Dear Great Book Guru, My book group is looking for something really good to read and discuss. My friends prefer short books by women writers but I feel this is really limiting. Do you have any suggestions? Book Club Burnout

Dear Burnout, I have just the book for you and your friends- Anne Tyler's newest novel- NOAH'S COMPASS When my book group began almost seventeen years ago, we started with Anne Tyler's DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT, and we have since read all her novels and never once have we been disappointed. Her latest continues a common theme for Tyler- a damaged, mildly depressed, mildly likeable hero who is estranged from much and many . Liam Pennywell is such a man- sixty, twice divorced, recently fired from a teaching job at a second rate private school, and a mild irritant to his three daughters and ex-wife. He finds himself in an unattractive apartment in a questionable part of Baltimore; he is attacked and robbed on his first night and spends a large part of the book trying to regain those lost moments. How can this be a good read, let alone a great novel? Well, Anne Tyler has the enormous talent to make us see ourselves in Pennywell's ordinariness so we end up caring deeply for him. When he begins to find love and affection with a young, unattractive woman- Eunice- we feel buoyed and when problems arise (and they always do for Tyler's heros)we wring our hands and hope for the best, while knowing that a happy ending is most unlikely. Tyler imbues seemingly pointless moments of life with humor and insight, and those people who live their lives of "quiet desperation" are shown to be worthy of our greatest respect.