Early in her career in her one of her rare interviews, Anne Tyler confessed to a belief that would become a central theme abounding in her work as well as a prime topic for critical argument over the value of that body of literature: “I don’t think most people are capable of change.” And, indeed, a singular aspect of novels that has remained a divisive issue is this lack of change over the course of a narrative arc, prompting the question of whether Tyler is author pursuing a vision or is the lack of character development the one glaring flaw in what is almost universally recognized as a major talent?
In place of the expected emotional arc which results in a significant developing change in her major characters can be found what many term obsessive quirkiness. The cast of Tyler’s novels are among the most eccentric (without intruding in the sphere of the grotesque) in the literature of the latter quarter of the 20th century and the early decades of the 21st century. This focus on eccentricity is equally present in Saint Maybe, but there is also the introduction of something new the first addition to Tyler’s canon since becoming a Pulitzer Prize winner.
While religion was never completely absent from her work, Saint Maybe becomes the first novel in which it is not approached sardonically and treated with a certain satrical distance. The main character, Ian Bedloe, confronts religion head-on with a sincerity, although it must be recognized that he point of religion here arrives with typical Tyler quirkiness: the Church of the Second Chance. What Tyler is writing here, then, is obviously a novel about redemption.
Redemption is not exactly a subject easy to write about without a character being capable of change. Unless, of course, the point is irony and the ending reveals no change. Tyler is obsessed with those aspects of personality potentially capable of transforming someone into a weirdo, but this focus on eccentricity is actually notably free of irony. If nothing else, Tyler can be said to be eccentric herself in the age in which she writes as being one of the few writers whose guiding principle is sincerity.
Saint Maybe has the potential to be an ironic title, but in fact it is not. There is no maybe about the end; a beautifully curved hand-crafted cradle becomes the symbol of change for Ian Bedloe. Nearly twenty years after that confession about not believing in the capacity of human beings to change, Anne Tyler produced a novel in which it takes her main character is unambiguously redeemed through an irrefutable change. True, it is not quick path to redemption, but it does finally arrive. Interestingly—perhaps coincidentally, but maybe not—it also takes Ian Bedloe around roughly twenty years to undergo that change.
