Love has the power to heal; however the experiences of the Tull family in Anne Tyler’s ‘Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant’ demonstrate the destruction and pain that individuals can also encounter as a result of this force.

The novel’s opening chapter focuses on Pearl Tull and the scars left by her failed marriage. In an effort to disprove her relatives’ suggestions that ‘she would be an old maid’ (pg 4), she found herself almost running down the aisle with a man 6 years her junior. At the time ‘she felt reckless and dashing’ (pg 5) but a few years down the track and 3 children later, Pearl was a single mother with a part-time job and a depleting self-esteem.

After Beck left her, Pearl’s determination (perhaps even stubbornness) willed her on, amidst the emotional debris; however things only got harder for the Tull family. The destruction that love had left behind affected her children and their futures just as much as it had hers. Jenny described her mother as a ‘dangerous person –hot breathed and full of rage and unpredictable’ (pg 71) and each of her children’s accounts reveal physical and emotional

Although all three children ‘felt her stinging slap’ (pg 71) on more than one occasion in their childhoods, Ezra was the child with which she made the strongest connection. He had always been the ‘enduring, uncomplaining sort’ (pg 77) but he too came up against the destructive force of love. Girls were not of much interest to him until he met Ruth Spivey –the ‘country cook’. Despite his mother’s initial bitterness, they became engaged and Ruth was introduced to the family.

Sam Wiley was the man Jenny claimed to have loved the most; though he left her for a young model and she swore never to remarry, something inside her would not allow love to completely destroy her, and she found Joe. ‘In need of her brisk and competent attention’ (pg 220) the St. Ambrose’s (all 7 of them) embraced Jenny and her daughter (Becky) and Jenny Tull finally found her place. Though her experiences took pieces of her and left scars, they moulded her as she searched for her own personal definition of life and love and just as she predicted, ‘Jenny was not capable of being destroyed by love’ (pg 114)

Some topics in this essay:
Pearl Tull, Jenny Tull, Ruth Spivey, St Ambrose’, Josiah Pearl’s, Homesick Restaurant’, Wiley Jenny, Harley Baines, St Ambrose’s, tull family, destructive force, destructive force love, force love, , destroyed love’ pg, destroyed love’, pg 71, pearl tull, ‘happy family’, love’ pg, homesick restaurant’, ‘dinner homesick restaurant’, jenny daughter,