Noah's Compass

by Anne Tyler

  RHRC: You’re from Baltimore, where Noah’s Compass, like so many of your novels, is set. What role, if any, did Baltimore play in creating this story?

  AT: I always think of Baltimore as playing a very central role, just because it lends so much character and color to my stories. (For instance, that burglar’s mother is pure Baltimore, in my opinion.)

  RHRC: Noah’s Compass focuses strongly on family dynamics. Have any of your experiences with your own family influenced the relationships between Liam and his family?

  AT: By definition, anything that happens to me personally will not be appearing in a novel. I like to imagine myself in totally different experiences from those I’ve had in real life.

  RHRC: Was Liam the first character to take shape in your mind? Did you find it difficult at all to write from a man’s perspective?

  AT: Yes, he was the first of the book’s characters. In fact I don’t think the plot would have come to anything without Liam’s particular quirks and foibles. (Another person would not have obsessed so about the memory gap; another person would not have earned the novel’s final sentence.)

  I feel comfortable writing from a male perspective—I grew up in a largely male family—but I always notice that the average male character can’t speak as fluidly or show his emotions as openly as female characters, and sometimes I feel restricted by this.

  RHRC: The title Noah’s Compass makes me think of the biblical Noah. Is it meant to? What parallels do you see between Liam and Noah?

  AT: Well, of course both Liam and Noah are drifting without destination, as Liam implies in his conversation with his grandson. But I also think that, like Noah, Liam is trying to be a singularly moral person—as he shows in his decision about Eunice.

  RHRC: When Liam moves into his new apartment, he anticipates quiet solitude and reflection in this “final stage” of life, yet this hardly seems to be the case as he deals with his daughters, ex-wife, and of course, Eunice. Is Noah’s experience a reflection on what happens to us as we age?

  AT: It’s not necessarily what happens to us as we age, but it’s most certainly what happens if we maintain any ties with our families. There is very little chance of solitary reflection in family life, I’ve found.

  RHRC: Why do you think Liam was so bothered by his inability to remember? What did he think he would gain by recalling the night of the break-in?

  AT: I think that, unbeknownst to himself, Liam was really asking, “Why was it that I let my whole life slip away so unobserved, and so unfelt?”

  RHRC: In our hectic modern lives it seems that all of us could benefit from a rememberer, and yet when we meet Eunice in the pages of Noah’s Compass, she seems like a complete original. Where did the idea for Eunice’s job come from?

  AT: I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of chiming in to supply the name of a person or a book that someone close to us is trying to recall—or of having someone else chime in when we ourselves forget. One or another of those episodes led me into a daydream about the possiblity of “chiming in” as a job description, and I jotted the thought on an index card and resurrected it when I was plotting out Noah’s Compass.

  RHRC: Which of Liam’s three daughters, Kitty, Louise, or Xanthe, was easiest for you to write? Did you identify with any one of them in particular? Do you think that Liam had a favorite among his daughters?

  AT: All three arrived ready-made, so to speak; they seemed very real to me immediately, although the only assignment I gave myself was to supply Liam with three daughters, and to make them different enough from one another that readers wouldn’t get them mixed up.

  I doubt if Liam could name a favorite. Certainly he had a longer and closer history with Xanthe, although it was also more fraught. And Louise, with her religious beliefs so different from his, would have been his most baffling daughter. Probably he would say that Kitty was his easiest, simply because she was willing to do more of the work of communicating with him.

  RHRC: Liam seems to think that he has failed as both a husband and a father. Do you think this is true?

  AT: As a husband, he certainly could have done better, although I don’t think he can be be held responsible for his first wife’s suicide. As a father … well, “failed” may be too strong a word. All three daughters are more or less all right, and leading more or less happy lives, which is about the most we can hope for with our children. But I think Liam did make serious mistakes, most notably with Xanthe. I found it a sad experience to imagine myself in the position of a father who could be so unaware of a child’s feelings.

  RHRC: When Liam discovers that Eunice is married, he tries to break off their relationship. Yet he struggles between doing the “right thing” and choosing to stay with Eunice in what could be a very happy relationship. Ultimately, they go their separate ways. Do you think he did do the right thing in this situation?

  AT: I think he did absolutely the right thing, because according to his own personal moral compass, interfering with someone else’s marriage was a sin. That’s no reflection on any other character who might have decided otherwise, operating from a different moral code.

  RHRC: Do you think of this novel as a love story at all? Either between Liam and Eunice, or between any of the other characters?

  AT: I do believe that Liam’s and Eunice’s story is a love story, even if it ended sadly.

  RHRC: You’re known for writing novels about Americans and their everyday dreams, fears, hopes, failures, and successes. How do you think those things have changed in since you wrote your first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, in 1964?

  AT: In the most fundamental ways, I don’t think they have changed very much at all. But certainly there are many superficial changes. For instance, I am regretfully aware that I am no longer able to write a novel from the viewpoint of a teenager living in today’s world. It’s too different an experience from anything I have ever observed at close hand.

  RHRC: What are you currently reading?

  AT: I’ve been recommending to everyone a Canadian novel I just finished—February, by Lisa Moore. It covers several decades in the life of a Newfoundland woman after her husband’s death in an oil-rig disaster, and it is beautifully written.

  QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Do you like Liam Pennywell as a person? Do you identify with him as a character? How?

  2. Liam loses his job and moves into an efficiency apartment, thinking he doesn’t have much left to live for and that this final part of life is meant to be “the stage where he sat in his rocking chair and reflected on what it all meant, in the end” (this page). Do you think this is an accurate reflection of Liam’s life at this point? Do you think most people his age and in his position feel similarly?

  3. Liam has strained relationships with his daughters and his ex-wife, and blames himself for these circumstances. Do you think he is right to do so? In what ways have the women in his life contributed to these difficult relationships?

  4. How do you think each of his daughters would describe Liam?

  5. Kitty becomes especially close with her father over the course of the novel, choosing to live with him over her mother at the end. Did this ring true for you as a reader?

  6. What was your first impression of Eunice when Liam spotted her in the doctor’s office? Would you ever be tempted to “[pay] someone else to experience your life for you” (this page), as Liam desires?

  7. Do you think that Liam and Eunice make a good match? Why or why not? Does their age difference matter?

  8. As you were reading the novel, did you ever suspect that Eunice was married? How did you feel when Liam discovered this fact from Eunice’s mother?

  9. Do you think that Liam should have tried to make things work with Eunice, or did he do the right thing by ending things with her after he found out that she was married? Should he have just taken his “share of happiness,” as his father suggested?

  10. Eunice says to Liam that married people “go on being involved for all
time even if they’re divorced” (this page). Do you think this is a true statement? Do you think Liam, Barbara, Eunice, and Eunice’s husband, Norman, behave this way?

  11. The only time Noah is mentioned in the book is when Liam is babysitting Jonah and tells him the story of Noah’s Ark. Liam says that “ ‘Noah didn’t need to figure out directions, because the whole world was underwater and so it made no difference’ ” (this page). How do you think this story relates to Liam’s own life?

  12. Liam seems to regard his life largely as a failure, and comments to Barbara that “It’s as if I’ve never been entirely present in my own life” (this page). Would you agree with Liam about his statement? To what degree do you feel present in your own life?

  13. Liam thinks that: “We live such tangled, fraught lives … but in the end we die like all the other animals and we’re buried in the ground and after a few more years we might as well not have existed” (this page). Liam is comforted by this thought; do you feel that way, or do you find this viewpoint depressing?

  14. Memory, or the lack thereof, is a large issue for Liam. What do you think he is trying to achieve by recalling the night of his break-in and any other memories that seem to have escaped him?

  15. When Liam does have the opportunity to confront his attacker, he says no, even though he has longed for this throughout most of the novel. Why do you think he decides not to pursue this? How has Liam changed between the night of the attack and the day when his attacker is identified?

  16. Liam set out to be a philosopher, ended up as a fifth-grade teacher at a private boys’ school for most of his career, and became a Zayda at a nursery school after being fired from teaching. Do you think Liam would have been happier as a philosopher? In what ways has your life taken unexpected turns and how did you deal with them?

  17. Did you like the ending of the novel? Did you feel that it satisfactorily answered everything?

  ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her eighteenth 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.