This week I'm taking a break from book reviews to share a delightful posting from Anne Tyler's website. Regular readers of this space know how much I love this author. Below is a link where she tells how she comes up with ideas.

Anne Tyler has written twenty-five novels. Her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. This peek into her creative process should resonate with both authors and readers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

https://annetyler.com/annes-inspiration/

Alas, Babylon appeared in 1959, when clouds of nuclear fear hovered over humanity. People built bomb shelters on their property and stocked them with water and canned food. Schools conducted duck-and-cover drills. Citizens were urged to keep their radios tuned to their CONELRAD stations. Sputnik, a primitive Russian satellite, orbited the planet, a harbinger of doom.

Pat Frank’s novel centers on the town of Fort Repose, Florida, where everybody knows everybody. The doctor makes house calls....

Autism gets a lot of news coverage these days. Woody Brown’s debut novel Upward Bound gives us a personal insight into autism and how the world appears to people like himself.

Upward Bound is a fictional daycare center for dysfunctional adults. One of them, named Walter, was able to complete high school with a lot of help from his mother. But his inability to speak prevents him from advancing further. Jorge, a giant of a man, has an inexplicable obsession with a Mr. Potato Head doll. Tom’s...