Young and romantic decisions

When she was 19, Rebecca ditched her scholastic boyfriend and quiet college life for a divorcee she'd only just met with three daughters and a home-run, party-organising firm.

Thirty-four years later, she finds herself still holding the babies and the business, despite her husband having died six years into their marriage. Saddled with endless prickly relatives and a reputation as the family's infallible, bubbly matriarch, Rebecca starts to wonder what she might have been like had she married her college sweetheart.

Anne Tyler's novel is one of her best: humane, witty and embarrassingly well-observed. Rebecca's collapse is a discreet one, unnoticed by others and unindulged by her, but chronicled by Tyler with such grace and detail that it's rarely less than mesmerising. Her prose is intentionally, successfully messy, with just enough sly good humour to make up for the few moments where things start getting a bit too homespun.