Where to start with Anne Tyler

American novelist, born 1941. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1989.

Best Anne Tyler book to start with: Breathing Lessons (1988), on 3 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Breathing Lessons, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989, is the best introduction to Anne Tyler. A middle-aged couple drive from Baltimore to a funeral and spend the day going over their marriage. It is funny and generous, and you can read it in a weekend.

The Accidental Tourist, shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 1986, is a very good second book, about a man who writes travel guides for people who hate travelling. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was shortlisted for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award in 1983 and follows a Baltimore family and the mother who raised three children alone. It is the darker of the two.

A Spool of Blue Thread, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize in 2015, follows a Baltimore family across three generations and is her most recent on the index. Digging to America, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2007, is about two families who each adopt a Korean baby. Ladder of Years, shortlisted in 1996, is about a woman who walks away from her family on a beach holiday, and it is the lightest.