily understandable. A definite recommendation for academic and public library fiction collections.--Catherine Swenson, Norwich Univ., VT

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