Book Review- A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (1998)

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler is, in my opinion, an attempt to write a story from the point of view of someone who never takes responsibility or accepts the consequences for his actions. In this respect, it is very successful in what it sets out to achieve providing a story that is compelling, for the most part.

The main character of this book is Barnaby. Barnaby is a thirty-year old divorced father. He hasn’t graduated college and every time he takes up night school he always stops going. He is the son of a wealthy and successful family but has a criminal history when he was a young kid. A Patchwork Planet feels like it takes a part of his life and tells about what happens to him, specifically from when he first sees his love-interest, Sophia. He is also our narrator for this book.


At the start of the book, you have the feeling that he is suffering from a string of bad luck. From his perspective, the reader is told about him running late for his weekly visit with his child because his car has broken down and he has to catch the train, which is running late. However, as the book keeps going, it slowly becomes obvious that this isn’t a string of bad luck but rather him not accepting the responsibility and consequences of his actions through-out his life. This becomes more apparent as he continues to make excuses about why he hasn’t finished college, why he doesn’t save more money, and why he is always running late. In this respect he reminded me of an unreliable narrator. If you just take the world from his point of view, he is never in the wrong. 

However, Anne Tyler was careful to make Barnaby a very likable character. His job involved helping senior citizens and those not able-bodied enough to do their own housework with the house work. This is a job that he has allot of pride for. He also generally behaves as an easy-going person and treats those he works with kindly.


As interesting as this book is, the style of writing starts to drag towards the end. It becomes predictable that he is going to wreck something, take no responsibility then try to fix it without understanding the consequences of his actions. It also felt like you found out things about Barnaby, Sophia and the rest of the cast as it becomes important. I felt that this was because Anne Tyler wanted it to feel like a portion of his life and so tried to let things come up organically. However, this ended up feeling like his history was just made-up for convenience to try and explain a characters actions.

This book was enjoyable at the start but the tension and character development started to feel very predictable and formulaic towards the end. It also would have been good if the characters history was revealed a bit earlier so that I wasn’t left guessing at their motivations. As an unreliable narrator, Anne Tyler writes Barnaby very effectively and it was a good choice for her to make him a character that the reader would want to like before all his flaws slowly become apparent.

3.5 out of 5 poor-excuses for waffles.