Book Club: Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler

KM: THIS novel by Anne Tyler is about Liam, a 61-year-old teacher at a private school who has just been made redundant. He's both divorced and widowed, spectacularly unambitious: very much a beta-male.

The story starts on the day he moves into a smaller apartment in a rather insalubrious part of Baltimore. He goes to sleep on his first night there – and wakes up in hospital, the victim of an attack he can't remember. That loss of memory obsesses him, because he's such an ordered, self-contained, calm man.

MH: I couldn't get on with him at all. He's so helpless, so completely passive, always looking for excuses. He blames everything on other people, shirks responsibility and is forever being organised by the women in his life – his ex-wife and his three daughters. And when he finally does discover romance with Eunice, a woman nearly 30 years younger, he still vacillates. You know the expression "a right girl's blouse"? That's Liam.

AB: I didn't think that about him at all. His three daughters may worry about him moving into the poorer neighbourhood, but he's almost selfless in the way he looks after his teenage daughter Kitty who wants to come and live with him in his tiny new flat. There's no guile or manipulation about him, indeed he has a lot of affection for both of his ex-wives – the first who killed herself, and the second whom he would have been quite happy to have stayed with.

MH: But his behaviour has brought about such sadness among the women in his life ...

KM: Or maybe it's his gentleness and reliability that attracts sad women in the first place? I don't think Liam is helpless at all. Certainly not in the way in which he almost obsessively pursues Eunice, because he's convinced that she might be able to help him recover his memory (her job is as an assistant to a billionaire entrepreneur who himself has a persistently failing memory).

Their relationship is wonderfully conveyed. Tyler lays bare her characters' inner thoughts; she really gets inside their heads. With Liam, there's something almost heroic about the way he rises above the chaos all about him – there's something solid and dependable about him.

DH: I liked him a lot too – his introspection, his confusion, his inner musings. He's like quite a lot of men in Anne Tyler novels – not forthcoming, understated, yet through him she gets to grips with what for me is the key question of her novel: whether you get a second chance at happiness and, if you do, whether it goes to those who deserve it?

DR: I'm a huge Anne Tyler fan, I've read everything she's written and think she's one of the best writers around. This book was the complete opposite to Marina Lewycka's latest novel which we talked about last month. That was meant to be a comedy, but it didn't work because it wasn't grounded on character. Here everything is. And she does this brilliantly but never showily: just the right, telling detail, and the kind of dialogue you can't help but trust. There's just so much going on in every scene: how families work, the kind of rows they'll have, how fathers should behave if they disapprove of their children's life choices. It's all grounded in a wise, deeply perceptive comedy of human relations ...

LR: She's a good writer – I could see everything in the book absolutely clearly, but ... Look, I wouldn't have finished this novel if I didn't have to. Apart from the main twist of the plot – which I must admit I didn't see coming – I thought Liam was entirely predictable, the story of his memory loss a bit heavy-handed, and there was nothing in the plot that engaged me. Liam isn't a compelling central character and nor are the others particularly interesting, so there's nowhere to invest one's emotions. In fact, I found him quite selfish – not making any kind of effort for his family but expecting to be the centre of attention. Even when he starts this relationship with Eunice, she's flattered by his interest but really all he's doing is trying to find out more about himself. He's fundamentally selfish.

MH: I agree – while on one level I admire this book, in that Anne Tyler is clearly a good writer, I didn't enjoy it, for the same reason: that its central character is just so weak.

AB: I don't see that at all. Liam's got one daughter who's a hectoring Christian, and another whom he comes to realise he has neglected. At every point he seems to be frustrated and misunderstood, yet underneath everything he's got a strong moral code. There are two questions here: first, whether or not Liam is what we might like him to be, and secondly, whether this is an effective characterisation, whether we believe in him as a person, and whether he's enough to sustain a novel. For me, that's a yes on both counts.

DH: Yes, we're making a lot of moral judgments about Liam here. I can understand that, but I do like him.

DR: Surely whether we happen to like him or not is absolutely irrelevant to the merits of the book?

LR: I've no strong feelings about Liam's character. My objection is to reading about him: I didn't feel he was engaging enough to be the centrepiece of an entire novel.

DR: But there's the huge story arc with Liam, from being this desiccated follower of Marcus Aurelius who takes little or no interest in the world about him to being, at the end, almost the opposite. And the whole intricate story, which continually mixes comedy and emotional bleakness, is of a man being brought to life – not, as he hopes, through recovering one particular memory but through remembering things he has buried inside himself.

MH: Though so many of these explanations were packed together towards the end, and the start – when he's shown moving house – was just so slow ...

AB: Maybe, but then there's this violent attack, and the story's up and running. And generally this would be an absolute example of everything I used to teach my students in creative writing classes to do in their writing – to keep things subtle, low-key, to let the reader infer the state of their relationships, and so on. This book may look as though it was the easiest one in the world to write – there are only two main plot twists, there's no grand architectural structure, no multiple point of view, not many different voices, and she doesn't flip backwards and forwards in time – but if you pay attention, nothing is wasted, even the little plot about the burglar who attacks Liam in his new flat has a kind of resolution at the end.

It's a very quiet book, not self-aggrandising, not flashy. But it's honed. Even the people who just have a walk-on part – they're still there, still believable.

DH: And I'd point out that she includes the whole age range, from Liam's five-year-old grandson, to teenagers, to his father in his eighties. And that mix drives the story, giving us a different perspective on Liam because we have, in effect, his life story.

LR: She's not shoehorning them in either: it's all an organic part of the story ...

AB: And there's something about Anne Tyler's overall tone, her view of the world, that is very appealing. Even the most annoying characters she gives the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Liam is a bit sexless, but ... You know all these male American writers all going off after this great, swinging, Moby Dick thing, the Great American novel? I think there's something almost desperate about peacocking like that. And then they have these great women writers like Anne Tyler, Lorrie Moore or Jane-Anne Philips showing the world with complete clarity, showing how people really are. Noah's Compass is so understated – just a little book of 270 pages or so – yet Anne Tyler is doing everything here that Jonathan Franzen is falling over himself to do in 600 pages. She's not one of those writers who is saying "Look at how capitalism is making us brutalise each other" – though you need that kind of writer too – but she is saying, "Here, take a look. This is everyday life, these are ordinary, unremarkable people." And she tells their stories with such confidence, such subtlety.

DH: She does have an optimistic take on life. It's to do with making the best of what you've got ...

DR: Yes, it's real life with the quirkiness dial turned up …

KM: But there's a certain kind of wisdom too. In so many of her books there's someone like Liam who is looking backwards at a life that, on paper, mightn't seem to have added up to all that much – but who then realises all of the good things it did in fact contain all along.

LR: Though Liam is only 61: it's hardly right at the end of his life ...

AB: But he realises that this is all his life is likely to be now.

MH: And that there's actually a lot to be gained from looking after children ...

KM: Who can appreciate his calm ...

AB: And the fact he doesn't talk down to them in a sing-song voice like other adults ... It might all seem unremarkable, and nine out of ten novelists would look at a character like Liam and think 'How on earth am I going to get a novel out of a character like that?' But there's a fullness here, a life that's been lived. If I have one tiny criticism of her writing, it's just that her world is just that little bit too nice, that she pulls her punches, and doesn't look into the inner darkness.

LR: It's a bit too safe too – for example, we know that Liam's social slide isn't going to be too catastrophic – he may be downsizing, but there's money in the bank, after all.

AB: But that's all OK – she's not the kind of writer we go to for the dark stuff, but to reaffirm our faith in people. And she's convincing about that.

DH: I found it compulsive reading, yet somehow claustrophobic ... But I enjoyed it so much I went back to her past books and read a few more.

KM: So did I.

DR: And there's no higher praise than that – even if we don't all agree!

• Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler is published by Chatto & Windus, priced 17.99.

ALAN BISSETT (AB) is a former creative writing tutor who now writes full-time. His latest novel is Death of a Ladies' Man.

DIANA HENDRY (DH) is an award-winning poet, children's novelist, short-story writer and writing tutor.

MARY HANSON (MH), winner of our Book Group competition, is a retired teacher who lives in Roxburghshire.

KIRSTY McLUCKIE (KM) is property editor of The Scotsman, and a columnist and broadcaster.

LEE RANDALL (LR) is assistant editor (magazines and arts) for The Scotsman.

DAVID ROBINSON (DR) is books editor of The Scotsman.